Page 39 of Fate, Interrupted

“Anti-wolf?” she asks.

“That was the impression,” I say. “They walked in off the street and started with words and then it stopped being words.”

“And he was there.”

“It’s his business. His people.”

Penny processes this. “And there was a fight.”

“Yes.”

“And you saw it.”

“Yes.”

She gapes at me. “And you’re not afraid?”

I’ve been sitting with this since yesterday afternoon, since I stood across the street with Jesse’s hand on my arm and watched Silas Coulter put three men on the ground with a speed and a precision and a brand of controlled violence that wasn’t anything like watching people fight on television or reading about it in a book. It was real, and it was fast, and it was—and this is the part I keep returning to—it was him.

The fight isn’t what stayed with me.

I was turned on. There is no respectable way to dress that up for Penny, so I’m not going to try. Watching Silas control three men who came looking for a fight sent a hard, unmistakable rush of desire through me. I wanted my hands on him.

A small thrill travels from my stomach south, thinking of that day. I’ve never really been attracted to ‘bad boys’, finding I have more in common with men who are more cerebral. Apparently, controlled violence is an exception to my long-standing preference for cerebral men. Silas is a different creature. Literally.

That’s the thing that keeps coming back.

The fight should have been what stayed with me. The wolf pressed forward in him, brightening his eyes with something that wasn’t human and lending him a strength that seemed wildly out of proportion to the moment. It had been startling to witness, especially with Jesse standing beside me, too petrified to utter a peep. But my mind kept circling back to something else.

The moment he looked at me.

One heartbeat, and his eyes finding mine through the noise and the aftermath and the three men on the pavement. In that beat, in that held second, what I saw in his face wasn’t aggression. And it wasn’t pride.

He looked like a man who already knew what I would do next. Walk away.

That bothers me far more than the fight did.

It was the resignation of a man who has watched this moment happen too many times to expect anything different from it. A human who sees what’s underneath and walks away, because walking away is easier than staying and asking questions, and enough people have walked away that he’s stopped being surprised by it.

The idea that he thinks I’m going to be one of them lodges behind my breastbone, uncomfortable and hard to ignore.

“No,” I say. “I’m not afraid.”

Penny studies me. “Because you know him.”

“Because it was him,” I say. “If it had been a stranger, I might have been afraid. If I’d come around that corner and seen what I saw without knowing who it was...” I stop. “Maybe. Probably. The honest answer is I don’t know. But he isn’t a stranger. He’s someone I know. Someone I’ve been talking to and having tea with, and winning trivia with. The fight was frightening, and the wolf was real, but none of it made me want to walk away.”

Penny is thoughtful for a moment.

Outside the window, a pigeon flutters on the window ledge, sending a burst of small gray feathers into the air. My coffee has gone fully cold, but I barely notice.

“He thinks I’m going to disappear,” I say.

“What makes you say that?”

“How he looked at me,” I say. “Before he left. He drove away because he expected me to walk away. Because enough people have walked away that it’s become the default.”

Penny pinches the tablecloth between her thumb and finger, her eyes following the ruching pattern she’s creating.