“Except for him,” I agreed. “But you get what I’m saying, right? The supernatural isn’t cute or playful. It’s dangerous and real.”
“I know. That’s the point.”
“What’s the point?”
“Look, even before I knew that vampires, werewolves, and witches were a thing, I was still a homicide detective. There were days where I saw way more shitty stuff in a single afternoon than most people will ever see in a lifetime. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that not everyone’s life is the same.”
I was reminded, forcibly, that Harris had led a complete life before meeting me. He’d already been through plenty of dark situations, maybe even more than I had.
“Books like this let me be in a world where magic is cute and quirky, cats talk, and situations can be crazy, but they’re never really all that bad. Where there are easy explanations and a resolution at the end.”
“Happy endings,” I said, feeling both tender and raw at the same time.
He chuckled, shaking his head as he eyed my expression. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” I said.
I didn’t want to tell Harris what I was really thinking—what I knew to be true, deep down. Happy endings were just for books and movies. They didn’t really exist.
CHAPTER TEN || HARRIS
Over the next few days, Reed and I found a strange rhythm. We’d wake up each morning and he’d make breakfast and coffee. He insisted on sleeping on the couch, claiming it was safer that way, in case anything tried to get into the cabin.
Nothing did.
In fact, there was no sign of the monster at all, despite that members of the pack were watching for it round the clock—mostly from near the town. Emma, Daniel, and Sarah were attempting to research it, but they weren’t having much luck. The only things we really knew were that silver could hurt it, it was fast, and its claws were coated in some sort of paralytic toxin. Apparently, that didn’t narrow it down as much as it ought to have. An unsettling thought.
Reed left a few times—always during the day—and was gone for a few hours at a time to check on the bar, which he had the twins running, and then on the rest of the pack.
I was getting worried about him. There were dark circles around his eyes and he always woke up in the mornings seeming less rested than the night before—probably the result of stress. Or maybe the couch wasn’t that comfortable to sleep on.
But I wasn’t as worried as I ought to have been. Hell, I used to get like that on some of the worst cases I’d worked. Real evil isn’t only appalling, it unsettles you, getting under your skin,disturbing things deep inside you. Paul had gotten like that sometimes, too. The only real cure for it is mundane routine and embracing the good things in your life until they drown out the bad. Paul and I had been that for each other. I hoped I could be that for Reed.
Maybe Reed was just worried the monster would return. Daniel had placed alarm spells around the perimeter of the cabin, so that if anything tried to get in, at least we’d have advance warning. And when Reed returned to the cabin, he always seemed a little more lucid. And, without fail, he brought back something for us to share: bottles of beer, containers of steaming takeout, and once, even some overpriced chocolates from one of the shops in town.
“I’m trying to figure out what you like,” he explained, when I asked him about it on night four of this newfound domesticity.
“All of it,” I said, digging into the takeout spaghetti he’d gotten from the Crescent Springs Bar & Grill—they had pretty much everything on the menu. “I’m not picky. No tomatoes and we’re good.”
“No tomatoes.” Reed eyed the bite of pasta on my fork, which was covered in marinara. “Right. Except, um, maybe don’t eat the spaghetti, then? Since the sauce is basically ninety percent tomatoes.”
“Norawtomatoes,” I explained, shaking my head at his incredulous expression. “It’s a texture thing.”
“Got it,” Reed said, nodding to himself, as if filing this piece of information away for later use. Then he stifled a yawn against the back of his hand.
“Tired?”
“I’ll be okay,” Reed said, maybe just a little too quickly.
After dinner, we read another chapter of the book on the couch and chatted about it. He teased me some more—lightly—about how odd it was for his hardened big-city detective to bereading something so cutesy and whimsical. But I could tell he was getting into it as well, because he had a harder and harder time putting the book down at the end of every chapter.
After we’d watched a bit of TV and drunk a few beers, it came time to sleep.
That’s when I pushed any lingering unease to the side and put my foot down. “I want us to share a bed.”
Reed’s eyes widened and he downed the last slug of beer he’d been nursing. “Oh. Uh—okay. I thought you said…”
“Look, we’re fated to be together, right?” I pointed out. “That probably includes sharing a bed at some point. We might as well get it over with now.”
