She was waiting for him to speak next. That wouldn’t work. She had to say it first.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Um…well, you said it sucked that I saw what happened to you, and I asked—well, said, but I was asking really—if we were casual. And you didn’t answer.”
He swallowed hard. “What do you want us to be?”
“That’s not fair, Jeremy. I asked first.”
Shoot. What was he supposed to do? What would Patrick say to Nicole?
No. He couldn’t be anyone but himself right now—flaws and all, Jeremy Freeman, Lucy’s wolf. The burst of resolve popped in his chest like a firecracker, and he held her gaze, promised himself to honor the vulnerability she risked in pressing the question.
He cleared his throat. “I don’t think of us that way.”
“What way?” Stress spiked in her scent, submerged lavender in an unpleasant tang.
Right. Too vague. Try again. “Casual. I don’t think of us as casual.”
She blinked, and lavender mingled now with bright hope. She smiled, only one corner of her mouth lifting. “You don’t?”
“No.”
“Oh, wow.” The smile grew. “I don’t either.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Oh,” he said. “Wow.”
At the same moment they both began to laugh. Just then their server brought a bowl of fried ice cream and set it between them, and they each grabbed a spoon and began a race to see which of them could consume more spoonfuls. Jeremy competed at a half-hearted pace, just to be fair. Lucy did not.
She claimed the last bite, and mischief sparkled in her eyes. “I win.”
“I concede.”
Her giggle was one of the cutest sounds he’d ever heard. “So, um, how far do we want to go with the labels thing? I mean, like, are we dating?”
“Yes,” he said.
She grinned. “Are we boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“I agree.”
Jeremy set both hands flat on the table as unplanned words burst out of him. “And if we’re dating, then you should know I’m a wolf.”
The grin froze, faded from her eyes. Confusion filtered into her scent as her brows drew together. She sat back in the booth, but the shift seemed unconscious. Or he hoped it was.
“Yeah,” he said when the silence between them started to hurt.
She still smelled confused. Not scared, not repulsed, so…that was good. Her silence wasn’t, though.
Maybe she wasn’t familiar with the pack’s preferred term. He gritted his teeth against the stupid word humans had coined for his kind, but he would use it if he had to.
“Lucy, I mean I’m a lupine.”
