Page 117 of Fate, Interrupted

I sit back in my chair and look at him, eyes wide. I keep my expression neutral, so it doesn’t say yes before he finishes the sentence.

“Yes? What about the family business? Your job?”

He pauses. “Yes.”

“And Logan and Henry?”

He absorbs that. The acknowledgment of the cost crosses his face and stays. “Yes.”

I hold his gaze. “That’s a lot to walk away from.”

“It is.”

“And you’ve thought about this.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says, “since my father gave me an order.”

There it is. He was given an ultimatum. The message was clear enough. Ditch the human woman. Step back in line. Don’t continue to be a problem. I can’t look at him now. I’m afraid he’ll see the sympathy in my eyes, and I can’t do that to him.

“So, the situation has become dire, your father is non-negotiable to a solution, and leaving Larkin is the only logical outcome.”

He doesn’t speak, only nods.

That hits differently than anything else he’s said. Because it means this isn’t impulse. It’s the opposite of impulse. Sitting before me is a man who has been thinking through pack meetings, stilted dinners with his father and brothers, expectations that don’t include me. This is a conclusion he’s arrived at slowly, the only one that makes sense to him.

I push back from the table and stand, because I need to be on my feet for this, and I cross into the living room and stop in front of the bookshelves.

My fingers find the spines. The navigation of a person who has touched these books so many times that her hands know them by feel rather than by sight.

Toni Morrison. Willa Cather. Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, slightly battered, which I keep meaning to replace and don’t because the battered copy is the one I’ve actually read. The Virginia Woolf with the broken spine from the summer I read three times in a row. The first edition Wind in the Willows I bought at an estate sale outside the city and still feel slightly giddy about owning.

Three years of this.

Three years of building a life, predictable and sound. Of building a scrappy business, book by book. I stand there with my hand on the Woolf, and I think about Penny, who told me to be careful. I think about Jewell, who has patiently listened to me for three years, at all hours of the day and night. I think about The Last Chapter, only half mine on paper, and the Mr. Clancys of the world.

And then I think about two guys in an alley who told me to step back, and a city that keeps tightening, and the men outside a Coulter Cleaners who saw the wolf the same time I did.

I think about all of it.

But most of all, I think about my life as I had imagined when I moved to Larkin. A life with a fulfilling job and a man I love passionately. I think about what’s been desperately missing from my life.

My heart leaps, and hope surges in my chest. I’m frightened at the hope, the irrepressible joy I feel. That this man in front of me is offering us the terrifying solution with a simple ’we could go.’

“What can you promise?” I ask, without turning around.

His voice comes from closer than I expect. He’s crossed the room, is standing a few feet behind me, the warmth of him sending shivers up my back.

“I can promise we won’t have to hide.”

I turn around. He’s right there. Close enough that I have to look up at him. No guard in his expression, nothing held back. Just him, looking at me. More certain than I’ve ever seen him.

“That’s a powerful sales pitch,” I say.

“It’s the truth.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s what makes it powerful. And if the Paxton pack says no?”

“Then we keep driving.”