Better.
He’d never realized he wanted a mate. But now that he had one, he couldn’t imagine wanting anything else, ever again.
***
Stella
Stella settled on the rock where she always watched the dawn. Today the sun was already up—she and Nate had slept in.
It had been the best sleep she’d gotten in a long time. No nightmares, no restlessness—they’d been squeezed together on that narrow couch, and apparently neither of them had moved at all, because if they had, someone surely would’ve been knocked to the floor.
Stella tried to imagine sleeping like that every night.
She’d always been a restless sleeper, even as a kid. It had gotten worse after Eva was born; she always seemed to have one eye open, waiting for a baby’s cry. And now with Todd, she was hardly sleeping at all.
Not sleeping put a patina over the world. It made everything harder, sharper, less forgiving.
Everything had felt soft and perfect in Nate’s arms.
She shook her head hard. That wasn’t the issue. That wasn’t the issue!
The issue was—
Stella was a middle-aged single mom who couldn’t focus long enough to live in the same place for more than a year. She worked as a waitress and lived with her sister so that she could make any money at all, because she hadn’t planned well enough to send her daughter to college.
And she’d never wanted to be tied down.
It was like two impossible problems at once. On the one hand—how could she shackle herself to a man like Nate, a professional, successful man who had his own busy life, presumably his own plans for the future, and no need for a flighty waitress with looming college debt?
And on the other hand, how could she lock herself in like this? Sweep away all future possibilities and replace them with this man?
Even if this man was...this man.
Unwillingly, Stella started to imagine what the future might hold. Nate traveled for work. Maybe he could take her with him. He was smart and thoughtful—Eva seemed to like talking to him. It wouldn’t be a bad thing for Eva to have a real steady male adult in her life.
And what do you bring to this
equation, Stella? she asked herself furiously. What sort of contributions are you making?
Nothing, she knew. She didn’t have any money or a glamorous job. All she had were problems that Nate was already helping her fix.
Suddenly, wildly, she thought of going back to the house, waking Eva up, and telling her that they were moving again. Getting in the car and driving somewhere—out of state, probably. Washington or Oregon, maybe. Leaving all of this behind.
No.
The thought was simultaneous: both from her own human mind, and her lynx’s growling instinct. No. Don’t leave.
If she hadn’t run away from Todd, determined to stay somewhere where she could work for a living and try to give Eva what she deserved...she sure as hell wasn’t going to turn around and run away from Nate.
She could probably at least have a conversation with him before she committed her entire future to one choice or another.
Stella laughed at herself, a little hysterical, but slowly calming down. Getting older did have some advantages, she guessed—back in her twenties, she probably already would’ve been in the car right now, too freaked out by the prospect of real commitment to think at all. And talking it over wouldn’t have occurred to her for a second.
When she’d been focused on teaching Eva how to deal with conflict, back in kindergarten and elementary school, Stella had learned a lot herself.
Like, Use your words.
Taking a deep breath, Stella stood up from her perch, shifted back to her lynx form, and started home.