The Oracle let out a bark of a laugh. He flopped his hair to one side as he leaned back on his elbows and surveyed his work. When he’d first come to the human realm he’d thought cars were beyond stupid. He’d pitied humans for not being able to transform into awesome, speedy beasts. But he had to admit that there was something satisfying about eating up the open road. There was even something satisfying about changing a tire. Now he just had to put the new tire on. He rolled his head to one side to look at her.

His woman. He knew that now. He’d had suspicions when he’d started dreaming about her. When she’d come to him in a dream and pulled him out of his darkest place. But now he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what they were to each other. And all that from just an innocent touch on the hand. Imagine what would happen when they were naked and touching each other in every god-forbidden place. Something uncurled inside him at the thought of it. Something woke up and stretched and walked around.

Then the expression on her face sank in. She looked utterly horrified at the idea that what she’d just seen was her future. In fact, she looked like she might be sick. O couldn’t help but laugh again. She was just so dang cute when she was all befuddled like that.

“Don’t look so excited,” he chuckled, rolling the spare tire through the dust between them.

“That can’t be my future,” she gasped and the Oracle looked up, mildly alarmed. Her pupils were dilating and her knuckles were white where she clasped her hands together. “My son wasn’t in that future.”

Something gentle exploded out of O. An interesting contradictory sensation. To feel so fiercely tender.

“Hey,” he said, gently tugging on her ponytail. He wanted to touch her skin, but he didn’t think she could handle that again so soon. “That wasn’t a prophecy.”

She turned and stared him right in the eye and he felt himself drawn toward her, like she was at the bottom of a slippery hill. “What?”

“I’m sorry to say that wasn’t our future. As sexy as some of that shit was, we’ll probably never experience it. Or not all of it, at least.”

The redhead took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second. She took another breath and glanced back at her son. He was lost in some internet world on her phone, furiously tapping the screen. A half-smile/half-zombie expression on his face.

“So what the hell was that, then?” she asked, some of the color coming back into her face.

The Oracle hoisted the new tire up and picked up the wrench. He ignored the slicing pain in his side and concentrated on the task at hand. On the smell of the desert. The interesting, unique woman beside him.

“How to explain to somebody average like you?” he mused.

“Gee. Thanks.” Her voice was dry but amused and O was immensely relieved that her lightheaded freak-out from moments before seemed to be passing. “Nice to know I’m not a special snowflake.”

“No. No. No. I don’t mean average, as in not special. Trust me, you’re extremely special. You’re wildly interesting.” He stood and dusted off his hands. She looked up at him from where she crouched in the dust. The sight of her down there while he stood over her set a little something on fire inside him. But he pushed it down and tried to keep things a little light. “Unspecial women don’t have noses like that.”

Her mouth dropped open as she brought one hand up to her nose. “You just had to bring up the nose, huh?”

He grinned down at her. “It’s memorable. How’d it get crooked?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me what just happened when we touched.” She crossed her arms and gave him a very stern look. One that he imagined worked like gangbusters on her son. “I’m sure you can manage to explain to an oh-so-average non-oracle like myself.”

He leaned back against the car. He wanted to make another joke. Give her the runaround. But behind her tough expression, he could see a little line of worry between her brows. She wasn’t enjoying this as much as he was. And suddenly that was kind of important to him. Kind of really important.

So instead he just leaned his head back against the roof of the car and absorbed the blindingly bright sun beating down on them. It felt good. Like fire. “I can’t say for sure, seeing as that’s never happened to me before.”

“Wager a guess.”

“I think that was our ‘what if’.”

“Our what?”

“If.”

“Our ‘what if’.” Her voice was blank.

“Yeah.” He pushed off from the car and shook his hair back. “That was ‘what if we don’t get in our cars and drive our separate ways’.”

“You’re saying if we get in the same car, we’re gonna end up making out on a snowy cliff somewhere?”

He grinned at her. “Oh, the grandeur.” He laced his hands through the air like an old-timey showman. “The drama.” He leaned in close and waggled his eyebrows. “The passion.”

She gave him a dry look just short of rolling her eyes. “I think I’ll pass.”

He shrugged. “Your prerogative.” He turned. “Hey, kid! You got anything cool to drink? I’m parched.”

The redhead’s son looked up from the phone and glanced at his mom. Definitely unsure of what to say to that.

“Are we giving him a ride, Mom?”

O turned and looked at her. “Yeah. Are you?”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked back and forth at the two of them. “What, you’re just gonna leave your car by the side of the road and come and ‘what if’ with me and my kid?”

O flopped down in the stubby grass next to the kid and watched him tap out a rhythm on the screen. O leaned over and did some fancy tap work, saving the kid from an untimely death in a lava pit.

“Hey. Thanks! How’d you do that?” The kid’s eyes filled up his whole face. Just like his mom’s.

O turned back to her. “You honestly think there’s even a tiny fraction of a choice between staying with the car and going with you two?” He looked back at the kid and then at the mom. “I’d choose you two 100 times out of 100.”

The kid paused his game and looked up at his mom. “I dunno, Mom. It’s up to you. He seems kinda weird but he doesn’t give me the creeps or anything.”

O took that as the high praise it was. It was the best he was gonna get right now. Maybe he was just chasing a feeling. Maybe he was abandoning his quest to find the mysterious man who could battle the king. But all he knew was that this was the best he’d felt in months. He’d barely even noticed the pain in his side except for a few twinges here and there.

As an oracle, he didn’t really believe in signs. There were no signs for him. There were concise visions that were usually as clear as water. But considering how frustratingly handicapped his powers had been since the accident, he was willing to go on instinct for a little while now. And his instincts were screaming. Get closer to the redhead.