Page 79 of Blade

He was watching me a bit too closely, though, and we were at the point where he was going to start worrying if I sneezed.

It was time for a distraction.

Pointing to the small statue and plaque, I tested out one option. “Are you really related to the guy they named the park after?”

“Yes.” Looking around, Blaine finally started to relax. “My family has been here since the beginning of the country. We came over from England and were given one of the original land grants in the Carolinas.”

“I never imagined those original settlers as being anything but plain human.” Had there been clues I just hadn’t paid attention to? “I need to go back and look at our history more.”

Blaine reached over and ran his hand over my head as we made our way to the back of the park where we’d have the most privacy. “Some of the groups were just human but a lot of the original settlers were more than human in one way or another. Shifters. Magic users.”

As he looked around, I wasn’t sure if he was seeing the present or the past. “There are a lot of different groups that made this home because of the space. Even back then it was getting hard to find places to run and shift in England.”

“It sounds like your family knows a lot about the history of nonhumans who came over.” It’d be interesting to learn more about it even if we had to do some research. “From what I’ve seen online, some groups focus on history more than others.”

Nodding slowly, he trailed his fingers around my ear as he processed. “My mother loved genealogy and family history. She married into it but threw herself into learning everything she could about that side.”

That was interesting. “Was she a panther too?”

I didn’t think he’d said but he hadn’t talked a lot about them yet.

“No, she was a witch but they met at college and her family’s coven was down in South Carolina. She used to go down a few times a month and never really connected to the coven here.” His petting slowed as I parked the truck, but he smiled as he talked about her. “She was kind of feisty and my father said that drove the other women here nuts.”

The feisty outsider got the catch of the county…I could see why there would be some issues.

“I just remember her being loud and happy and always running around doing things, but she passed away when I was young.” He tried to keep his smile in place, but I could almost feel other emotions right under the surface. “My father always talked about her as I was growing up and Ida made sure I heard all the stories about the trouble she’d gotten into.”

I reached out and ran my hand over his head that time. “I think she sounds like a wonderful woman and mother.”

Smile looking brighter, he nodded. “She was beautiful too.”

Oh…and it was dimming again.

“We’ll have to find where the pictures are stored then and you can show me.” I wasn’t sure if he was ready to talk about that yet, but it felt like we needed to inch toward the conversation. “I’m curious to know who you look more like.”

“My father.” Taking a deep breath, he leaned into my hand as he let it out slowly. “He always said I was more like my mother in personality, though.”

It sounded like I would’ve liked her.

Before I could decide how to take the conversation, he looked out at the woods. “Ready? I don’t have any memory of the lake here, so I’m curious.”

He was also ready for a change in topic, so I nodded and let the conversation shift. “Yes. It’s not big but it’s pretty and there’s a long deck out so you get good views of the area.”

I rambled about what I’d seen before and my favorite parts as we climbed out of the truck and started walking down the marked trails. Unfortunately, over the weird sandy soil that got everywhere and around the overgrown bushes that blocked the best views of the water. But the trails were easy to navigate so they didn’t require a lot of attention.

I wasn’t sure that was good for him, but I told him stories about getting startled by a bird the first time I was there and how I’d run into a couple when I’d been out on the dock before. “I think they were looking for someplace romantic to go. They just had that look to them. I was going to let them have the dock but they turned around before I could leave.”

Blaine reached out and ran his hand over my head without seeming to realize it. “You’re allowed to enjoy it too.”

“Well, yes, but it felt like they should have it.” I wasn’t sure why, though. I’d been enjoying it and there was more than enough room for someone else. “I might need you to point out if I do that more than I think.”

“You mean not doing something you want or giving away something because you think someone else should have it?” When I nodded, he smiled and I knew I’d missed something. “You kept trying to buy cake mix instead of the brownie one because I looked at the box too long.”

Oh.

“It would’ve been okay to get cake instead.” I’d just wanted to do something fun for us. “I wanted to make sure we’d get something we both enjoyed.”

Shaking his head, Blaine actually leaned over and kissed me as we rounded a curve in the trail and got closer to the dock. “You are still trying to justify making me happy instead of getting what you wanted. You wanted the brownies. I could tell how much you wanted them. I can smell it. Remember?”