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“Tomorrow?” I said, pulling the robe tight. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.

“It’s late, Leona,” he said, and he shifted back.

I gazed into his wake as the wolf scampered off into the darkness.

I wasn’t sure of him.

I had always been so sure of Damian.

But my surety had turned to ashes when he betrayed me.

So, maybe I didn’t mind this lack of certainty with Vincent. Maybe it felt like excitement, like anything could happen. Maybe it felt like an adventure.

“I DIDN’T THINK you were going to be in town,” I said, clutching my phone to my ear as sunlight streamed into the bedroom I’d slept in as a teenage girl. “When I texted you, you didn’t say you would be.”

Vincent chuckled on the other end of the phone. He’d called me bright and early, waking me up, and I did not mind at all. “Yeah, I was not going to come. I told myself, over and over, that you had been very clear about how you felt about me and what happened with us, and that I needed to keep my distance.”

“Clear?” I said.

“Yeah, well, I kept second-guessing it,” he said. “I would think back on what you said, and I’d read things into it, and then I’d think about what it was like to be in wolf form and licking you senseless and those noises you made, and… here’s your chance, Leo, set me straight. If you want us to be nothing more than friends, practically siblings, make it totally clear to me now, and I swear to the souls of the ancestors, I will back off forever.”

“I don’t think that is what I want,” I whispered.

“Seriously?” He was stunned. He had not expected me to say that.

“You knew that! You don’t call someone at seven in the morning if you think they just want to be friends!”

He laughed, surprised. “I, uh, I just needed to be put out of my misery, really. I thought for sure—”

“Damian knows,” I cut in.

Vincent was quiet on the other end.

“He’s really angry,” I said.

“He would be,” said Vincent.

“I don’t want to cost you that, Vincent,” I said. “He’s really your only family left.”

“I thought we were practically siblings,” he said, amused.

“Vincent, gross!”

He sighed. “Things between Damian and me have been strained for a long time.” He paused. “Uh, I should also tell you that I took Opal’s manuscript.”

“Wait, you have that?” I said.

“Yeah, I should have told you, but I wanted to read it all first. A lot of it was really hard to read. But you know what? I think she was good for my brother. I think she challenged him. I think she made him a better man. And anyway, it made me realize that things between Damian and me have been strained for ages, now, maybe since we were both teenagers. I also didn’t realize how perceptive she was. She saw how I felt about you.”

I sat up in bed. “Is it really like that? That you’ve had feelings for me for a long time?”

“Yeah,” said Vincent, his voice guttural. “But I couldn’t admit that to myself, Leo. You were his. And also, back then, it was not appropriate. When you were sixteen and I was twenty? That’s fucked.”

“But you were doing it with Opal,” I muttered.

“I know,” said Vincent. “We—you and me—we have some darkness in our shared past, and we’re going to have to work through it together if we want to make this work. But, uh, if you want to try, so do I. And if it doesn’t work out, then at least we tried, and I won’t regret it, even if I never repair things with Damian after this. Some things are worth doing, even if they’re going to be difficult, even if there’s a risk attached to them. You, Leo, you’re worth everything.”

I bit down on my lip. It was what I wanted to hear. “I think you are, too, Vincent.”