Page 38 of Spatially UnawareWolf

“You don’t have to do the agility course tonight. We’ll leave it until tomorrow.”

His brow creased. “So I still have to work out, and if I do well, my reward is… not doing a different kind of workout?”

“Pretty much,” I said, grinning. “The whole point of me moving in was to get you moving, remember?”

At least one of us needed to remember that.

Luke regarded me steadily, then gave a sigh and said, “Come on then. Let’s get it done.”

He headed for the door.

“Luke?”

He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”

I nodded at his bare feet. “Forget something?”

He wiggled his toes. “Nope. I’m seeing if extra external sensory input will help keep my feet in the here and now.”

I blinked and wondered why I hadn’t thought of that. “That’s kind of genius.”

“It’s nothing.” Luke ducked his head, but not before I saw a pleased smile flit across his face.

On impulse I said, “Grab your shoes.”

“Why?”

“Because if you make it to the bottom, I’m taking you for ice cream, and I assume you don’t want to come all the way back up for shoes.”

Luke’s face lit up like a five-year-old who’d been promised, well. Ice cream.

I followed him into the bedroom to put my own sneakers on and grab a jacket, and then we stepped out onto the landing. As we approached the top step, Luke said, “Talk to me?”

“About what?”

“Anything. Something that will distract me from what I’m doing.”

That made sense. Luke’s steps had slowed, so I latched onto the first thing I could think of. “Did you know there are selkies in town?”

Luke gave me an incredulous look. “You didn’t know?”

“No? I didn’t even know they were real. But I said something to Dylan—that’s my housemate—about how it was getting late in the year for that bunch of guys who always swim in the mornings at that little bay at the end of the cove, and he was all, ‘Oh, the selkies?’ Up until then I just thought it was one of those niche swim clubs.”

“A niche swim club,” Luke repeated flatly.

“You know. A bunch of guys chasing thrills swimming in the ocean, and they’d have a dumb name like Maine Men Marinate or something. How was I supposed to know they turned into a pod of fricking seals?”

Luke shook his head. “You live in Hyde, and it never occurred to you that the colony of seals that live here all year round might be anything except a colony of seals?”

“I honestly didn’t think that hard about it,” I said, and then I elbowed him in the side. “Now put your shoes on. We’re going for ice cream.”

Luke’s eyes snapped down, and he let out a shaky breath. “We’re in the foyer.”

“Yep.” I grinned at him.

“Did you just coax me down the stairs with some bullshit story about not knowing there were selkies in the bay?” he demanded, his eyes bright.

“It’s not bullshit! I had no clue they were a real thing. And besides,” I said, pride swelling in my chest—whether for me, for Luke, or for both of us, I wasn’t sure—“you’re the one who made it all the way down. I just kept you company.”