Maybe it was because the last ten minutes had been nothing but one surprise after another, or because the thought of sitting through dinner alone suddenly felt exhausting.
Perhaps maybe it was because I was simply relieved to have someone beside me who already knew what was going on.
Dane held my gaze for another moment, and something in my expression must have told him more than I intended.
His eyes softened as he seemed to understand, before he stepped closer and draped an arm across my shoulders.
The familiar weight settled around me immediately, and to my embarrassment some of the tension I'd been carrying all evening eased the second he touched me.
"If Seth doesn't mind," Dane said, the corner of his mouth lifting into an easy smile, "I know a place."
We ended up following Dane's suggestion. According to him, it was the best pizza place in town.
I told myself I should've pushed for a rain check, but somehow we all ended up squeezed into a booth by the window anyway.
Dane handled the introductions like it was nothing unusual at all. He stuck with the story that we'd met because he'd wandered into my café one day and then just kept coming back.
It was close enough to the truth that it almost made me laugh. The impressive part was how naturally it came out, like he'd been telling the story for years.
At some point while he was talking, Dane shifted closer without breaking the conversation, his arm settling around my waist in the exact spot we'd tested a few days earlier at the park.
My breath caught a little at the familiarity of it.
Dane and Lynn somehow managed to turn a conversation about pizza toppings into a surprisingly intense debate about crust styles, and I mostly listened with half my attention until Glen leaned in.
"I didn't expect him," he said quietly, glancing briefly at Dane before looking back at me. "I thought you'd sworn off shifters after Darryl."
My stomach tightened at the mention of my ex.
I let out a slow breath.
"It's been a while," I said, keeping my voice casual. Then, before I could stop myself, I added, "And Dane's different."
Without really thinking about it, I reached for Dane's hand. His fingers slipped between mine immediately, as if he'd been expecting it.
Glen's gaze flicked briefly to our joined hands before the conversation moved on, but when the wedding came up again, I found myself hesitating.
"I just don't want to make things weird," I admitted. My thumb brushed absentmindedly against Dane's knuckles. "I don't want to show up and feel like I'm stepping into something I don't belong in."
Lynn frowned. “What? Darryl’s fine. Elliot’s fine — he’s the one getting married, after all. They’re both fine.”
Glen nodded. "Seriously. Nobody's going to be upset that you're there."
"Honestly, Seth," Lynn said, leaning forward, "you act like you're just Darryl's ex, but that's not what any of us see. You've knownus forever. Half the people coming to this wedding are your friends too."
That settled somewhere deep in my chest. Not because I'd never known it, but because I'd spent so long trying not to think about it.
They kept reassuring me between bites of pizza and arguments about crusts.
Before long, the conversation drifted toward college stories, disastrous group projects, road trips, and the kind of memories that only become funny years later.
Some of those stories included Darryl. Some of them included the two of us together.
Through all of it, Dane stayed quietly beside me. He never tried to steer the conversation away or pull me out of it. He simply let me have the memories when they came.
Whenever one caught me off guard, his fingers would shift against mine or brush lightly over my wrist, grounding me without making a point of it.
It wasn’t that I still wanted Darryl. That chapter of my life had been over for a long time. But five years didn’t simply disappear because a relationship ended.
