“What?” Stella asked. “You can’t just leave me hanging.”
“I suppose I wanted—something like what I have. A good military career, a job that makes a nice pile of money while letting me meet lots of women.”
“You don’t sound too triumphant, for someone who’s actually fulfilled his seventeen-year-old dreams,” Stella tested.
“I guess my seventeen-year-old self didn’t have it all figured out after all. Who’d have guessed that?” Nate flashed a grin.
“Don’t tell Eva,” Stella advised. “She thinks she understands exactly what she wants.”
Nate laughed. Stella restrained herself from asking, So what do you want, other than what you have? Nate had deflected once, and she could do him the favor of not pressing for answers, just like he hadn’t pressed her.
“Anyway,” she said. “Maybe you’re right, and I should quit pretending I’m not afraid. Only an idiot wouldn’t be afraid in this situation, anyway. I just get so caught up in thinking people are judging my choices.”
“No one I’ve met so far has sounded like they judge your choices,” Nate said. “I certainly don’t.”
Stella pulled the car into the driveway of the house, parked, and looked over at him. “You’re different,” she said speculatively. “I don’t know why. I didn’t even want to pretend with you. Not from the second we met.”
Nate met her eyes, and there was a long, long moment where neither of them said anything, just looked at each other. Stella felt caught by his gaze, her breath coming faster, her lynx waking up in her chest.
Danger, danger! An alarm bell seemed to ring inside of her, and she reacted too quickly, fumbling for the door handle, tripping her way out of the car, and trotting up the walk to the house.
Cowardly, maybe. But she had to get away from the growing feeling that this time, she had met a good man.
And he was off-limits.
Inside, she almost ran into Lynn, who reached out her hands to steady Stella. “Whoa, hey,” her sister said, half-laughing. “Everything okay?”
Stella started to give her an airy, Oh yes, fine—but fresh from the conversation with Nate, she made herself take a deep breath and say, “Todd was waiting in the parking lot at work. It...it freaked me out a little.”
Lynn’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no—is everything okay?” Her eyes shifted to a spot behind Stella’s shoulder, and she turned to see Nate coming into the house after her.
“Nothing physical happened,” Nate assured Lynn. “Just a lot of words.”
Lynn looked back to Stella. “What’d he say?” Her voice was fierce.
“Just...a lot of stupid stuff.” Stella didn’t want to go over it all again. Hearing it once was bad enough. “It sucks.” Her voice was small.
Lynn pulled her into a hug. Stella felt her eyes go wide—this was the second time in two days. Lynn had never been a touchy-feely person. Stella was the total opposite, and she could remember being a little kid, clinging onto Lynn with both hands while Lynn protested and tried to escape.
Well, no escaping here. Lynn held her close, her solid strength seeming to rejuvenate Stella somehow, give her more air to breathe and more warmth to sustain her.
After what felt like a long, long time, Lynn pulled back and smiled at her. “Ken and I thought we might shift and go for a run,” she said. “Do you want to come along?” Her eyes flickered back beyond Stella’s shoulder again. “If that’s all right.”
“I’ve got no reason to think it wouldn’t be,” Nate said comfortably.
Stella thought about getting out into the clean, crisp air of the mountains, running together with her family. “That sounds wonderful,” she said, heartfelt. “Is Eva home? Maybe she wants to go, too.”
“She’s upstairs,” Lynn confirmed.
Eva, it turned it, did actually want to go, which Stella considered a minor miracle. It was great to see her looking up from her technology more often; Stella had gotten so used to having to surgically remove her from her phone.
But now, she thought about it for a second, and then asked, “Is Nate coming along?”
“Yep,” Stella said, and then a thought occurred to her. “I guess he’ll shift, too, so we’ll get to see what kind of shifter he is.”
Eva grinned. “Sure, I’ll come.”
So they all gathered in the backyard. Ken and Lynn were already shifted, the lion and the lynx together. Nate tossed Stella a grin, and then his eyes got that faraway look that Stella sometimes saw in other shifters right before they changed.