She wondered how his wolf was dealing with it, but this wasn’t the place to ask.
They found two open routes beside each other outside, and she clipped in next to him and went up slowly, beside him.
He hit a crux section close to the top, but she stayed silent, counting to twenty in her head before she offered help — and he figured it out on his own.
She felt proud of him for it, and Tuesday decided she’d need to think about that later.
Once he’d… if not mastered, at least made it to the top of the hardest and tallest outdoor route, she told him, “There’s more.”
He furrowed his brows, and she said, “Back inside. No ropes. More challenging.”
He lifted his brows, and she led him to the bouldering area.
She let him look around and figure out why this would be more challenging when it wasn’t anywhere near as tall.
Here, the floor was padded with crash mats, and climbing got technical in ways height alone couldn’t accomplish. The angle of the wall made gravity your adversary in different and more immediate ways, and overhangs changed the physics ofeverything.
The best way to explain was to show him, so she walked straight to the hardest section, chalked her hands from thebag clipped to her harness, leapt up to grab the only jug in this section, and just went for it.
The overhang demanded everything — compression, tension, the kind of body awareness that came from years of understanding how weight moves through a frame. She matched a hold that required her entire body to counterbalance, moved through a sequence that looked improbable andwas, and finally lifted herself enough to top out.
She danced a little jig, dropped back to the mat, and looked at Knife.
He was watching with his arms crossed and his head tilted slightly, and she couldseethe wheels turning in his head.
“Show me the entry move again,” he demanded.
She showed him, and ignored what his growly command had done to her libido.
He tried it three times before he managed it, and he looked at her with satisfaction — and maybe a touch of competitiveness that she found sexy as hell.
They spent the next hour in the bouldering area, and Tuesday thoughtthiswas what the day had been building toward — not the restaurant, not the bridge, not even the outdoor walls.This. Two wolves in human form pushing bodies that could do far more than mere humans, in a public space that required them to appear human, the constraint itself sharpening everything, and both of them entirely, completely present.
Her shoulders and forearms were beautifully exhausted by the time she finally called it.
“Good?” she asked.
He chalked his hands and looked at the problem he’d been working for the last twenty minutes — an overhang sequence that kept spitting him off, but she wasn’t going to solve it for him today even though she easily could. She’d been giving him beta all day, and he’d feel better if he figured this one out himself. Also, it’d give him a reason to want to come back with her.
When he hesitated again, she told him, “Dinner is next, whenever you’re ready.”
“One more time,” he said. “Then food.”
She’d figured that would work.
- - -?- - -
Knife didn’t discover new hobbies. He just didn’t. He rode with his brothers, he hung out with them, and he had his work. He cooked meat for fun and then ate it. If his bike needed work, he handled it himself for simple mechanical issues. Deeper, complicated problems, he usually helped Bubbles work on it.
But Tuesday had shown him something he could turn into an occasional outlet. The fact it required strength, coordination,anda shitload of thought appealed. His wolf had hated it at first, but eventually, he’d seen the appeal as well.
But now both wolf and man were hungry, and it felt good to be back in his own shoes, walking.
And he looked forward to seeing what restaurant she took him to.
They strolled past the aquarium and along the river, and Tuesday told him how she’d learned about Chinese family-style dining when her dad took her to a place in San Francisco, when she was still in elementary school.
“One of his teammates, this guy’s wife’s family owned the restaurant. They put like, ten of us at a big round table with a huge lazy susan in the middle. They brought out dish after dish, and then you’d just rotate to what you wanted and put some on your plate. When a dish ran low, they’d bring another. Everyone ate from everything, and Isowish we’d adopt that here.
