It made my chest tighten in a way that wasn’t at all uncomfortable. I couldn’t help it; I wanted to believe it.
“Yeah, for sure,” I said, a beat too late.
And somehow, while he was still talking, Janine had already slid another cup beside me and was wrapping sandwiches into a paper bag.
“Go on, take your break now,” Janine said suddenly.
I shot her a look.
Dane blinked, glancing between us. “I’ve got some free time right now.”
One moment we were outside the café, and the next we were at the park, walking through tree-lined paths as Dane led us to a quiet bench overlooking the town square.
Only then did he let go of my hand.
We sat down side by side. Dane set the brown paper bag Janine had prepared between us and began unpacking it.
He handed me the tuna melt, then took the BLT for himself, settling in like this was already a routine we had fallen into without noticing.
“I feel like I should be paying you for these,” he said lightly.
“I’m taking it out of her pay,” I said automatically, and that earned a proper laugh from him, more relaxed than anything I had heard since the morning after the wedding.
We ate in silence for a while. Eventually, Dane leaned back and turned his gaze toward the town square in the distance.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“Good,” I said, a little too quickly.
After that, the conversation drifted. Dane asked a few more questions about work, about the café, about nothing in particular.
I answered. He listened. But it didn’t feel as natural or easy as before. It felt like we were both going through the motions instead of really being fully present in the conversation
Every so often, he went quiet mid-thought, eyes shifting toward the square or the trees or somewhere just past me, like he was turning something over in his head that never quite made it into words.
And every time, I waited for him to say it. He never did.
That alone should have told me something.
This is what happens when it’s over, I told myself. Things just go back to how they were before.
That was easier. Cleaner.
If I called what I had with Dane real, then I didn’t have to question those moments that had felt different between us, or wonder if I had made them up. Because theyhadfelt different. But feeling different didn’t mean anything was actually real.
Darryl had felt different once too. In the end, none of it had changed how things ended.
I kept my eyes on the path in front of us, letting the thought sit there without looking at it too closely.
Shifters chose shifters.
No one had said it out loud this time, but it was still there anyway. In the wedding speech. In the way people looked at Dane. In the way he moved through a world that made sense to him in a way mine never fully did.
It was only a matter of time before that difference mattered. Before he realised it, if he hadn’t already.
I didn’t ask. Even sitting here with him, even as he handed me the last bite of his sandwich and brushed crumbs from his hands, I didn’t bother asking what he was thinking.
Because I already knew I didn’t want the answer if it confirmed what I was starting to think.
