“You want to stay for dinner?” Gibson tilted his head and studied Zach with an expression he couldn’t decipher. “It’s nothing fancy. Rabbit stew actually, but I’ve also got a nice whiskey, and it’s strong enough to wipe away any bad taste left in your mouth after eating my cooking.”
“I come up here with your brother on the seat next to me and we talk about rabbit stew? Anticlimactic, all things considered.” Zach frowned, wondering where he’d discovered the thread of fearlessness in himself during the drive up the hellish road. He needed something from Gibson, an intimacy of sorts, something to balance out the secrets and the confusion he found himself in. He needed a clarity, straight answers or at least a knowledge of where he stood and where they were going, even if they were just going to be friends. “I’m not sure where we go from here. I had to take a couple of days because it hurt to move, then I needed time to figure out what I wanted. From you. Hell, from me. And I was doing pretty good with it until Ellis showed up in the middle of the road, and suddenly, everything became very real.”
“I thought we would start with the stew and then work our way through other things. I wasn’t sure when you would be finding your way back up here. Actually, I wasn’t sure you were ever coming back.” Gibson stepped closer, their hips almost brushing, and Zach resisted the urge to lean against the SUV, torn between wanting to boldly take a taste of Gibson’s mouth or having the other man pen him against the vehicle and kiss him breathless. “You made me promise to be here, but I realized after I dropped you off, you didn’t give me a promise you’d return. I’ve been making enough dinner for four people since I left you at the inn because I didn’t know when I’d see you again. So yeah, have a bit of dinner, something to drink, and maybe we can get around to talking about other things besides me being able to turn into a wolf.”
Five
THERE WAS a hell of a lot more to the cabin than Zach remembered. At the time he’d been overwhelmed, first with pain and then with Ellis shifting back and forth in front of him. He didn’t recall the kitchen, wrapped around one corner of the main floor, or the banks of bookcases lining most of the interior walls, their shelves filled with rows of double-stacked novels, spines worn from handling.
A pair of short bookcases was set up against the back of the sectional, a line of pristine paperbacks assembled proudly between a pair of bookends made out of a split river stone. The shelves were packed with board games, their cardboard boxes nearly as worn as the heavily read-through library. The cabin’s furnishings ran to comfortable—a bit oversized, which made sense considering the breadth of the Keller boys’ frames—and other than a few scattered rag rugs on the gleaming wooden floor, the interior’s color palette seemed mostly made up of soft blues, creamy golds, and a few punches of hunter green.
The dining room was exactly as he remembered it, a cluster of mismatched chairs pushed in around a circular wooden table that had seen better days. A laptop sat open on one end, its long cord plugged into a bendable pink power strip connected to an outlet on the kitchen’s free-floating island.
“It looks bigger. The inside, I mean,” Zach commented, setting the chocolate pudding cake down on the counter. Gibson joined him, padding on now bare feet after shedding his boots by the front door. “Crap, I probably should’ve taken my sneakers off. Sorry.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” Gibson held the refrigerator open with his hip, then reached for the cake box to slide it in between a few bottles of hard cider. “Do whatever you feel comfortable with. I just hate to have things on my feet, but since I’m pretty fond of my toes, walking in the snow requires footwear. Also, if you do take off your shoes, be sure to put them in the closet. That way, Ellis can’t get to them.”
“Is that normal?” It seemed odd to have a discussion about Gibson’s brother chewing up shoes, but Zach supposed he was going to have to embrace a different type of conversation if he planned to be around either of the Kellers. “I mean, you guys are still human or at least think that way, right? It’s not like—okay I have absolutely no social direction on what is offensive when talking about… I don’t even know what you like to be called as a group. This is a whole new field of landmines.”
Thank God Gibson had a sense of humor, because while his warm laughter held no censure, Zach wasn’t sure he would have felt the same way if he’d been in Gibson’s place.
“Usually we say shifter, but some of the family are old-school and they say werewolf. I’m not too fond of that one because, well, if you get into the whole werewolf, there wolf comedy routine. As for Ellis. That asshole has chewed on shoes since he was little kid,” he replied. “It’s something stupid that he’s always done, and no matter how much my father tried to beat it out of him, he couldn’t stop. It was just easier to put our shoes away. I guess there are some things that the human brain can’t deflect. I hate to admit it, but if you scratch behind my ear, I kinda have to thump my leg. And don’t get me started about belly rubs.”
“I don’t think that’s a wolf thing. You rub my belly and I’ll agree to anything you want,” Zach admitted with a shrug. “Something about it makes me both crazy and warm inside.”
“I’m going to have to keep that in mind,” Gibson said, edging closer to Zach’s side. It was intoxicating; the warm cabin air and Gibson’s nearness left him with tingles. “If you’re hungry, I can put the stew on to warm up. Or I could crack open some whiskey or a couple of those ciders and we can just sit and talk.”
“I can wait on food. Talking sounds like a really good idea. Sitting sounds like an even better one.” Zach took a sniff, unable to help himself, and he was delighted at how comforting Gibson’s scent was to his frazzled nerves. “I’m the one shoving my way into your day. I would’ve called first, but apparently exchanging numbers was beyond me. Then again, my phone is on the bottom of the lake, and I just got a new one yesterday.”
“Okay, then.” Gibson jerked his head toward the fridge. “Cider, plain iced tea, or water? Pick your poison.”