Chapter Nineteen
Iz had chosen an old-fashioned Italian restaurant.
“I noticed you picked pasta for a lot of our imaginary meals,” she said, as Logan pulled out her chair for her. She sat down with a kind of playful gracefulness that led to her bare shoulder brushing against his hand. It sent a delicious tingle through his fingers.
Hedidlove Italian food, but not as much as he loved her. He was starting to regret their decision to have dinner before dessert.
There was no compromise option here, either. He had overcome most of his existential angst at having had rough, frantic sex with Iz back at the motel, but that didn’t mean that he was prepared to try for round two in, say, the restroom. He still wanted more romance than that. He could tell which part of him was doing the vast majority of his thinking right now if he was evensort ofconsidering that.
Maybe—just maybe—some part of him still thought that this was too good to be true.
Logan had spent a long time alone in the dark, with his humanity dwindling down, and back then, dinner out in a nice restaurant with his gorgeous, incredible mate would have seemed as out of reach for him as the moon. Even now, it felt like a dream he might wake up from.
“What are you thinking?” Iz said softly.
His first, reflexive instinct was to say it was nothing. It was raw and unpleasant, and it showed how far away he was from being okay.
But Iz had asked him to stay with her, and he didn’t think she’d just meant “don’t leave.”
Be my mate,she’d said. That was what she wanted. For some unknown reason, she was willing to take all of him, just as he was, and he knew her face would fall the moment she knew he was lying to her. And shewouldknow.
She knew what she wanted, and she’d told him. All he had to do was trust her.
“I was thinking how unbelievable this would have seemed to me a couple months ago,” Logan said. “This is so ... civilized. I have a cloth napkin. There’s a coat-check. This is a couple levels beyond vending machine food, and the vending machine food was already a lot to take in. I spent most of a year eating raw meat in the dark.”
Thankfully, he remembered to lower his voice for the last part. Although honestly, if the people at the surrounding tables overheard anything, they’d probably just assume he’d been on some kind of extreme form of paleo.
“I keep thinking I’ll wake up,” Logan concluded.
Iz nodded. “And we’ll be back in the cave.”
“No.” He hadn’t realized it until she’d said that, but his version was different. “No, that—that I am, and that you were always just this beautiful, amazing dream I was having. I mean, Iz, no offense, but if you think about it, you’re pretty unrealistic.”
Emotion had welled up in her eyes during the first part of that, but now she smiled.
“Come on, Logan. Be serious.”
“I am! You’re brave and funny and sweet and completely off-the-charts gorgeous, and you tell me everything’s okay and that you want me just the way I am, and your mind is like this heart-stopping fireworks display, and you love animals and old horror novels, andwhen we team up, we have superpowers.”
“You have a motorcycle,” Iz said primly. “And a leather jacket. And you’realsobrave and sweet and funny and off-the-charts gorgeous and an animal person, and you make me feel like I can do anything, and you taught me telepathy, and you came up with the term ‘fluffalo.’” She sipped her water. “Also, obviously the superhero bit is the same for both of us.”
“I can’t believe coming up with ‘fluffalo’ ranks that high on your list.”