by Zoe Chant
She escaped to the kitchen, where Old George gave her a knowing look and prompted her for the food orders she had taken and forgotten in her apron pocket.
Trevor bolted down his dinner for the promise of dessert, and Andrea had to keep herself from stepping in and reminding him to chew.
It was easier to watch Trevor than it was to watch Shaun. She wasn’t sure how a man could be sexy eating a diner burger, but she suspected that Shaun would be sexy blowing his nose. It was surprisingly intimate to watch him eat, in much the same way that is was weirdly hot teaching him about wiring and showing him where the trash pickup corner for their block was.
She brought them the pie — apple for Shaun and pumpkin for Trevor — and refused to linger, choosing instead to laugh with Tawny about her magazine delivery woes and chat with Stanley about how her book (wasn’t) going.
Other than topping off their water glasses and asking with false cheerfulness how their meal was, she avoided Shaun’s table until they had left, Trevor chattering cheerfully about his favorite cartoon characters as if they were close personal friends.
See? she told her hawk. Trevor was blooming under his father’s affection. Shaun was right to keep a relationship with her from interfering with that.
I see wasted opportunity, her hawk snipped.
We’ll go flying tonight, Andrea promised. Everything was better when they had a chance to spread their wings and feel the wind in their feathers.
She gathered up the bill and money from Shaun’s table and took it to the register. She did the math twice and stared at the tip he’d left in consternation. $30 for a meal that cost less than that was a ridiculous tip. It was the kind of tip you left when you were trying to make up for something.
Like when you were feeling guilty for using someone.
There was a sour taste in the back of her mouth as Andrea cleared the other tables and distantly said goodbye to the regulars.
It’s just a thing, she reminded herself, with increasing bitterness. You knew that from the start.
When the last chairs had been put on the tables and she had mopped the floors, Andrea gave the cat one last pat, locked the front door and slipped out the back. There weren’t many places in Green Valley that weren’t open to prying eyes, but Gran’s Grits had a private back alley with a tall fence extending around the dumpster.
Andrea took the trash bags from the diner to the dumpster, locking the door behind her, and looked around cautiously. It was nearly sunset; the sky was starting to turn golden and red. Andrea could hear distant sounds of kids shouting to each other. Someone was taking the last moments of daylight to mow a lawn. A screen door banged and a dog started barking several blocks away.
Andrea slipped carefully out of her shoes and pulled her uniform off over her head. She folded it neatly around her purse and tucked everything under the back step, carefully out of sight.
The she spread her arms and closed her eyes and gave a little hop into the air. Her hawk gave a keen of delight, and then they were flying swiftly to the top of the fence around the dumpster as a small red-tailed hawk. She paused there to surveil again, drinking in the sharper avian sight.
There was no one around, and none of the sounds nearby changed, so she spread her wings and soared up into the evening sky, leaving everything behind for a little while.
Chapter 25
Shaun left the diner feeling frustrated and confused.
He’d thought it would be a good idea to see Andrea at work, to prove that they could be friends and coexist in this tiny town.
Trying not to watch her too obviously, and being careful not to meet her amazing eyes for too long, had proven to be more effort than he’d anticipated, and he could see that she was finding it as difficult as he was. They’d figured out a perfect rhythm to the preschool drop off and pick up — a convincing mix of friendly and professional in front of other people. Trevor was innocently oblivious to any additional tension, and if Miss Patricia’s glance was a little amused and knowing, neither Shaun nor Andrea gave it any weight.
But the diner had been... different.
Shaun thought it was just the surprise of seeing him, but Andrea didn’t shed the tension that settled over her as the visit continued, and he could barely keep his eyes off of her. He was badly tempted to pull her into his lap and kiss her. He wanted to flirt with her, and tease her the way they did when they were alone together.
Knowing that he couldn’t was galling, and he found himself being short with Trevor’s youthful antics and questionable table manners.
His conversations with Andrea had gotten shorter and more uncomfortable as the meal progressed, until he was keenly aware that it probably appeared to an outsider as if they were having some kind of falling out.
“Daddy?”
Shaun shook himself back to the now, and slowed down as he realized that he was trying to walk at a regular, grown-up pace with Trevor’s hand in his own. It was only a few short blocks between Gran’s Grits and their house; it had seemed foolish to drive.
“What is it, kiddo?”
Trevor seemed oddly subdued. Had Shaun been too tough on him about elbows on the table and sitting still?
“I don’t think I like Granite’s Grids.”
“What don’t you like about it?” Shaun had to ask, with the tiniest chuckle for how he had mangled the name.
“Miss Andrea seemed weird,” Trevor said suspiciously.
Shaun had hoped their tension wouldn’t be obvious to the boy. “She seemed fine to me,” Shaun lied.
“I didn’t like it,” Trevor insisted stubbornly.
They walked in silence for a moment.
“Are we moving away forever?”
Shaun’s heart gave a little hiccup. “Yeah, we’re moving back to Minneapolis when preschool is over,” he said. He had nursed the idea of a bakery in Green Valley for nearly a week, loving the idea the more he thought about it. He’d even gone as far as investigating the available rentals in the tiny town. But he hadn’t mentioned the concept to anyone outside of his father, and while he didn’t talk about leaving at the end of the semester, he’d never mentioned that they might not.
“Why?” Trevor’s whine was quiet and intense.
Because of the miserable longing he had caught in Andrea’s eyes. Because of the way he couldn’t stop wanting her. Because of the impossible choice he had to make between being the father that Trevor deserved and the mate he wanted to be for Andrea.
Because maybe the distance could make her crave her less.
“My work is in Minneapolis,” Shaun lied for a second time in that conversation. “And they have great schools there. You’re going to Kindergarten next year, you know.”
Trevor was quiet for a moment, then began to whine. “My legs are tired. Will you carry me?”
Shaun stopped and bent to gather the slight boy into his arms. Trevor slipped arms around Shaun’s neck.
“I love you, Daddy,” he mumbled into Shaun’s collar.
Shaun squeezed him tight, as if it would keep his chest from hurting. “I love you too, slugger.”
The little boy fell asleep on their walk home, and Shaun could only cradle him helplessly and wonder how something so small and fragile feeling could mean so much and cause so much pain and joy all at once.
Chapter 26
Andrea flew like a shot, straining her wings to go as high as she could, and then tumbled acrobatically back down among the puffy, sunset-stained clouds. Green Valley was just a series of lines and squares below her, familiar rooftops fading into the greater patchwork of the fields around it and the wild forests that wrinkled over the hills.
For a long while, the sheer joy of flight drove everything else from her mind.
But finally, she tired, and settled into an easy glide just over the treetops.
Despite herself, Shaun slipped back into her mind.
What they had, their thing, was simply unsustainable.
She had made the classic mistake o
f wrapping her heart up with her body, and giving both of them to Shaun.
He’d wanted the one, which was admittedly gratifying, but had eschewed the other, leaving Andrea with a strange, empty aching hole where her heart had been.
Would something more have happened if Trevor hadn’t needed his father’s undivided affection?
Andrea couldn’t bring herself to resent the little boy. She would have been happy for Trevor to rediscover his father even if she hadn’t fallen for him herself, and she loved that the stability of a loving parent was having such a positive effect on him.
Her hawk was as heartbroken as she was, still sadly convinced that Shaun was destined to be theirs, but uncertain how to resolve that with the emotional distance lying between them.
Neither of them was paying the slightest attention as the sun sank below the horizon, turning the sky deep violet.
Neither of them heard the silent wings of the owl above them, or was aware of its presence until it was close enough that the backdraft of its wings fluttered her feathers as it struck, driving wicked claws deep into her.
Andrea shrieked in agony, twisted, and dived, shaking loose from the bigger bird and tearing herself off its claws by sheer force of will.
As fast as she could, she was diving away, the owl snatching at her tail feathers.
She was smaller and more maneuverable, but the owl was stronger and faster. It could also see in the dark and wasn’t injured.
I’m not your prey! Andrea tried to insist, flapping frantically, but the owl didn’t appear to hear her.
She rolled to the side as the owl dove at her again, claws scratching at her angled wing.
Pain burned through her wing, and her breath was coming short and hot. The initial strike had slowed her more than she had realized, and when she zigged, the owl met her with outstretched claws and a cry of triumph as it closed around her.
It wasn’t the best grab, mostly one of her legs and a good portion of her tail, but Andrea failed to roll out of the grip this time.
The lights of Green Valley were below them, and Andrea could see her yard from here, all green shadows and safety. She didn’t have to get far, if she could get away again.
It would serve you right if I shifted now and we both fell out of the sky, Andrea thought fiercely, but she knew they were too high; the fall would kill her as surely as the owl would, and there was not enough time to shift back before she hit the ground.
The owl was beating its broad wings, hauling her back from her goal. Andrea fought desperately, pecking and beating her agile wings. The owl struggled to keep them aloft, and they dipped lower. Andrea rolled free again, flying like an arrow in the direction of her house for a short distance until the owl inevitably caught her again.
Chapter 27
Shaun tucked Trevor back into bed after the third trip to the bathroom and the second drink and the seventeenth hug at least, and tried not to gnash his teeth too obviously.
A glance at the hall clock confirmed that he had certainly missed Andrea’s return from the diner.
Not that he had a clue what he was going to say. Was he going to break things off completely? Tell her his dilemma and see if she had sage child advice that could fix everything? Make some transparent excuse to get her into his house and out of her clothes and pretend he could keep doing this forever?
He hurried down the stairs as quickly and quietly as he could anyway.
To his surprise, Andrea’s porchlight was still on, though she usually turned it off when she came home. None of the interior lights were on, either.
Shaun went out and stood on his own porch, looking over at hers as if he could will her to come home.
Green Valley apparently had no kind of nightlife, and by ten o’clock, the whole place was reduced to quiet insects and night birds. He could hear the far-off highway if the wind was right, and there was a dog barking several blocks away. Someone yelled and it fell silent.
There was a strange cry from above, and Shaun looked up to see a dark shape — no, two of them — struggling in the sky on a collision course for his house.
He watched in fascination as the larger bird beat broad, silent wings, clearly trying to subdue its prey, which was not at all done fighting. The smaller bird was clawing and beating wings at what looked like an owl, and feathers from both of them were flying off in flurries like snow.
It was like a moment from a National Geographic special and Shaun reached for his phone before he realized that it was too dark to capture any of it. His tiger’s night vision was the only reason he could see it at all.
The smaller bird was clearly wounded and overpowered, so Shaun found himself cheering silently for it as it managed to twist away and drunkenly drop several stories towards him. It was a small hawk, he realized and the larger bird, a huge owl, was on it again just before it could get to the ground. It screamed as the claws closed on it again.
That was it for the hawk, he thought, wondering if he could scare the owl off and get the smaller bird to some kind of bird rehab in time.
Do it, his tiger flared unexpectedly at him. Now!
He dashed down the porch steps at the urgency of the command, and picked up a landscaping rock, hurling it without thinking at the owl.
It struck true and the owl gave a cry of pain and tumbled away, releasing the hawk.
Then, to his utter astonishment, the hawk shifted into a girl — no, into Andrea! — and fell out of the sky.
She landed on her feet but fell at once to her knees, and from there toppled onto her face.
Shaun was frozen for only a moment, then he was racing across the dark lawn to where Andrea lay. The owl, which had been hovering overhead, fled.
“No, no, no,” he said as he reached her and rolled her carefully over.
She was naked, and slick where he touched her. Bleeding. She was bleeding from everything. It was dark and colorless in the unlit night, over her chest, down her arms, on her legs.
“No, no, no,” he repeated, gathering her into his arms. He couldn’t do anything for her out here.
Her eyes opened, glinting in the darkness. “Wrong yard,” she said, coughing wetly. “Sorry,” she whispered, and her eyes screwed shut in pain as Shaun lifted her up and carried her up the steps.
In the light of the house, it was even worse: the blood was bright red and everywhere.
He laid Andrea gently onto the couch, not caring if she ruined the horrible thing. Pressure. He needed to put pressure on the wounds.
He collected a handful of kitchen towels and hurried back to find her sitting up.
“Lie back,” he insisted. “You should not be sitting.”
“It’s... not as bad as it looks,” she said, voice tight with the lie. “I... heal fast.”
To be fair, the bleeding did seem to have slowed remarkably. But she was ghost white, and when she tried to stand, failed miserably.
“Down,” Shaun commanded, and she sank obediently back into the terrible throw pillows.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I heal really fast. I’m a...”
“A shifter,” Shaun finished for her with a growl. “I know how fast a shifter can heal, and I know you need to lie down a little longer at least.”
Her eyes widened in sudden understanding. “Of course you do,” she said with a hiccup of pained laughter. “I’m so stupid.”
“The jury’s still out,” Shaun told her lightly, pressing a towel into the puncture wound on her collarbone that appeared to be the worst. It was hard to tell, as covered as she was in bloody scratches and gouges.
Chapter 28
Andrea let Shaun clean her up, too weak to stop him, and felt unspeakably foolish.
Of course he was a shifter, with that powerful physique and that unsettling silvery gaze.
She’d been so busy trying to handle her own body’s reaction to him that she hadn’t thought too hard about his animal magnetism being an actual animal feature. He was graceful like a cat, and had the confidence
of a predator.
“What are you?” she had to ask.
“Tiger,” he answered gruffly. “Not that I’ve had a chance to shift since we came here, of course. I don’t have the kind of form that can flit around the neighborhood looking inconspicuous.”
Andrea hissed as he used a damp towel to wipe the worst of the blood from her arm. That would be where the owl had raked her wing. The few places that were still oozing blood he rinsed with hydrogen peroxide and put bandages over — tape over gauze in some places, superhero bandaids over the most minor. She knew that spectacularly colorful bruises would join the tapestry before tomorrow.
“Did you know that I was—”
“No.”
Andrea wondered if she imagined that he sounded short. Was he angry that she’d kept the secret from him?
Then she remembered that he’d kept the same secret from her, and would have punched him if it didn’t hurt so badly to lift her arms.
“Let me get you a shirt,” Shaun said.
“I don’t want to bleed all over your clothes,” Andrea said. She grimaced. “Or your couch, or your floor.” The whole place looked like a murder scene.
“I’ll get it cleaned before Trevor gets up in the morning.” Shaun found a shirt in the laundry room and helped her button it over herself. It was colorful, and loose enough that it didn’t chafe over her raw wounds.
“Hydrogen peroxide,” Andrea said, as she let Shaun roll up the comically long sleeves for her.
He paused. “Did I miss a spot?”
“Oh, no! I’m fine. It’s just that hydrogen peroxide gets blood out of fabric. Test it first, of course, but it lifts most bloodstains without harming couches and rugs.”
Shaun gave a gruff chuckle, switching sleeves. “You know the weirdest things!”