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“Pandora should have shut the freaking box,” he muttered at his cinnamon twist before taking a vicious bite. Nothing was worse than hope because it made youwant, want things you could never have.
“You don’t really mean that, do you?”
Finn jerked his head up to find Gary gazing down at him with those warm, dark eyes. “I, um, what?”
He slid into the chair across from Finn. “That the world—that you—would be better off without hope.” He sighed, his gaze shifting beyond Finn’s shoulder and his eyebrows pinching for a moment before he met Finn’s eyes again and smiled. “Things can be dark enough. Imagine how much darker they would be if we never tried tofixthem, and nobody will eventryto fix them if they don’t think they can succeed.”
Finn nudged his teacup widdershins, until its handle pointed at precisely three o’clock. “Some things are too big to fix.”
“That’s what I used to think, but you know what? Miracles can happen when you least expect them. I’m total proof of that.”
Gary’s tone, fierce and joyful all at once, made Finn look up. “You are?”
Gary nodded solemnly. “I spentmillennia—I mean whatseemedlike millennia trapped in a… a dead-end job with theworstboss. I thought I’d never escape. But then somebody flipped the script and”—he spread his palms with a flourish—“here I am. Free. Doing something I’d been dreaming of foreons.”
“Eons?” Finn quirked a smile. “That long, eh?”
Gary rolled his eyes. “You havenoidea. But my point is that hope snuck in when I least expected it, thanks to someone I never saw coming.”
“Ah.” Finn jerked his teacup another quarter turn, rattling its saucer. “That guy who was just here? Aaron, was it?”
Gary blinked. “What? Oh, gods, no.”
“So… He’s not your boyfriend?”
“Definitelynot.” He frowned. “He didn’t approach you, did he?”
With a shrug, Finn tapped the cup’s handle.Seven o’clock. Eight o’clock. Eight-thirty.“No reason why he should.”
Gary drummed his fingers on the table, eyes narrowed. Then he seemed to reach some kind of decision, because his expression cleared and he squared his shoulders. “This may seem weird, but how would you like to stay with me until your cousin gets back to town?”
“Wha…” Finn fumbled the teacup before it reached the nine o’clock position, nearly oversetting it. “You mean like at your home?”
Gary waggled his palm. “Not technically. My place isn’t really… appropriate for guests, but I’m house-sitting for my friends, TD and Lonnie, and there’s loads of room.”
A place to stay. A place withGary. Finn’s belly tumbled, joy warring with apprehension, because in the past, whenever something seemed too good to be true, he got his ass kicked.
Or shot in the chest. Twice.
“Why? I might be, I don’t know, an ax murderer or a cat burglar or something. I mean, I told you that my father’s a criminal. You remember that, right? For all you know, I might be his protégé, groomed to carry on his legacy.”
Gary tilted his head, a smile quivering on his lips. “You don’t strike me as particularly feline, so cat burgling is out, and I’m pretty sure an ax murderer would need an ax.” He made a show of peering under the table at Finn’s pack. “You got an ax in there?”
Finn choked on a laugh. “No. Just clothes in serious need of a wash.”
“And the way you talked about your father? Well, trust me, I’ve hadloadsof experience scoping out shady characters, and my instincts say you’re not the evil mastermind type.” He waggled a finger at Finn’s chest. “Too much heart. Besides, remember what I said about flipping the script? Let’s flip yours and see what happens.”
“I don’t know what to say. I mean, you have no reason to be so generous.”
Gary stood. “I benefited enormously from somebody else’s generosity. In my small way, I’m just paying it forward.” Something flickered across his face. “Although, now that I think of it… How do you feel about dogs?”
Dogs? Seriously? Finn was surprised into a laugh which could almost qualify as a bark.
“Me and dogs, we’re like this.” He held up two fingers, pressed together. There was actually a pretty significant distance between weres and ordinary canines, but many in the supe community—vampires, for instance, who had a bug up their asses about shifters in general—didn’t make the distinction.
“They’re, um,big. And there are three of them.”
“No problem.”
