Page 43 of Shifters in the Night

“I’m not usually that loud,” she sighed.

Jon kissed her. “I choose to see that as a compliment.”

“You should, as should your non-existent neighbors. I live in a building where sound carries.”

Jon winced internally, remembering that his neighbor situation had recently changed and Eva’s trailer was on the property. Well, he would just have to work that out in the morning because now didn’t seem to be the time to bring up another woman, especially another woman who Lia very recently thought was a threat. He still didn’t understand that one, but considering his own reaction to Lancaster, he would just shut up about it.

“Don’t you miss the big city, though?” he asked, stroking his hand down her smooth back.

“Well, to be honest, St. Louis is a smaller town than people think, with a lot of green space in it.”’

“So you get a lot of chance to run then?”

She propped herself up on her elbows and rolled to rest her chin on his chest. “Not really. I’m hardly ever there. We tend to go from project to project. I don’t think I’ve been in my apartment for longer than a week or so in the last year. I thought I would miss the city, or any city, really. But I don’t. I like the quiet here. I like being able to see the stars. Sometimes, the choices in the city can be overwhelming.”

“Yeah, but Will and Sonja talk about the restaurants and the museums and the opera,” Jon said.

“If that’s your sort of thing, I could see missing it, but I’ve had years of that. Except the opera. My ears are so sensitive,” she said, shuddering.

“You know, I should have thought of that.”

“Oh, you’re a lot more perceptive than you let on, you know. I don’t think anybody has ever picked up on my emotions the way you do,” Lia said.

“It’s because you wear them on your face like a sign.”

She snickered, rolling over and suddenly freezing. “Oh, no.”

He sat up, searching the room for the threat. She pointed across the room to a framed black-and-white picture of his family, most likely at a fish fry at Bayard’s place, sitting on his dresser. “Did we just do that in front of a picture of your grandparents?”

He chewed his lip, suddenly feeling very guilty at the sight of his grandmother smiling beatifically from the photo. He sat up, leaning against the headboard. “It would appear we did.”

She pushed herself into a sitting position next to him, slapping a pillow over her face. “Suddenly, I feel like I should apologize to them for making a bad first impression or something.”

He snorted, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling the pillow from her face. “They would have loved you.”

“So, they raised you and Will?”

He nodded. “My parents were a nightmare. They loved each other like mad, but it just sort of made them unstable. They couldn’t get through the day without some big blow-up, one accusing the other of not loving them enough, one accusing the other of wanting to leave. They were just awful together, but at the same time, they couldn’t stand being apart. I don’t think either one of them wanted to stay but they for damn sure didn’t want the other to leave and find someone else. They were always stealing each other’s bracelets to make sure the other had to stay.”

“What sort of bracelets?” Lia asked.

“Oh, this,” he said, holding up his wrist to show her the polished stones. “These are stones from home waters, polished by the waves. Every selkie wears stones from their home waters to make the shift complete and comfortable. It’s my pelt.”

She grinned, showing the same innocent wonder that she had in Bayard’s house. “Like in the legends?”

He nodded, shivering slightly as she ran her fingertips over the beads. “So, my parents stealing each other’s pelts was pretty damn awful.”

She shuddered. “The idea of not being able to shift at will is bad enough, but not being able to trust your partner with such a thing?”

He surprised even himself by letting her to continue to toy with the bracelet. “Eventually, they found their own bracelets and ran off. To be honest, the quiet was almost a relief. Our grandparents moved us in here and I think it was months before Will and I relaxed enough to sleep at night. We kept waiting for our parents to come back – which never really happened – or for our grandparents to start fighting like Mom and Dad. My grandparents were smart enough to give us the time we needed and then got us working on the boats, going to school, doing healthy kid things, becoming the people we needed to be. They saved us.”

“They look really happy with you.”

He kissed her, letting his nose bump against her chin. “They were. They passed within a few weeks of each other, a long while after that was taken. Our parents contact us every once in a while and make noises about maybe coming back for a visit, but they never do. I think they’re each afraid the other will show up.”

He cleared his throat, feeling oddly raw, to have let all that pain out, pain that he didn’t even know he was holding onto. Hell, he barely talked to Will about their parents. But he felt better for it and he decided to trust that. “Enough about me. What about you? What’s your family like?”

“Really?”

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