CHAPTER NINE

 

 

Seth inwardly sighed as he stared at Sarah’s face. Her forthright expression, the lack of patience on her face, she was finally doing what he’d known she’d do the whole time. She was making him explain what the hell was going on. He just really wished he didn’t have to. Hoping to throw her off the scent, he pretended she was just talking about the food. It made it so much easier if he could feign ignorance. “It’s turkey chili and homemade bread. I thought you’d like it.”

“I’m not talking about the food.”

He sighed as he stood in the door frame. He couldn’t help but feel that lingering in the doorway was a metaphor for his situation with her. He needed to leave her behind for her own good, but he so didn’t want to. He couldn’t decide if he should stay or go. “I know.”

“So, what the hell is it?” She gestured to the food, to him, to herself. “Is this flirting? You put together my entire house, you mow my lawn, you make me dinner three times a week. You wash my car. Are you courting me, Seth?” She paused to read his expression. He wondered what she saw there. The idea of courting her lanced through him in a pleasurable, yet depressing, spike. He wanted to do that. He wanted to badly. He wanted to take her to movies and make her dinner and make out at the end of a date. But he couldn’t, and he knew he couldn’t.

Her face sobered as she watched him. “Or are all of these guilt gifts? You kissed my brains out my ears but you didn’t like it and now you feel guilty? Is that it? You regret it?”

He stiffened. “No! God, no. You have to know that’s not the case, Sarah.”

Her face was set but not angry. “Actually, I don’t really know anything. I’m confused. You’re the most generous, most giving person I’ve ever met and it confuses me. Are you doing these things for other people, too? I’m just reading too much into it?”
He took a deep breath, grappling for a way to explain this without telling her too much. “You know I volunteer. I like to be helpful. I give as much as I possibly can. It’s who I am. But… no. I’m doing more for you than I do for other people.”

She shifted from one foot to the other. “Why? Just tell me the truth. I don’t even really care what the answer is. I just want to understand.”

He wanted to tell her the truth. The real truth. The whole shebang. And that scared the shit out of him, because the one rule that he and his brothers had lived by their entire lives was that this was a secret they were never, ever allowed to tell. Suddenly, standing there in Sarah’s kitchen, with that look on her face and her wet hair all knotted high on her head, Seth actually felt the weight of the secret on his shoulders. For the first time, he understood just how hard it was to carry something like that for your whole life. The rest of his life spanned out before him and he wondered how tired he’d be by the end of it.

Bauer zapped into Seth’s brain and he suddenly understood the old man in a new way. Why he was so rude. So abrupt. So bitter.

Because a secret like this, one that isolated you from people you loved, it twisted a person. Changed him. This wasn’t something Seth could keep a lid on forever with no repercussions. If he kept this secret forever, it was just going to bend him out of shape, change him, leave him unrecognizable.

But the real question was, would he take that burden on in order to protect Sarah? Because telling her was akin to jail time for her. If he told her the whole truth, she would be faced with a terrible decision. Turn him and his brothers in to the authorities or risk being an accomplice in the crime he committed every single day by living his life unregistered.

If he was ever found out, and his life was investigated, they would interrogate every single person he’d ever known. Sarah would be on that list. If she knew his secret, she would either be forced to lie in a court of law or tell the truth and face jail time.

He simply couldn’t do that to her.

Keeping her in the dark was the only way he could protect her from himself, from what he was.

But those amber eyes trapped him as they always did, her lovely face framed in her honey brown flyaways. And he knew he couldn’t lie to her either.

Not about everything.

So, he took a breath and told her as much of the truth as he could, hoping, praying, it would be enough to take some of the weight off of his soul.

“The truth is… that kiss was the best kiss of my life. I can still feel it.” He lifted his fingertips to his mouth, without even really noticing. “I liked the project of helping you out with your house, Sarah. But I know now that I did it because I wanted to be closer to you. I’ve never met anyone like you. Even that first day on your porch, your mouth full of peanut butter, I thought, wow, I like her. It’s… chemical or something. I like you.” He lifted his eyes to her and made sure she heard the next part. “I want you.”
She took a step toward him and he automatically took a step back. Her expression clouded again as confusion once more took over.

“But…” he continued, hating each word as it came out of his mouth, “we can never be together in that way. I’m not built for relationships.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that shit, Seth. You’ve had like fifty girlfriends. Kaya and Nat told me all about you and your brother and your rotating door. I’m not judging you, at all. I’m just asking you to tell me the truth here.”

Seth dragged a hand over his face and tried to think of a way to explain without leading her directly to the answer. She was a smart girl and he really didn’t want her to figure this out. “Sarah, I date women who I’ll have no trouble breaking up with. That’s pretty much my only criteria. And you don’t fit that criteria.”

She lowered her brow in confusion or anger, he couldn’t quite tell. “You have this singular talent of complimenting me and insulting me at the same time.”

“I’m not trying to insult you!” He was really botching this, but to be honest, he didn’t think there was really a way for him to have not botched it. It was just going to suck. The end.               “Sarah, I’m trying to tell you that I think you’re fucking perfect. And that’s why I can’t date you. Because I already know that I’ll just keep wanting more. With you, I’d want… everything. And I’m not built for that. I wasn’t born to be able to have that with someone.” His words were getting choppy as he struggled for a way to explain without really explaining.

She stared at him, her eyes looking fiercer than he’d ever seen them look before. “So, to sum up, you have some serious confidence issues, thinking you’re not good enough for love or something like that. And you do all this nice shit for me, mow my lawn, make me dinner because…”

“Because I want you. But I can’t really have you.”

“This makes no freaking sense!” She threw her arms up in the air and marched a small circle. “Why can’t you have me? I’m here! I’m willing! Though, actually, at the moment, I’m really pissed at you. But really, what’s the big deal? What aren’t you telling me? This is a free country, Seth. People can date other people without life-altering ramifications. I’m not saying we should get married. But I liked kissing you and I wanted to do it again and—oh.”

She stepped back from him and one hand went to her mouth as she stared at him, wide-eyed.

“What?” he asked, stepping forward for the first time. He was certain that something had just occurred to her and he was anxious to know what it was.

“I get it. I’m such a dummy. Shit. No, I’m not dumb, I’m just inexperienced. I didn’t understand before. You know, I’ve never really dated anybody. And I was homeschooled for so long, traveling the world for competitions. But yeah, I should have understood.”

“Sarah, understood what, exactly?” He strode up to her and gently took her by the shoulders. She just looked so… sheepish. He didn’t like it, it didn’t suit her at all.

Then, just like that, the shutters went down on her vulnerability and she looked all put together again. As confident as always. “I’ve never really been let down easy before, Seth. When you were all ‘you’re fucking perfect, Sarah,’” she did a poor imitation of his voice that under other circumstances would have made him laugh, “I thought you meant it. But you say that to everybody you break up with, right? You tell them you want everything from them and then you give some vague and arbitrary reason as to why it can’t work? You can tell me, Seth, it’s okay. I’d rather know than not know.”

He was dumbfounded. She’d gone and twisted everything and was hurting herself in the process. No, no, no. He couldn’t let it stand.

The thing was, she was giving him the perfect out. The perfect way to cut this thing off at the pass. Hell, she was confident and self-assured enough that she’d probably be over him in a week. They could probably even go back to being friends.

Every fiber of Seth’s being revolted against that idea.

He dragged his palms down his face. “Sarah, I’m not sure what you’re hoping to hear right now, but I’ve never ‘let someone down easy’ in my entire life. I’m a true believer in the quick and clean break-up. I also have never, ever lied to someone while I was breaking up with them. Not even white lies about how special I think they are. Okay? I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. I want you—” he cut himself off when his voice got a little too smoky. He was attempting to break things off with her. Not seduce her. “I want you very much. In a different world… where I was inherently different, I’d want to start something with you.”

She pursed her lips and then her brows. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him through squinting eyes. He couldn’t help but laugh and reach out to smooth a thumb over her forehead.

“Your distaste for me right now is shriveling you up like a raisin,” he told her, manually uncrossing her arms and dropping them to her sides.

She finally cracked a small smile. “All right. I guess I believe you about how much you like me. Because, after all, I’m pretty freaking awesome.”

He grinned. He loved that she could say that about herself and truly mean it. It was a kickass quality to have.

“But the rest of it,” she continued, “doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.”

Seth sighed, his smile fading. He looked down and frowned. Somehow, when he’d uncrossed her arms, he’d ended up lacing fingers with hers. They held hands, creating a circle, a protected area between the two of them where the rest of the world was not invited. “Maybe, would you just trust me when I tell you that I wouldn’t be good for you?”

“Would you trust me to make that decision on my own once I have all the information?”

They stared at one another, neither of them backing down, but not dropping their hands either.

“So, we have an impasse, huh?” he asked eventually.

“Appears that way. Seth, I’m awesome and you’re awesome. I’m sure you’ve got your shit to deal with, we all do. I’m certainly not perfect. But whatever your secret, scary baggage is, I don’t think it needs to mean that this thing between us is dead in the water. Let it float for a little bit, see where it goes. If you start being bad for me, don’t you think I’d recognize that? Don’t you think I’d be capable of making the hard decisions when the time comes?”

Well, when she put it like that… Seth blinked. He’d never quite thought of it that way before. That maybe it was a little misogynistic to assume that he knew what was better for her than she did. Because Sarah was one of the most outwardly capable people he’d ever met. She just wasn’t fragile. He had a lot to learn about her, but she just didn’t seem like someone who let life beat her down.

But then reels of the local news that he and his brothers had been watching played in his head. Interviews with locals about the ‘shifter problem’. He’d seen the hatred that people had for shifters. He knew that most of the general public thought that shifters should be rounded up and registered, interned in camps where they’d be subject to study and chained up when they got too rowdy. He didn’t think that Sarah would feel that way, but who was he to guess about something like that? Something that important?

No matter how much he wanted to, no matter how tempting she made it, he couldn’t fold on this issue. Her life could be on the line, his brothers’ lives. It wasn’t worth it.

“Sarah… I can’t.” He dropped her hands. “You don’t understand. This is what’s best for everyone involved. I swear. You have to trust me on this. I have to step back.”

She pursed her lips again and cocked her head to one side. “I suppose that’s your right.”

He blinked at her, surprised that she didn’t have more to say on the issue.

“Just like it’s my right,” she continued, “to try and convince you otherwise.”

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

She stepped forward and took him by the elbow. He stared down at her as she bustled him through the house straight out to her front porch.

“Sarah—”

“No, no,” she told him, reaching forward and straightening the collar of the shirt she’d just tugged out of place with all her bustling. “No more protesting. You’ve said your piece. Now, I’m just gonna see if I can’t change your mind.”

“Sarah—” This time, it wasn’t her words that cut him off, it was her lips. She went up on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his, her hands firmly on the back of his neck. Absolutely zero percent of Seth fought the moment. He’d wasted all his arguing energy on words, and now his body had nothing left. His hands came up, flat against her back, and he held her flush against him, his head bent down to hers. She was a good seven inches shorter than he was, but still up on her tiptoes, their thighs were pressed flat together and her hipbones knocked into his.

Then she stepped back and broke away from the kiss. It had been a hot band of heat between them, like static shock, and had barely lasted long enough for him to get a taste of her. His eyes fluttered open to see her standing two feet away from him, framed in her doorway, smirking at him.

He looked down at his dumb hands which were hanging in the air, as if he were still reaching for her. He dropped his hands and shoved them into his pockets.

He cleared his throat, felt the gravel in his voice still and cleared it again. “Obviously there’s heat between us, Sarah. That’s not the point.”

“I agree,” she told him matter-of-factly. “The point is that I’m gonna be the one courting you, Seth. And you can just take your time and get used to the idea.” She smiled at him in a straightforward way, almost nothing flirtatious about it.

And then she closed the door in his face.

He stared at the door, noticing that it needed a new paint job, but not much else penetrated the fog that had just suspended all his thinking parts.

“I just came over to deliver the turkey chili,” he said to no one, scratching at the back of his head.

 

 

***

 

 

Bauer sat his creaking bones down at Elizabeth’s breakfast table and tried not to fall face first into the steaming cup of coffee she slid over to him.

“Not sleeping well?” she asked after a moment, buttering some toast and then sliding a plate of that over to him as well.

He was tempted to just grunt an answer at her and then inhale the toast. Before he’d come to stay at Elizabeth’s, it had been over three years since he’d had butter. It was still an incredible delicacy to him. Everything on this table and in this house seemed an incredible delicacy to him.

Instead of grunting, he took a gulp of coffee and sat up a little straighter. “I never sleep well. But that’s not why I’m tired.”

She raised a knowing eyebrow, a sly smile on her face. “You’re getting some aches and pains attempting to keep up with the whippersnappers?”

Bauer chuffed out a laugh. “When did I get so old?”

“About twenty years ago,” she responded drily.

Bauer knew she’d been watching his work with the boys from the house. They were mostly spending time in the backyard, as it was private property and perfectly secluded.

“Why are you making them work out so much?” she asked after a minute. “All three of them are strong boys already.”

Bauer finished a piece of toast in two large bites and she rose up to grab the bowl of scrambled eggs she’d already made. The woman was a goddess.

“It’s not about muscles,” he said after a minute, trying to figure out a way to explain it. “It’s more about the way you use those muscles. Your boys, they live two completely separate lives. One as humans and one as wolves. And they do it in two completely separate bodies. But they’re never going to gain any control if they treat it like that. They need to feel their human when they’re in wolf form. And they need to feel their wolf when they’re in human form.”

She considered that for a long time, staring into the depths of her coffee. “So, all this working out you’ve got them doing… it’s to retrain their bodies to be more wolf-like?”

He nodded. That was a fair enough assessment.

He polished off his eggs and then more of his toast. She pushed the bowl of fruit salad toward him and he tried not to grimace. She was always pushing fruits and vegetables on him. As a rule, he didn’t reject food, but he preferred carbs and protein over a bowl of fruit. She eyed him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking, and he took a few scoops onto his plate.

He looked at her, looking out the window over the rim of her coffee cup, and decided that since she’d asked him a few questions, it was probably fair play to ask a few of his own.

“Your boys… they’re adopted?”

Her eyes snapped to his and he saw a lifetime of suspicion and defensiveness that lived there. After a moment, she dropped her eyes to her coffee. “Yes.”

He pushed his luck. “Are they related to one another?”

“Seth and Raphael are identical twins.” Her tone said that he was an idiot.

He chuffed a laugh again. “Yes. I figured that much out. I meant Jackson. Is he related to the twins?”

Elizabeth paused, her eyes darting to the stairs. Ever since her sons had found out about Bauer, at least one of them had slept the night over at her house. Usually Jackson.

“No. He’s not. He’s the son of my best friend. She and his father died when we were young. Left Jackson to me. I don’t know if she even knew that his father was a shifter. It was… quite a surprise when I discovered Jackson’s heritage one full moon when he was about two and half years old.”

She chuckled, so Bauer did too, but he could only imagine how terrifying that must have been for her. A young, single mother with a child who most of the world would fear and hate. A child who would certainly be taken away if she gave away his secret.

“I moved out here almost immediately. From Jersey. Bought this place with some money my folks had left me.”

“So, how did Seth and Raphael come to be a part of your life?”

“The twins were in the foster care system as babies. They’d been abandoned. I’ll never know for sure why, exactly, but my guess is that their mother didn’t know their father was a shifter until after she was pregnant. I imagine that the idea of raising two shifter children was too much for her. Maybe she was faced with doing it alone. Anyways. They were about a year and a half when I met them. About a year away from shifting for the first time. They were with a different foster family, who didn’t know a thing about them. And they were at a playground about three miles from here. I’d taken Jackson there to play.”

Elizabeth was lost in the memory, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes focused into her past. The morning sun was lighting her up from one side.             

“I was reading a book on a bench and Jackson came up to me and said, ‘Mom, you see those boys? They’re wolves, too.’”

Bauer leaned forward. “Wow. I’ve heard of that before. Children being able to scent out their own kind of shifter.”

She nodded. “I guess it’s a survival thing. Especially in pack animals. Jackson told me that it faded as he got older. He can’t do it anymore. But he sure did it that morning.”

“What happened then?”

“I—very carefully—spoke with who I thought were their parents. But really, it was two very overworked foster parents. They’d thought they were willing to care for multiples, but Seth and Raph were proving them wrong.” Elizabeth laughed. “They were certainly rambunctious.”

“How’d you get them here?”

“I took Jackson and went to an adoption agency that afternoon, started the process. Now, you can’t just say, I saw two kids on the playground and now I want them. That’s horribly creepy. No, but I said that I was hoping for toddlers, multiples were okay. Also, that I was willing to foster as well. And not three weeks later, I got the call that two very… energetic toddlers were looking for a new placement, it hadn’t worked out at their old place, and would I take them?”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I just fostered them at first, but got the adoption paperwork started right away. They bonded to Jacks immediately and that helped everything along.”

“I’ll bet he was like another parent to them.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Immediately. He’s always been torn between whether he’s their big brother or their father.”

They were quiet for a while again, Bauer still picking at his fruit salad. He wanted to tell her that he was going to do right by her boys. Right by her.

But an old, familiar restlessness rolled through his body. A paranoia. The feeling that he was being chased and it was only a matter of time before he got caught again. He rose up from the table without another word. And though it made him feel rude, he simply turned away and strode out into the cool morning air.

 

 

***

 

 

Across town, Sarah sat at breakfast with Kaya and Nat.

“I thought Raphael was supposed to join us,” Sarah said to them, signaling to the waitress for another glass of orange juice.

“So did I,” Nat said with a shrug. “Normally, I’d say he was probably still snoozing on top of whatever warm body he took home last night, but I’m not sure he’s doing that much these days.”

“Really?” Kaya asked skeptically. “You think he’s hanging up his hat?”

“His player hat?” Sarah supplied helpfully.

“More like his player fedora,” Nat cut in.

“How about we call a spade a spade and decide that if Raphael is wearing any sort of ‘player’s hat’ it’s definitely a beret,” Kaya said decisively. The women burst out laughing, picturing messy, cheesy, flirty Raphael bumming around town in a beret.

“Well, that got weird,” Nat said, wiping a tear from her eye. “And I’m not sure if he’s changing his ways or what. All I know is those boys have been spending a weird amount of time together. Way more than usual. And always at their mom’s. The last few times I’ve stopped by over there, they’ve all been there.”

“Me too,” Kaya agreed thoughtfully.

“They like to spend time together, that’s not weird… right?” Sarah asked. Being the only daughter of a megalomaniac father didn’t exactly teach her the ways of large, functional families.

“Well, I guess not,” Nat said thoughtfully. “But typically, the only time they’re all together is on the fu—oof!”

Sarah looked between the sisters, certain that Kaya had just kicked Nat in the shin. Sarah chose not to say anything about it. Apparently, everybody had secrets around here and Sarah wasn’t out here trying to shine a light on all of them. She wasn’t a detective. She just wanted one thing: a chance with Seth. Anything else wasn’t something she figured she needed to get to the bottom of.

“It just seems like they’re hanging out a lot more than usual, is all,” Kaya said, swiftly trying to cover up her sister’s apparent slip of the tongue.

“I wonder why?”

Kaya shrugged. “Maybe they’ve finally staged an intervention for Jackson’s grumpy ass.”

Nat choked on her water, laughing. “The intervention being for what? His foul mood?”

“His brooding looks,” Kaya shot back.

“He does have a hell of a tragic Shakespearian thing going on,” Sarah said thoughtfully, smiling at the waitress as she set down their breakfast plates and extra drinks.

“For no good reason,” Kaya muttered.

As the waitress cleared away, Sarah leaned in, trading half her hash browns for half of Nat’s pancakes, the way they’d previously decided on. “What do you mean for no good reason?” she asked Kaya.

“I mean the man is such a miserable mope for no good reason at all. He’s got a thriving vet practice, a family who loves him, friends who care about him,” she sniffed, “he’s not terrible to look at, plenty of women want to date him. But he grumps around town, always looking like he’s got a hot poker shoved up his ass—”

“Anyone I know?” said a deep voice from the left of their table.

As a person who’d had her worst professional and athletic miseries broadcast all over the entire world in slow-motion, high-def torture, Sarah was not someone who ever really wished she was recording a moment. She preferred to live in the present, letting her memory do the work.

But she really, really wished she’d had her phone out to record the face that Kaya made when she realized that the man speaking to them was Jackson, and he’d most likely just heard every single word she’d just said about him.

“Jackson!” Nat squeaked.

Kaya still looked like she’d accidentally swallowed an entire hardboiled egg and was doing her best to choke it down.

Sarah decided to throw her new friends a bone. “What brings you here on this lovely morning?” she asked him with a pleasant, innocent smile on her face.

He held up a paper bag in his hands. “Just picking up breakfast before I head into the clinic.”

“You’re working today?” Nat asked, with a little nervous smile.

He nodded.

“Everything all right with Raphael?” Nat asked after a beat, when it was clear that Jackson was in no hurry to fill in the lulls of the conversation. “He was supposed to meet us for breakfast.”

Jackson’s face clouded for a moment before he cleared it away back into the mostly neutral, slightly broody expression he so favored. “We had a long night, the three of us. He probably slept through his alarm.”             

As if he couldn’t help it, like he’d been fighting against a magnetic pull and was finally overcome by the gravity of it, his eyes slid slowly over to Kaya. But her head was bent as she pushed the food around her plate and she didn’t notice.

A small postulation formed in the back of Sarah’s head right at the same moment that Jackson shifted back on his feet. She was certain that he was going to leave. And she wondered if, maybe, it would be better for certain members of this breakfast table if he stayed for a little while instead. She figured she might as well kill two birds with one stone. Get some much-needed information from him and get him to hang out for a minute as well.

“Jackson, how should I get your brother to date me?” Sarah asked, point-blank, shoving a mouthful of pancakes into her mouth. “Seth, not Raph.”

Sarah could feel the surprise of the sisters emanating from across the table at her question, but if Jackson was surprised, he kept his face quite impassive. He just eyed Sarah for a moment with those dark eyes, that serious expression, and she got the impression she was undergoing a test of some kind. Finally, his dark gaze flicked to meet hers.

“I… wouldn’t be the right person to ask about that.”

She almost rolled her eyes. What was it with this family and all their evasive frickin’ answers to every single question? She took another bite of pancakes. “Why? Because you don’t date?”

A small smile quirked his lips at her audacity, but his eyes stayed carefully neutral. “I thought we were talking about Seth, not me.”

He was good, this one. “You have any time before you have to be at work?” she asked, nudging out the chair next to her with one foot.

Jackson looked down at the chair, then at the other women at the table, then at his watch.

Once again, Sarah could sense the complete surprise of the other two women when he set his food down on the table and sat down, unpacking his breakfast.

“Oh. Jackson!” said their waitress, as she came buzzing back over to the table at warp speed. “I didn’t realize you were staying. You want some coffee?”

“That’d be great, Chrissy. Just bl—”

“Just black. I know. Coming right up!”

It was a wonder Chrissy didn’t lose a contact lens with how fast she was blinking her eyelashes in Jackson’s direction. Sarah caught the tail end of Kaya’s epic eye roll as she surveyed the situation.

“Well, Jackson,” Nat said, leaning forward, friendly as ever. “This is such a treat! I can’t remember the last time we’ve spent time together without your buffers—I mean, brothers around.”

Nat, obviously mortified by her slip of the tongue, leaned over her plate and shoved some food in her mouth.

Jackson merely smirked again, as if he understood exactly what Nat had been trying so hard not to say.

Sarah tried to put the pieces together. She’d thought that the three Durant brothers were all friendly with the Chalk sisters. But as Sarah surmised from the table full of vibes zinging around, Jackson wasn’t quite as friendly as his younger two brothers. Sarah had never seen Natalie quite so nervous, and had definitely never seen Kaya so quiet.

“That’s probably because it’s never happened before,” Jackson said in a quiet voice, slicing neatly into what looked like an egg white omelette, no cheese, tomatoes and onions, with a side of wilted spinach.

Sarah grimaced at his food, leaning forward. “Ugh. No offense, but just looking at your breakfast is giving me Olympic training flashbacks.”             

He turned his head to her and for the first time, she read a spark of interest in his expression. “I forgot you’re an Olympian.”

He nodded politely when Chrissy dropped off his coffee, almost spilling it over the edge in her excitement at serving him.

“Former Olympian,” Sarah corrected Jackson.

“You ate that for breakfast while you were training?” Nat asked.

Sarah nodded. “That or something like it. Protein-heavy meals. Lean, no carbs.”

“But…” Kaya frowned. “You need to eat carbs when you’re burning so many calories.” Sarah knew that Kaya had just graduated undergrad with a degree in nutrition.             

Sarah cleared her throat, unsure what to say. She shouldn’t have brought this up. She had come a long way in the last seven weeks, but she was nowhere near being over the trauma her father had inflicted on her. And now she was about half a step away from having to either explain it or lie about it. She really didn’t want to do either.

“Um…” she cleared her throat.

“Seth mentioned you run a lot,” Jackson cut in.

It surprised Sarah, because it almost felt as if he’d sensed her discomfort and cut in to help her out. Not something she would have guessed he’d do before this very moment. But she had to admit, she didn’t have a good handle on who he was. Probably because he was so damn private.

“Yup. I do six to fourteen miles a few times a week. Depends on how I feel.”

“What?” Nat’s mouth dropped straight open. “I knew you were athletic, but jeez louise. That’s like… amazing.”

Sarah laughed. “I’m used to being active. I go nuts without it.”

“Me too, actually,” Jackson said. “If I don’t run at least every other day, I get what my mother refers to as ‘ants in my pants.’”

Natalie and Sarah laughed but Kaya just sort of stared at him, a frown on her face. “I didn’t know you were a runner.”

Something flickered across Jackson’s face as he absorbed her first words directly to him, but it shuttered down and he shrugged off her words, as if to say ‘why would you?’ “Yeah. Track in high school and college.”

He turned away from Kaya and back to Sarah. “You ever run the Mesa trail?”

“Yup. Kicks my ass every time. A lot of elevation on that trail.”

“Do you run it out and back?”

She nodded. “That’s usually my fourteen-mile loop.”

Jackson’s eyebrows raised, clearly impressed, then they furrowed down again. “Are you running it alone?”

She shrugged. “What other maniac wants to do that?”

“I will,” Jackson said, shocking the shit out of everyone at the table. “You shouldn’t be running it alone. Even if you have a phone, reception’s not always great. If you were to twist an ankle or something…” He shook his head, like he didn’t even want to consider that. Sarah found herself unexpectedly touched by his concern for her.

A little befuddled, she asked the first question that came into her mind. “Can you even run that far?”

His eyes widened in surprise and he chuckled, low in his throat. The sound was deep and quiet, but nonetheless, both the Chalk sisters jolted in their chairs when they heard him make it. It was like it had never even occurred to either of them that he could laugh.

“Yeah. I can.” Jackson picked up his mug of coffee and, in a practiced move, swallowed down the remaining balance. “All right, I really have to get going now.”

Sarah looked down and saw that he’d devoured his food, though with such polite grace that she’d barely noticed. “Early appointment?”

“Yup. I’m seeing a Saint Bernard with a bad case of arthritis.” He stood, waved goodbye to Chrissy across the restaurant and placed his hands on the back of the chair. “It was nice to see you ladies, but it’s time for me and the hot poker up my ass to get across town.”

Kaya’s cheeks went bright pink but her eyes flamed with what looked like a challenge. Nat and Sarah merely laughed, though, which softened the lines around Jackson’s mouth.

“Bye, Jackson.”

“Bye.” And then he was striding across the restaurant and was gone.

All at once, all three women just sort of relaxed, like they’d just unzipped themselves from some extremely constricting clothing.

“Holy CRAP,” Natalie stage-whispered across the table to Sarah. “You got Jackson Durant to sit down and eat breakfast with us.”

“You got him to laugh,” Kaya added, a complicated expression on her face.

“My first impression of him was that he was kind of a killjoy, but I actually kind of like the guy. He seems sweet,” Sarah said, swallowing the rest of her orange juice.

Kaya waited a beat, but she still spoke too fast to be strictly casual. “But it’s Seth that you’re into… right?”

Sarah hid her smile behind one more monstrous bite of hash browns before she pushed her plate away. Something told her that Kaya was waiting for her answer with bated breath.

“Yup. I have a crush on Seth.” A thought occurred to her and Sarah bit her lip. “Is… that weird for you guys? Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t be so blunt about this before. I’ve never really had female friends before. And I’ve definitely never had a crush on one of those female friends’ best buddies from forever ago. Oh, jeez, I didn’t even stop to think that maybe one of you had feelings for him, too. I don’t mean to step on anybody’s toes! Maybe I shou—”

“Sweetie,” Nat said, leaning across the table and gripping Sarah’s forearm, a very bright smile on her face. “You’re doing great. You haven’t stepped on anybody’s toes. And besides, you should always tell your friends the truth, even if it steps on somebody’s toes. And I can’t speak for my sister, but I do not have feelings for Seth Durant.”

Kaya’s face immediately pinched down into a little sourpuss. “Me either. Yikes. I mean, he’s hot. And so sweet. And generous. But I don’t think I could ever have the hots for someone who matches their socks to their underwear.”

“See?” Sarah said, laughing. “And here I am thinking that’s just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“He’s all yours, sister,” Kaya said with a wave of her hand.

“Who, Jackson Durant?” Chrissy, the waitress, asked as she came back to clear her plate. “Is he on the market again?”

Kaya scowled. “That’s not who we were talking about. And to my knowledge, Jackson was never off the market.”

Chrissy waved a hand in the air. “Oh, don’t be silly. You know he hasn’t been dating since he came back from California. Shame, too. He used to be an awful lot of fun.”

Squinting at her, Sarah could see that the girlish-looking Chrissy had a few lines around her eyes and mouth, and probably was closer to Jackson’s age than Kaya’s.

“Did you used to date him?” Nat asked curiously.

“Nothing serious. Just a few dates here and there in high school.” Chrissy sighed dramatically, her eyes blurring a bit. “But trust me. A girl doesn’t forget a thing like that.”

Chrissy floated away with their trays and Sarah quickly threw some cash on the table, figuring they needed to get the hell out of there before Kaya drop-kicked the waitress.

“Anyways, yes, I like Seth. And I’m almost positive that he likes me.”

“He does,” Natalie said with a decisive nod of her head. “He talks about you all the time. He doesn’t really do that with other girls.”

“That’s true,” Kaya said thoughtfully.

“Do you guys have any ideas on why he might be hanging back, though?” Sarah asked as they left the restaurant and started toward their cars.

“Hanging back, how?” Nat asked, making a wistful little sound at a sundress in a shop window that they passed.

“He says that he’s not relationship material. That he wants to be with me but he can’t. He says that in a world where he was inherently different we’d be together. What the hell does that mean?”

Kaya and Nat exchanged the kind of eye contact that told Sarah they knew exactly what it meant.

Eventually, Natalie spoke up. “The Durants are a… complicated bunch.”

“Oh my God,” Kaya said, and Sarah and Nat turned around to see her staring at some flyers tacked up on a telephone pole. They were brightly colored and stapled to nearly every inch.

Sarah backed up, noting that all the color had abruptly leached out of Kaya’s face. Kaya lunged forward and started ripping the flyers off the pole and shoving them immediately into the trash can next to it.

“Kaya!” Nat said, obviously surprised at her sister’s actions.

Sarah just bent down and picked up one of the flyers that had slipped from Kaya’s hand and drifted, like a leaf, to Sarah’s feet.

It was a flyer advertising a meeting that would take place in two nights. “Citizens Taking Action Against Rogue and Unregistered Shifters,” Sarah read, the blood draining from her face as she noted that the crest underneath the wording was two sawed-off shotguns crossed over one another. “That’s disgusting.”

She immediately followed Kaya’s lead and ripped off the highest ones that the other woman couldn’t reach. When the pole was bare and all three women were breathing rather hard, Sarah became aware of Nat’s eyes on her.

“You don’t support this kind of thing either, huh?” Nat said quietly.

Sarah’s brow furrowed. “Of course not. I’m one hundred percent against shifter discrimination. The idea that human beings should be registered and rounded up? Don’t people realize what happens to shifters in those camps? They’re imprisoned and tortured. Sterilized, even. No. I think vigilante groups like this are built on fear. I would never, ever support something like that.”

Nat and Kaya’s eyes were big by the time Sarah finished speaking.

“You speak like this is… personal to you,” Kaya said carefully. It was a bold question because the sisters didn’t know for sure that Sarah wasn’t a shifter. And Sarah didn’t know whether or not the sisters were shifters. And to share information like that could be deadly. But Sarah had an easy answer.

“One of my closest friends I made in the first Olympics I participated in was a shifter. He was outed during his medal ceremony.”

“Oh my gosh,” Nat said, her eyes filling with tears and one hand going over her mouth. “I remember that. It was so awful.”

Sarah nodded, taking a deep, calming breath. Her heart started to race and tears pricked at the backs of her eyes the way they always did whenever she thought of this.

“What was his name again?” Kaya asked.

“Simon Lau. He was a good friend and a good person. He died in a shifter camp a year and a half after the authorities dragged him off the podium.”

Sarah scowled down the street at the other flyered poles. “I’m gonna get to work on those ones, too.”

She stalked off down the block, feeling her friends’ eyes on her back the whole time.