I love him.
I’ve known it for a while, said it to myself in pieces, in the dark, in the morning, on the patio with a wine bottle between my hands. Standing here in a dining room with a man hoarding inedible stew, the feeling finishes clicking into place, and there’s no taking it back now. I cross to his side of the table, gently pry the bowl out of his grip, and set it down on the wood.
“Grayson.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s okay.” My voice has gone gentle. “You don’t have to eat it. I’ll learn. I’ll get better. Tonight we order pizza.”
He looks up at me, his throat working around something. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“I really would have eaten the whole thing.”
“I know you would have, you ridiculous man. That’s not the point.”
I bend and kiss him on the temple. He turns his face into my palm, closing his eyes for one slow beat.
“So. Pizza?”
He catches my wrist and presses his mouth to the inside of it. “Order two. I’m still starving.”
The pizza arrives in twenty-two minutes, and we eat it on the floor of the dining room with our backs against the cabinets, the candles still burning on the table above us. He gets sauce on his sweater. I get crumbs all over the dress he bought me. Neither of us cares even a little.
At nine, the doorbell rings. Linda steps in with a coat over one arm and a half-asleep Ethan glued to her hip, the boy complaining through a yawn that he wanted the whole day with Miranda and nobody asked his opinion.
“Hi, buddy.” I push up off the floor and cross to scoop him out of her arms. He locks his legs around my waist, pressing his face into the side of my neck. “I missed you too.”
Behind me, Linda begins lifting the empty bowls off the table, moving through the room with the quiet ease she’s worn into the house over years. There’s a small knowing smile on her mouth when her eyes find mine across the room.
I’m about to walk her into the kitchen when something flickers at the edge of my vision. A tiny point of light, just outside the dining room window, pinprick small and instantly wrong. The pieces don’t connect in any order I can name. My body moves before my brain catches up to it. The little red dot tracks the movement of my chin, then steadies on me.
“Grayson,” I whisper his name, confused and a little scared.
He looks up.
His name has barely cleared my mouth when the world cracks open. Glass blows inward in a single bright spray, a sound tears across the room, and as I move, a hot, fast sting rips through my left shoulder, spinning me a quarter turn. I’m already falling sideways into the cabinet with the boy clamped to my chest.
“MIRANDA!” Ethan’s scream tears against my ear, high and terrified.
Grayson’s across the room before I hit the floor. His arm locks around me. He goes down with us, his body curling over Ethan and me, his shoulder angled toward the window to take a second shot that doesn’t come. The candle on the table topples and gutters out. Linda’s gone to the floor a foot away, both hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes blown wide.
“Where are you hit? Miranda!”
“Shoulder,” I gasp. “Bullet went straight through, I think. I’m okay. I’m okay.”
His hand moves down my arm, my side, checking. When he reaches my shoulder, his fingers come away wet.
“Through and through.” His voice has dropped into the register that belongs to his wolf. The amber’s gone out of his eyes entirely. “Stay down. Both of you. Linda, with them.”
“Grayson—”
“Down.”
He’s on his feet before I can grab his hand. The back door bangs open, and the body that goes through it isn’t fully his any longer, his outline blurring before he even reaches the grass. A streak of dark fur, and then he’s gone into the trees. Ethan is sobbing into my collarbone.
“Hey.” My voice scrapes raw. “Hey, buddy, I’m here. Look at me.”
