I didn’t say any of that to Elliot, though. Because that’s not the sort of thing you say to a casual lover or even a passing friend.
It wasn’t something I’d said to literally anyone. Noah knew—I didn’t have to tell him. But I hadn’t talked about my childhood—our childhood—with anyone else. Friend or boyfriend. And I wasn’t going to put it on Elliot now.
“But you’re more discerning?” His tone was playful, light.
I offered him a smile. “When I can be.”
Elliot is nobody’s fool. Those sharp hazel eyes searched my face, bringing a flush of heat to my neck. I wasn’t going to tell him the whole story, but I wasn’t going to lie to him, either. Lies aren’t a good foundation for any sort of relationship, whether romantic or friendship.
He opted to not push it, even though I could see the curiosity there. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was respecting my boundaries or because he understood that those boundaries should only be crossed if we became more than we were.
Instead, he started telling me about Shawano. The restaurants and shops and the things that happened in small town Wisconsin. He told me about the way the reservation crossed—and didn’t—with the town, and the casino and the events it hosted—concerts, magic shows, touring performers. He also told me what you needed to go to Green Bay for, and all the things that were worth driving to Milwaukee or Madison for, even though you’d spend most of the day in the car… or have to stay overnight.
By the end of dinner I felt full and I had a better sense of where I’d just dropped my life to move to. I was also starting to worry that I’d made a terrible choice.
2
Seth Mays
Where are you?
ELLIOT CRANE
Basement.
Looks like a closet door next to the pantry.
I foundthe door in question and went downstairs, finding Elliot at a massive worktable. I was surprised by the brightness of the workshop—basements aren’t usually places where one feels warm and cozy, but Elliot had installed warm, downward facing lights that illuminated the huge central table, and two of the walls had been hung with woven mats and blankets—the wall opposite the doorway held long wooden shelves filled with all sorts of things—hardware, adhesives, larger tools—while the wall beside the door had a pegboard hung with smaller tools.
He was playing music—at the moment, something that sounded almost, but not quite, country. It wasn’t anything I was familiar with, but I liked it.
I paused at the bottom of the stairs, and he looked up at me. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
He was working at sanding something, the muscles of his biceps bunching as he leaned his weight into the handle holding the sandpaper. I caught myself watching for longer than was polite.
“I didn’t know people still hand-sanded things,” I remarked. Not that I spent a lot of time paying attention to what people were doing in the world of carpentry, but I might have started looking up videos of carpentry online as a way to try to understand Elliot a little better. Most of the videos I’d seen had people using power sanders.
Elliot made a funny grunting sound that I thought might be a scoff. “Peoplemight not,” he told me. “But master carpenters do.” He went back to his sanding, the pattern of his tattoo bulging with the muscles of his upper arms.
I stared again.
“Did you want something?” he asked. “Or did you just miss me?”
I gaped at him, not certain how to respond to the innuendo. If it even was an innuendo. I wasn’t sure.
I saw the moment he decided to stop teasing me. His lopsided smile softened, and he put down the sander. “What do you need, baby shifter?” he asked gently.
I swallowed. Therehadbeen a point to me looking for him, after all. “Oh. Um. I was going to ask if it was okay if I made a ’mater pie.” I shrugged. “I thought it’d be good for lunch.”
“A what?” Elliot asked. “And yeah, you can make anything you want. Did you need help finding stuff in the kitchen?”
“I—no. Not unless you don’t want me looking through the cupboards. But I can do that so you don’t have to stop working. I need to get tomatoes, anyway.”
Elliot’s eyebrows went up. “You haven’t looked in the back yard, have you?”
“No?”
