Page 18 of Tempered By Flames

From what Liam said, he was getting closer to Austin and West, too. He truly was part of their group now, just like Ethan had suspected he’d become eventually. It made Ethan feel better about telling him he was a chimera shifter. Things would’ve been awkward if he hadn’t, and if Liam had reacted differently. Ethan didn’t want to stay away from his friends, but he might have if he hadn’t told Liam what he was. If Liam had reacted differently to the news, he would have been asked to leave, which would’ve made things awkward for West and Austin at the station, but it would have put Ethan’s mind at ease about the rest of his friends.

Luckily for everyone, they wouldn’t have to find out. Liam was just as excited about Ethan being a chimera shifter as he had been the day he’d found out. Sometimes, he texted Ethan a few questions, but it was clear he was hesitant, as if he expected Ethan to tell him to stop. Normally, Ethan would have, but there was something nice about someone being openly curious rather than uncomfortable. It wasn’t like West and Austin, who felt like they needed to be careful whenever the subject was broached. Well, they were relaxing about it, too, and Ethan felt it was thanks to Liam.

“From the way you’re staring at your phone, it looks almost like you’re in love with it,” Dani said before loudly slurping some noodles from her bowl. When Ethan looked up at her, she squinted as if she was trying to read him. Knowing her, she definitely was, and he tried to smooth out his expression. He already knew it was going to fail, though. His friends knew him better than his family, except maybe his grandmother.

“That’s not an expression I’ve seen you make often,” Dani slowly said. “Or at all, actually. You look all soft and weird.”

Ethan snorted. “Looking soft makes you weird, now?”

“When it’s you, yeah. You keep everyone at arm’s length, even us.”

There was some truth in that statement, and it made Ethan feel guilty. Clearly, though, Dani wasn’t going to expand on it. She was too focused on finding out what was going on with Ethan, and knowing her, she would find out. “It’s nothing,” he said, hoping she’d stop watching him as if he was an interesting specimen under a microscope.

She chewed another mouthful of noodles, still staring at him in a way that made Ethan increasingly want to run away screaming.

Then Dani grinned, and Ethan knew he’d lost. “How’s Liam?” she asked.

She knew. She definitely knew. “Fine,” Ethan answered in what he hoped was an uncompromising tone. Maybe she wouldn’t ask more questions if she realized he didn’t want to talk about it.

She didn’t seem to care.

“How do you know? Have you been in contact with him?”

“You know I have,” Ethan said patiently. He was going to have to answer her questions whether he was willing or not. It would be useless to prolong the torture. Dani was getting her answers, no matter how Ethan felt about it.

“Oh? Because I haven’t been in contact with him.”

“You haven’t had to talk to him.”

“I also haven’t agreed to go on the coffee date with him. When is that happening?”

Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. It’s a bit complicated to organize with the way his shifts work.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. What’s the holdup?”

Dammit. Ethan’s friends always knew when he was lying. Sometimes, he hated it because it forced him to talk about what he was really thinking and feeling. He didn’t always like making himself vulnerable like that, even with them.

He looked down at his phone again. He couldn’t talk to Dani about this while looking at her. “I don’t know. I guess I’m still afraid of how he’s going to treat me. He said all the right things, but it feels too good to be true.”

“I get it,” Dani said. “You’re used to people rejecting you.”

“My mother has.”

“We’re not going to talk about your mother now because if I start, I’m never going to shut up about her and how I feel about the way she treats you. She doesn’t matter, though. The only thing right now that does is you, and it’s clear that you like Liam.”

“I do, but it doesn’t mean he likes me back.”

“That’s a different kind of problem, although I’d say that if you truly believe he doesn’t like you back, you need glasses. That man has been pining after you since the first time he met you.”

Ethan grimaced. “Please never use that word in that context again.”

Dani waved his words away. “You know what I mean. It’s clear he never thought anything bad about you, before or after you told him you were a chimera shifter. He mentioned something about you having dragon in you, right?”

“Don’t make it sexual.”

“I’m not. I know we joked about it at the time, but I think that, to Liam, it means something. He’s a dragon shifter. He’s not looking at you like you’re different, not like a lot of shifters do. He’s looking at you like you’re like him, and in a way, you are. That’s what he sees. I think you should accept that and go with the flow. You need to open your heart, and I can’t think of a better person to do it with than Liam, from everything I know about him. We might all be wrong, but I really don’t think so.”

Ethan tapped his fingertips on the table. “What if he changes his mind?”