I'm not ready to pull it yet. Not tonight.
But it's getting harder to leave it alone.
Chapter 9
Ezra
I'm avoiding him.
I know I'm avoiding him. My lion knows I'm avoiding him. Knox probably knows I'm avoiding him, because Knox knows everything that happens in this bar the way the bar knows everything that happens in this building — through the walls, through the floor, through the frequency of silence that means something has changed.
What changed is: my lion decided. And I'm not letting it.
Three days ago, Nicholas sat in his booth and told Troy to leave. Not dramatically, not with a speech. JustI don't think this is going to work out. You should go.And my lion heard that — heard the quiet certainty of it, the baseline standard that didn't need to be defended because it was foundational — and decided.
Mine.
I've been fighting it since.
Lions don't get to choose for us. That's the whole point — that's what separates shifters who live in the world from the animals. The animal has instincts. The human has judgment. When they align, you get something beautiful. When they don't, you get a man on a barstool pretending he can't feel the gravitational pull of a human in a window booth who eats nachos edges-first and tips exactly thirty percent and keeps his phone facedown like he's hiding from someone.
My lion wants Nicholas. My brain says Nicholas works for the company that's trying to buy our home.
My brain wins. My brain has to win. Because if my lion wins, I'm the idiot who fell for the corporate agent, and Delgado's warning will be justified.
So I don't look at him. I don't comment on his nachos or his work habits or the way his left hand holds a pen differently than his right. I don't think about the dating profile I wrote six months ago that describes, with uncomfortable precision, exactly the kind of person he seems to be.
I do the books. I stock the bar. I exist in the same room as him and maintain the professional distance of a bartender to a customer and absolutely nothing more.
It's the hardest thing I've done in years.
* * *
"You're brooding," Jason says.
It's mid-morning. Nicholas isn't here yet — his pattern is noon, give or take fifteen minutes — and I'm using the pre-Nicholas hours to get work done without the distraction of his presence in my peripheral vision.
"I'm doing inventory."
"You're doing inventory and brooding. The inventory doesn't require that face." Jason leans on the counter, dish towel over his shoulder. "Is this about the booth guy?"
"Don't call him the booth guy."
"Robin calls him the booth guy. Vaughn calls him 'the human.' Knox doesn't call him anything, which is its own statement." Jason tilts his head. "You were warming up to him all week and now you've gone cold. What happened?"
"Nothing happened."
"Something happened at the date. The night with Troy." Jason's eyes are sharper than people give him credit for. He's the soft one — the one who brings water and makes food and hums while he works — but he's also the one who watches. "You were different after that. Not better-different. Worse-different."
I set down the clipboard. "My lion decided."
Jason's expression shifts. He understands — they all understand. When a lion decides, it's not a preference. It's not a crush. It's the animal identifying a mate with the kind of certainty that doesn't have a return policy.
"Oh," Jason says. "Oh, Ezra."
"Yeah."
"And you're fighting it."
