had been nesting, and he still needed to finish repairing the damage done by their occupancy. A couple of the windows were still boarded shut, because he was leaving the issue of glass transportation and installation until the very end. The roof was patched, but not fully fixed yet. The old stove still had to be replaced. Mr. Walton was keeping most of the furniture, so it was pretty bare.
“There’s still some serious work to do,” Joel told Nina as she looked around, biting down on the desire to apologize. He wished he could’ve shown her the cabin as he imagined it when it was finished, complete with cozy furniture in front of the fireplace.
She wasn’t smiling any longer, but the serious look on her face somehow meant more to him than the smile had. “It looks like a future,” she told him. “Like it’s going to be built into something more than it is.”
He let out his breath. “That’s what I think whenever I come here. The house I live in with my brother—that’s his future. He and his mate are going to live there, maybe forever. Maybe have kids there. But this is something I’m making for myself.”
Nina bit her lip. “I understand. Or, I think I do. I don’t like to look ahead. It always seems to go wrong, somehow.”
She said it quietly, the sadness present in the set of her mouth, the fall of her eyelashes. No dramatic emotions, no tears, nothing. And yet, that soft little statement wrenched Joel’s heart.
It spoke of years of disappointments, of hurting, of wanting and not getting. And the way she kept it all locked down suggested to him that it hurt too badly to let it out.
This was going to be the moment where that changed for Nina, Joel vowed. From now on, she was going to be able to look ahead with confidence and excitement. He was going to make sure of it.
“I’m looking forward to having lights in here,” Joel told her. “But for now, all we’ve got is the fireplace, so I’m going to go ahead and get it lit.”
He went to do that, and when he’d gotten a good little flame going, licking over the logs he’d set up, he looked back to see that Nina was exploring around, checking out the kitchen area and curiously examining the boards on the windows.
"Still a work in progress," he said. "As you can see."
"Is it fun to work on?" she asked, turning back to him.
Joel nodded immediately. "I like doing things with results you can see. When I'm working on the cabin, I'm finding problems, fixing them, and then seeing the finished product right away. It's satisfying."
Nina said thoughtfully, "I've never fixed anything up like this. Well, I've never owned a place to live, so I guess I haven't had a chance."
"I don't technically own this place," Joel admitted. "Yet. I'm fixing it up as part of a deal with Mr. Walton—he's letting me occupy the place while I work on it, and once I've saved up enough money, I'm going to buy it. The furniture was all his, which is why there isn’t much.”
Nina nodded toward the nest of sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets he'd created right by the fire, in lieu of an actual bed. “That looks pretty comfortable.”
Joel smiled. “Want to have a seat?”
They arranged themselves amid all of the soft things spread on the floor. Joel gave Nina most of the pillows and stopped himself from asking five or six times if she was comfortable. She sat cross-legged on a pillow and seemed just fine.
Joel kept a few inches between them. Having her so close was reminding him that she smelled intoxicating, like the forest and wildness and woman all mixed up together. Joel watched her face, looking pensive, the firelight illuminating her deep brown skin and making it look like it was lit from within.
“Can I ask you something?” he said softly.
Nina’s eyes flicked up to his. They seemed to look right through him, clear and endless. “All right.”
“You seem like you've had a lot of trouble in your life. You were ready to skip town just because I noticed you. What happened to you?"
Nina was quiet for a long, long moment, long enough that Joel thought he’d gone too far and she was going to run away again.
But finally, she said, "I'm adopted."
"Okay," Joel said slowly. And then it clicked. "By human parents?"
Nina nodded. "They got me when I was a baby. And it was never a problem—they loved me just as much as they would have if I'd been theirs. I never worried about that at all. Until I shifted in front of them for the first time."
Joel felt himself go cold. "How old were you?"
"Sixteen," she whispered. "I'd known I was a shifter for a couple of years already. I'd felt the leopard inside me for my whole life, but until I was thirteen or fourteen, I thought it was just this...growly inner voice."
In spite of himself, Joel smiled faintly. He’d had that growly voice inside him for as long as he could remember, too.
"When I shifted for the first time, I didn’t know what had happened or what I was. I thought I was this insane freak.” Nina wrapped her arms around herself, as though she was cold. “I tried to research shifters on the Internet, figure out if there were others, where they might be...but it was totally impossible to find any real information. There are all these crazy made-up websites out there."