His emotions were a mess, a tangle of doubt and bravado he couldn’t seem to sort out. A part of him wanted to be bold, his palms itching to cup Gibson’s face and steal a kiss, while a rational voice in his brain sang a cautionary tale. He was tired of being safe—of playing it safe—and the wildness of his situation challenged every single second of the life he’d led so far.
Maybe his aunt was right. Maybe Zach needed to shake himself out of the box he’d been living in and take a chance on something—or someone—unexpected. He’d recovered from a car crash everyone said should have killed him, and although it took him a while to get back on his feet, he’d fought hard to do so. Living in San Francisco, working in a corner office of his family’s business, and drifting in and out of unsatisfying relationships was all he had to look forward to if he didn’t make some kind of change. Purchasing the bed-and-breakfast was an out-of-the-blue decision no one in his family agreed with, but for Zach, it seemed like a step in the right direction—actually, any step was better than going backward.
“Cider sounds really good,” Zach finally said, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. “And maybe we can get around talking about belly rubs. Right after I put my shoes in the closet.”
IT WAS normal.
And that made it very weird.
Gibson had never done normal. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to sit down with another man over a pair of hard ciders and simply talk about life—including how being a shifter affected how he lived. The few people he had shared with in the past distanced themselves a bit, a slight gritty uneasiness forming between them, and they rarely spoke of what he was—of what he could become—ever again.
It felt nice to talk about Ellis. Or least have the opportunity to talk about Ellis.
Shit, it would be kind of nice to talk about himself and what being a wolf meant.
“When was the first time you shifted?” Zach asked, his thumbnail peeling off a corner of the bottle’s paper label. “Were you, like, a baby? Is it something that happens when you hit puberty?”
“Oh God, I would hate to have to deal with that and puberty at the same time.” Gibson nearly spit up the mouthful of cider he just sipped. “Hormones and your body going furry without any control would be my worst nightmare. So, thankfully the genetic dice roll evolved so we go wolf about the same time we learn how to walk. Having been around some of my younger cousins, still learning the difference between lifting their leg and peeing in a toilet, it’s the kind of thing that makes you swear off having kids. We kind of spend the first few years of our lives just among family, or at least until you learn how to control the shift. Nothing says ‘Oh my God, I’m living next to a pack of monsters’ like somebody’s baby turning into a wolf cub in the middle of the grocery store. It is a great way to pick up a date, though. Nothing like a big-eyed, fat-bellied puppy to start up a conversation with somebody hot.”
“Yeah, I’d agree it would work with a puppy. Having had your brother nearly biting off my ass, it’s not so cute when it’s two hundred plus pounds of fur and teeth chasing you down a mountain.”
“I’ve already apologized for that. I’d like to tell you that he’s sorry, but well, I know Ellis. He’s not sorry.” Gibson glanced over to where his brother normally lay. The mound of pillows was empty, but it was still daylight out, and Ellis liked to spend the afternoons roaming. “I come from a family of assholes.”
Ever since he’d pulled Zach out of the lake, Ellis was more restless, pacing by the front door before Gibson could even get coffee on and keening to get out before the sun rose. He’d been woken up that morning—although at 4:00 a.m., Gibson wasn’t quite willing to call it morning—by Ellis pawing at his shoulder. Stumbling downstairs from the loft’s king-size bed nearly took him out, and not for the first time, Gibson promised himself he would install runner lights along the cabin’s stairwell.
No matter what werewolf myths were out there, being a shifter sure as hell didn’t give anyone see-in-the-dark eyesight when it was pitch-black.
“I, too, come from a family of assholes. Mine like to take advantage of what they call financial opportunities, but in reality, they’re just savaging companies that could thrive if given a little assistance.” Zach pulled his legs up onto the cushion, crossing them, then leaned back into the sectional’s curve. The hems of his jeans hiked up, exposing his ankles and the line of scars running up his calves. “I was right there with them until one day the universe decided I needed a truck thrown at me and I woke up to a doctor leaning over my hospital bed, telling me in no uncertain terms that I’d never walk again.”
“Sometimes—okay, a lot of times—doctors are wrong.” Gibson stretched across the few feet that separated them, running the tip of his index finger over a shiny, florid scar. “Did it take you a long time to prove him wrong?”
“Almost a year, not quite one but close enough. I had a lot of help, and mostly I spent the year pissed off,” Zach admitted ruefully. “When it seemed like I was ready to start my life over again, my father called me into his study to tell me I’d been demoted because I hadn’t been there to close deals.”
“Jesus, and I thought my father was a raging dick,” he muttered. “So what did you do?”
“I’d spent most of my life trying to prove myself to him, and I guess right then, I realized he should’ve spent my lifetime proving himself to me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t someone he could be proud of, it was that he wasn’t somebody I looked up to.” Zach shivered under Gibson’s touch but didn’t pull away. “I wasn’t proud of my father. In my head I kept making excuses for why my family was the way they are and going along with their condemnation of family members they thought were a waste of time. So I told him to fuck off, cashed out all of my stock options, bought a bed-and-breakfast at Big Bear, then got my ass chased down the mountain by a man in a wolf suit. Okay, that last bit was probably insensitive.”
“No, you’ve got it right. We are pretty much humans wrapped in a wolf skin, unless you’re like Ellis, and you spend too much time that way.” It wasn’t so much the not knowing if his brother, or rather how much of his brother, remained inside of the wolf; it was wondering if he was ever going to see Ellis again. He missed his older brother. He even missed the pranks Ellis played on him and was torn between wanting to coax his brother out and letting him slip away into the form they had inside.