Page 108 of A Shade of Myself
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I didn’t overestimatehow scary I was, nor was I a total fool. Since Laurent had offered, I invited him to come with me to find Poe and be my backup. I hoped that having a mission he disapproved of would fill our drive time with sniping and make this first “you don’t want to date me” encounter less awkward.
Was him staring impassively at my in-person request before napping for the entire drive less awkward? Hard to say.
I headed into Stanley Park, concentrating on accessing the hidden version under the stone bridge. Once we came through into the Park, I pulled over and shook Laurent awake. “How do you propose to find Poe? This place is massive and if you try to sniff out every raven, we could be here for hours.”
He unbuckled his seat belt and rolled down his window. A breeze rolled off Burrard Inlet to whisper through the towering firs. “Bird shifters tend to congregate so there will be a much stronger scent concentrated in one place.” He grabbed the hem of his shirt, then paused and opened the door. “I’ll shift in the forest and come back.”
Awkward status fully engaged.
“I told you that the dating thing was part of the act,” I said testily. “So, unless you’re having second thoughts about us sleeping together—”
“No.”
“Then what’s with the sudden modesty?”
Shutting the door partway, he rubbed his thumb over a knuckle. “I haven’t gotten close to anyone like I have with you in a long time,” he said, slowly feeling his way through the sentence.
I tensed, braced for the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech.
“Our friendship is easy,” Laurent said. I snorted and he gave me a wry smile. “Okay, not easy, but you know what I mean. It’s easy to talk to you.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that dating didn’t mean we’d talk less, but I kept quiet because a tiny frown furrowed between his brows. He was struggling to find his words, and whatever he wanted to say wasn’t some glib brush-off speech.
When he looked at me again, there was an almost pointed earnestness to his gaze. “I want to make sure you’re not mad and we’re okay, because I haven’t had anything like this”—he pointed between us—“in a long time.”
That’s when a couple things hit me. This wasn’t the first time in our friendship that he’d mentioned us being okay; it wasn’t even the first time since he’d returned from Paris. Also, Laurent was hardly Mr. Chatty, so why this fixation with talking to me?
This wasn’t some friendzone move; it was about his parents. About years of them not speaking about the past and a father with whom Laurent didn’t even want to converse.
Maybe this was as close as he could get to acknowledging that what we had was special without choking up. What would change other than a label if we did start dating? Neither of us was sleeping with anyone else, and we could address that bridge if we came to it.
I had my family, good friends, and my magic, in addition to whatever this was with Laurent. All of which made me happy.
“We’re okay,” I said, infusing every ounce of sincerity into my voice, because it was true. For now. Then I leered at him. “Take off your shirt.”
That earned me a very thorough kiss and a striptease reveal of his delectable chest, before he kicked off his shoes and jogged into the forest to shift.
Playtime was over. I had to get my head in the game to face Poe. Jake’s drawings were in my purse, but I wasn’t handing over even a scrap of information about myself. Not one single fact.
The white wolf returned in no time, hopping deftly into the back seat. I shut the door for him then drove slowly along the dirt lanes that followed old bison hunting trails taken by the Indigenous people centuries before.
Laurent’s furry head lolled out the window, but about two-thirds of the way around the Park, he barked softly.
I parked at the side of the road and followed him into the forest.
He stalked silently through the trees, moving slowly so I could keep up over the uneven ground. I wasn’t scared of being attacked, thanks to the wolf and my cloaking, but if we got separated, I’d never find my way out.
I brushed a hand across a pine tree, my fingers hitting sticky needles. Buzzing mosquitos and the distant sound of lapping water provided a soothing melody for our journey.
A bird called out with a deep, throaty kraa.
I looked up at the raven on a branch, watching our progress. “Is Poe around?”
The bird scratched its body with its beak, unresponsive.
Laurent had paused to see what the raven did, but now resumed his trek.
