“Lucy Campbell. She’s into interior decorating. She’s got purple-dyed hair. She’s really smart, Patrick. And beautiful. We sort of bumped into each other—I mean, her hair sort of bumped into me—and I knew her. Like this loudspeaker blaring in my head that Lucy’s mine, my mate.”
Patrick was nodding. “Exactly how it happens.”
“There was a blaring loudspeaker in your head when you met Nicole?”
“Sure enough.”
“What do I do about it? I can’t just tell her. How did you tell Nicole she was yours, and you were a wolf?”
“Well, first of all…” Patrick set both hands on his shoulders again, studied him hard. “How far did things go tonight?”
He shuffled his feet, ducked his head. “We kissed.”
“And?”
Jeremy’s head came up. “And nothing. I just met her.”
Relief filled Patrick’s voice, his scent. “Good. That was wise of you.”
Not a word people often applied to him. He smiled, squared his shoulders, let himself settle inside. “It feels important for her to know soon, what I am. Otherwise I think it would be like lying to her.”
Patrick nodded. “I told Nicole before things got too serious between us. I had to know she was okay with dating a wolf.”
If he had chosen honesty, then Jeremy would too. He sighed, and his shoulders caved a little.
“I know it’s hard,” Patrick said. “A wolf knows so quickly she’s the one.”
Understatement was one of Patrick’s hobbies. So quick, the brush of Lucy’s hair, the knowledge that he’d found her though he hadn’t been looking. But fate didn’t need a wolf to look. Fate brought her at the right time, made sure he couldn’t miss her.
“When can I tell her?”
Patrick clapped him on the shoulder, drew him in for a final embrace. “You’ll know when the time’s right. I’m proud of you, Jeremy.”
Words his guardian said sometimes when Jeremy stuck with a task and accomplished it, or sometimes when he wasn’t sure at all what he’d done to make Patrick proud. Every time his chest swelled with the warmth Patrick put into the words.
A smirk found his mouth. “Proud even though I ignored your texts for six hours?”
Patrick rumbled a low growl that held little correction now. “Don’t do that again.”
“Okay.”
In a mutual decision they headed for the porch steps, softly re-entered the house. The door shut with a little click. Wolves didn’t bother with locks.
Before he headed for his room, he wanted to put one last thing into words. He said, “It feels like a line drawn in my head. Yesterday I didn’t know if fate had a mate for me or not, or when I would meet her.”
“And today you know.” Patrick smiled.
“Yeah. Today I know.”
Five
Textsalldayeveryday. Evening chats over coffee until the café closed. Walks around campus, her fingers entwined with his. Jeremy always felt warm as a fever.
He treated her to a few dinners at the mall food court one town over. He wanted to take her somewhere fancy, but for the moment Lucy said no to that. He was a twenty-one-year-old student who worked part-time behind the counter of a gas station. That he was broke went without saying, though the age of his pickup truck came out and said it. Food court tacos made for a satisfying meal as long as he was eating them too, his big hands able to hold a shell together with ease, his eyes sparkling blue when he teased her and deep blue when he listened.
Five weeks passed like five days. On Thursdays they both finished their last class by 4:00, and soon it was habit to walk over to the science building and wait for him to exit his Earth Science elective. Why the man was so into identifying rocks and knowing how they were formed, Lucy couldn’t figure out. She’d asked if he collected rocks as a kid or something.
“Nah, I just saw it on the class list and thought it looked cool.”
