I breathe.
“I should go,” I say. “It’s late.”
He doesn’t push. He doesn’t pull. He stands where he is and looks at me with that calm that isn’t distance, that steadiness that isn’t coldness, and he says: “I’ll walk you back.”
“I know the way.”
“I know you know the way.” He falls in line with me anyway.
We walk out of the carnival ground and down the main street, cobblestones quiet under our feet, the clock tower reading a quarter to midnight. He doesn’t talk. I don’t talk. The silence between us has the quality it always has. Full rather than empty.
At the corner where Main Street turns toward Doris Harrow’s place, I stop.
“You were going to say something,” he says. “At the wheel.”
“I changed my mind.”
“All right.” No pushback. No pressing.
I regard him. I do this every time, I look at him and I lose the thread of whatever I was thinking. I don’t know if it’s his face or his attention or the frequency of whatever the pack bond sends toward me when he’s close, which I shouldn’t be able to feel, which I’m feeling anyway.
“It’s nothing you need to know,” I say.
“Okay.”
“It’s not… I’m not a danger to the pack. I want to be clear about that.”
He gazes at me for an extended period. “I didn’t think you were.”
“Archer—”
“Archer thinks in terms of threat assessment. That’s his role and it’s valuable and it’s also not the only way to read a situation.” His eyes are locked on mine. “I don’t think you’re a danger to us.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I know enough.” A pause. “I’m starting to know you.”
I should tell him it’s not enough. That starting to know someone across a few days of carnival prep and river paths and Ferris wheels is not knowing, not the kind that earns the weight I’m almost putting down.
I should say it and I don’t.
“Goodnight, Ryan,” I do say.
“Goodnight, Lola.”
I walk the rest of the way to Doris Harrow’s alone and I am furious with myself in the way I get when I’ve done something I know better than to do.
I almost told him.
I almost stood at the base of a Ferris wheel in a small town and told a man I’ve known for less than a week something that could get him and his pack involved in a federal situation that has nothing to do with them. All because he was standing there being steady and looking at me like he already knew something important and I am apparently not as done with wanting to be known as I thought I was.
This is Amber’s fault.
No. This is my fault. Amber is a separate category of problem. This is my fault. The vulnerability of someone who has been alone long enough that the first warm thing they walk into starts to look like home.
Sweetwater Valley is not home.
The pack is not mine. I will never be a bonded Omega. That requires staying in one place for far longer than I ever have. The moment Jack finds out how to completely sever this partial tether, I’m gone.
