"Where will you—do you want me to wait with you? It's rather cold."
Claire shook her head. "I'll be okay. He'll be home in an hour or so." She slipped out of the car and went to sit on the biting concrete of the porch step. Her mother drove away slowly. Claire could see her watching in the rearview mirror. She put her hands in her pockets, tucked herself down into her coat, and waited.
When Matthew pulled into the driveway, the wind had numbed her nose, and her hips ached from sitting on the concrete.
When he stepped out of the car and saw her, a smile skittered across his face and then his lips went flat as a closed door.
"Claire? What are you doing here?"
She stood up. "I have to talk to you. Please."
He nodded. "I know. I need to talk to you, too."
Her heart hiccuped in her chest. Something about the way he said the words made it sound like he was breaking up with her.
"Let's go inside," he said.
The two of them ended up at the kitchen table.
The ticking of the old-fashioned wall clock above the stove pounded against Claire's ears, reminding her that she didn't have time to waste. Still, she couldn't find the words to tell him—especially not when things seemed so uncertain between them.
"Listen," he said, jumping in ahead of Claire. "I don't know what you heard happened at Emily's on Saturday night, and I know we haven't talked, but it all started with the fight we had in the car—"
She spoke over top of him, not wanting to rehash their argument right then. "I have something to tell you, and I don't . . ." She bit her lip. "I need to tell you. But it's wolf stuff, and it's bad. And if you can't handle it—"
He held up a hand, stopping her. "Wait. I don't want to have this fight again. I'm not freaked out by the werewolf stuff. I never have been."
She made a face. "But when I was tested, you didn't even want to be there. It's like you're trying to ignore the werewolf side of my life. I mean, what about what happened after Yolanda's party?" She paused, remembering the rough wood of the utility shed against her fur. Remembering how badly Matthew had lied when Emily had almost found her and how tense and horrible things had been between them afterward.
The memory made her too edgy to sit still. She pushed the chair back from the table and paced in front of the counter.
Matthew shook his head disbelievingly. "You told me to leave you alone so many times. . . . It's not exactly easy to figure out how involved I'm supposed to be—when I'm being a gardien and when I'm being your boyfriend."
Claire ground the heel of her hand into the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. "But there's no difference between the two."
"Of course there is!" he said, standing up. "They're both things I am, but they're not the same."
"Right," she said, dropping her hands and stepping toward him. "And I'm two things too. A wolf and a human. But you know both. I just want to be myself with you—all of myself, not just the human part and not just the wolf. I thought that's what was so great about you being a gardien in the first place. Until you started acting like you only wanted to date the one version of me."
"I'm not saying that! You're the one who keeps saying it. Yes, it's hard. I mean, when Doug doesn't get something that's going on in Kate-Marie's life, he ruins the lunch conversation by pestering all of us until we tell him what the hell we think he should do. And then he does it and things are fixed. I don't have that option. I'm not allowed to talk to any of my friends about your life, and I don't exactly love the idea of having a heart-to-heart with your mother about it.
You're all I have, but instead of telling me what you want me to do, you spend all your time being mad that I'm not perfect."
"It's not like I have some secret werewolf dating guide that I'm not showing you," she fumed. "I want us to be together, but I want to be with you. Not in charge of you. You can't just lurk around at the edge of everything, waiting for me to tell you to jump. I don't know what I'm doing, either, and you're not the only one who can't get advice from your friends." Her words were coming fast and faster, and she felt the conversation spinning away from her.
He reached out and caught her wrist. "Stop. Listen to me. I love you. All of you. I'm not trying to ignore the fact that you're a werewolf." Misery creased his forehead, crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Our relationship is never going to be easy. And I won't lie—sometimes, I wish it was. I look at what Kate-Marie and Doug have, and it's so simple."
She pulled her wrist out of his lax grip. "I can't help that."