Page 18 of Eddie

“People are watching,” Matthias said.

Eddie didn’t look around. He didn’t have to. “Yeah, they are.”

“Because of me.”

“Yep,” Eddie confirmed. “It’s a small town. Everyone here knows me, but they don’t know you, and they’re wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“Wondering who you are, why you’re here, and why I’m having dinner with you. I don’t usually bring people who aren’t friends the town already knows here.”

But Matthias was here with Eddie, and people wanted to know why. They wanted to know who he was.

He was Eddie’s mate, and Eddie was his.

He’d been afraid to say it because saying it would change things, but what was there to change? He and Eddie didn’t know each other. Eddie already knew, anyway, so why delay the inevitable?

“You know what I am,” Matthias said.

“I know what Jenna is,” Eddie said. “You mentioned it before. I figured the same applied to you.”

“It does.” He watched Eddie’s face. “Buffalo shifter. Both of us. The whole family, actually.”

“Okay.” Nothing in Eddie’s expression changed. He didn’t look wary or hesitant. He was steady and calm, like Matthias was telling him something interesting rather than something that was about to change his life. “And there’s the mate thing.”

It was a funny way to put it. “The mate thing,” Matthias agreed.

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” Matthias was a shifter. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that the man sitting in front of him belonged with him. Unfortunately, Matthias came with buffalo-sized baggage. “I know it’s a lot. We don’t know each other, and my family, well, I know any reasonable person would—”

“Matthias.” Eddie leaned forward slightly, pressing both arms on the table. “You’re a shifter. I’m your mate. I know what I’m getting into and what it means, and I’m not running.”

Something in Matthias’s chest loosened. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding onto the possibility that Eddie would.

“I don’t know how any of this is going to work from your side,” Eddie continued. “So you’ll have to tell me. But from mine, I’ve been thinking about you since you left, and I was glad when you called, and I’m glad you’re sitting here instead of in a car on the way back to wherever it is your family is.”

“Two hundred miles east,” Matthias said. “Give or take.”

“Two hundred miles.” Eddie shook his head, but he was still smiling. “How long have you been the one they call?”

It was such a spot-on way of putting it that Matthias almost laughed. “Since always, I guess.” He picked up the menu again. “I’ve always been more responsible than even my parents. As soon as I was able to drive, I was the one to take Jenna to her dance classes and Noah to baseball. Before then, I made them breakfast and dinner when our mother forgot. I helped them with their homework and when they were in trouble. As I got older, I started helping my parents when they were in trouble, too.”

“You were a kid.”

“I’m the oldest.”

“That doesn’t mean you should’ve been handed the role of parent, especially not to your own mother and father.”

“No,” Matthias agreed. He’d known that for years, and he’d thought it plenty of times, but that didn’t change anything. Hearing someone else say it, especially his mate, was different. “Noah’s twenty-five. Jenna’s twenty-nine. There’s no reason for any of them to need me the way they do.”

“Yet they do.”

“Because I let them.” Matthias sighed. “Because every time Noah calls from a police station, I drive out there. Every time Jenna does something stupid, I go get her. And my mother has never had to deal with either of them on her own because she calls me first and I answer.” He paused. “But not tonight. I’m not saying I don’t love them. I do. I just...” He stopped. “I got in the truck to go get Jenna and started thinking about if they’d do the same for me if I were in trouble. I don’t think they would. I don’t think they’d know what to do.”

Eddie was quiet for a moment. “Well,” he said finally. “I would.”

Matthias’s heart felt like it grew two sizes. “Yeah?”