“He isn’t. He’s just mad that you heaved him out of bed.”
“So he wanted a nap, and I’m his terrible father forcing him awake?” he asked, as he attempted to wrestle the thing away from his eyeballs. And she went to say something funny in return. She almost laughed.
But then she realized:
The raccoon had stopped struggling.
Now it was just looking at her. Eyes bright black stars, little face suddenly so much more than it had been before. It seemed almost human to her now. Like it had become a little person, full of its own feelings and thoughts and ideas about things.
And what it thought, right now, was about her and Seth.
This one yours?it chittered.
Because clearly, it already saw her as some kind of mother figure. And now it wanted to know if she claimed Seth, so that he could be its father figure. It wanted to know if Seth was telling the truth, she thought, then didn’t know what to say. Of course she didn’t. A fucking raccoon was attempting to get her to define her relationship with a man she was trying not to be horny for, while they stood together in a scrappy yard, in front of a Chevy she was going to fly.
It was kind of a ridiculous situation to be in.
She almost wanted to sayget off my back, raccoon.
But then she’d have to explain to Seth what the raccoon was asking, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t let Seth know what any of this was about. She just had to nod, instead. And to her surprise, it worked. The second she did, that ball of fur and those tiny fingers started to climb down. It got to his shoulder, and then his chest, and then, and then, oh lord in heaven, then…
It held out one little hand to her.
And wow, tonight was really being a lot.
She didn’t know how to cope with the sight of that. Or with the way it felt when the raccoon clambered into her arms, and pushed his face into her hair, and whispered that his name was Pod. It was just all very overwhelming, to the point where she couldn’t help tearing up a little bit.
It was all right, though. Because when she began to explain herself to Seth—to describe the feeling of finding a familiar, of finding a raccoon familiar who could actually talk to her, like all her childhood dreams of being in some fantasy novel about a found family—she discovered she didn’t have to.
He was fucking tearing up too.
“Look, I’m just very emotional at the moment, okay?” he said. “There’s too much happening at once. I had my first ten orgasms in almost a decade last night, and now my buddy who I can’t stop wanting to bone has a talking raccoon. Like something out of a movie, made by Amblin Entertainment.”
Then he tried to pretend he wasn’t wiping his eyes with his shirt.
She didn’t know why he was embarrassed, however. She’d seen him cry a million times—usually over movies with plots just like this. And even if she hadn’t, well. It wasn’t unpleasant to see. In truth, it was very,verynot unpleasant. As intinglynot unpleasant.Sexynot unpleasant.
Oh god, now I suddenly want to fuck him because he can access his emotions and express them in a heartfelt way, she groaned to herself.
As soon as she did, however, she had to wonder if that “suddenly” was accurate.
If there had never been a time before now when she’d enjoyed that about him in a more than friendly way. And though she told herself no—though she told herself that it was only weird like that between them when there was nakedness, or sexy stuff going on around them—the idea lingered and lingered.
She saw him as he had been, clutching his chest at the end of28 Days Later, upturned face all agony and longing for things to be okay. The way he whispered, “Run, run,” through the darkness to a woman onscreen who couldn’t hear him. Then later on, he would always text her.
I’m still not okay after that. Are you okay after that?
And she would reply no.
But now she suspected she had meant yes.
Yes, yes I am, because you are with me. Because you feel the same way I do. Because we are the same and you’re never afraid to say so.
It was just that she hadn’t been able to say such sentimental words, to someone who probably would have gushed back, if he’d felt the same. Hell, he probably would have gushed first. He wore his heart on his sleeve, why wouldn’t he have said if he did? So clearly he could never have felt it.Obviouslyhe had never felt it. It absolutely had to be that he’d never felt it.
You know, it might not only be werewolf hormones that are making him act like this, her mind suddenly blurted out. And such terror gripped her when it did, she got in the car while Seth was still trying to determine if it was safe.
He tried to stop her, with dire warnings about the rear suspension.
