Page 27 of Wolf Bane
“I’m not asking you to give me information,” I rushed to add.“I just… I rely on your feedback, you know?And I can’t ask you to get yourself in trouble?—”
“You kind of did the other day,” he muttered.“But sure.”
“Fuck.”I flopped back on the bed, still gripping his fingers.“I need to know right now, Ethan, if I keep digging into this, what are you going to do?”
He pulled his hand away, getting to his feet to start pacing.“What do you mean?Are you asking if I’ll, what, turn you in or something?If there’s some sort of werewolf jail for people who get nosy?What the fuck, Landry?”
“Whoa.That response isn’t proportional to what I’m asking,” I shot back, popping to my feet to block his progress back and forth across the room.“I just want to know if you’re going to try and keep me from doing it, or I don’t know, get mad at me or something!”Jabbing his chest, I added, “Not everything I ask is a jibe about your job, or some backhanded commentary on ICW, okay?”
He shook his head, the tiniest flicker of a smile tugging at one corner of his lips.“Not everything, huh?Just some things?”
“Ass.”But the word lacked heat.“I’m exhausted, okay?And you’re dragging ass too.Can we just… table this fight till the morning?”
He hesitated, then nodded, letting me tug him back towards our bed.“I promised Tyler I’d go to a clan meeting tomorrow morning.Well.This morning, I guess.Some bullshit about property rights between a divorced pair of weres.”He yawned.“Fucking hell.”
He toed off his socks and curled up behind me.“Big spoon,” he muttered when I tried to turn towards him.“Let me, huh?I’ve missed this.Missedyou.”
Tears stung the back of my closed eyelids, and I felt his breath hitch in his chest against my back.“I missed you too.”
* * *
When I woke up,the house smelled of coffee and toast and clean laundry.I knew Ethan was already gone for the day before finding his note, stuck to the top of the coffee pot.
Love you.Be home by 4.
Grinning like a teenager with a crush, I stuck the note to the fridge next to another one he’d written me over the summer, a silly line drawing of a cartoonish werewolf and a human wearing a lab coat with a heart around them both.Our fight (well, not really a fight, but our whatever that was) the night before had been uncomfortable and nowhere near done, but it felt so much lighter afterwards, waking up knowing Ethan was home for now and that we’d at least made a bit of headway in this barrier that’d sprung up between us.I grabbed a cup of coffee from the still-warm pot and popped some bread into the toaster.I was just contemplating eggs when my phone shrilled with Waltrip’s ringtone.
“You busy?”he said as soon as I hitaccept.
“Does no one ever say hello anymore?You’re the second person in a day who just started talking when I answered.”
“Hello, Landry.How lovely to hear the melodious sounds of your mellifluous voice once more.Now, my day can truly begin.”
“Fuck you.I take it you got my message?”My toast popped up, so I switched to speaker phone so I could grab a plate and the jar of peanut butter.
Waltrip grunted agreement.“Yeah.What the hell is going on?Can you not seriously go a week without seeing my handsome face or something?”
“Sounds more like a Mal problem,” I teased.Mal had been making cow-eyes at Waltrip for a while now, but Waltrip hadn’t noticed.
I think.
Ethan seemed to think Waltrip was playing it cool, but I argued there’s a difference betweenhard to getandnot interested.
Mal didn’t seem bothered, though.He kept cow-eyeing and Waltrip kept Waltripping.
“Anyway,” Waltrip grumbled.“I don’t know how much help I can be right now.I’m heading to Forth Worth for a client.”
Ooooh, maybe?
“Lobo Medical Research?”When he didn’t respond right away, I added, “I asked Tyler to look into something possibly related to Garrow, and I had a patient whisked off there yesterday.”I did a little happy hopeful dance as I slathered crunchy peanut butter on my toast.Maybe this week wouldn’t be such a slog?Not if Waltrip was already on it?
“Huh?No.Not everything in my line of work is about cloak and dagger mad scientist shit.Just your basic skip trace for a law firm.Tyler didn’t mention anything about a Lobo Medical Research when I spoke with him this morning.”
“He may not know what it’s called.He was following up on something through the ICW.”
Waltrip’s growl was low and a tiny bit scary.“Fucking ICW.Can’t get away from those assholes.”
“I talked to Tyler the other night about some of this and he was going to start doing some digging for me, but I was hoping?—”
