He huffed out a breath. “Tomorrow.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“You leave.”
I turned back to him. His face was illuminated by the fire. It was strange seeing him as he was now after all this time. It was like being familiar with a stranger. Wolves never looked like their human parts when they shifted, and vice versa, but there was something about his face, the set of his jaw, the way his eyes flashed. I would have recognized him anywhere. “Only if you’re going with me.”
He pulled his lips back over his teeth. For a moment I thought he was smiling, or at least trying to. But it twisted down like he was in pain. “Not going. You go. I stay.”
“The quicker you get that idea out of your head, the better off we’ll be. If you think I’m just going to go after all this time, you’ve—”
“You found me.”
I blinked. “I did.”
He didn’t look at me. “How?”
“Oh, so you get to ask questions, but I can’t?”
“Yes. No more questions. I get many questions.”
“Why?”
“That’s a question.”
The skin under my right eye twitched. Of all the aggravating motherfuckers for me to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with, I had to choose this one. I made terrible choices. “Maybe I don’t have to tell you anything since you won’t extend me the same courtesy.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
He stood and began to pace, shoulders stiff, hands flexing and unflexing. His feet scraped against the dirt floor.
I grabbed the shorts from where I’d set them on top of my bag and tossed them at him. He glared at me as he snatched them out of the air.
“Put those on.”
“Why?”
“So I don’t have to see your junk flopping around. Just do it. Please.”
He looked down at them, then down at himself. The light from the fire rolled over his bare skin. He’d lost weight since I’d seen him last, and though he wasn’t quite skin and bones, he was too skinny for his own good. Wolves needed to eat. We burned hot, our metabolism going into overdrive to compensate for our shifts. If we were too weak, we wouldn’t be able to turn wolf, or back to human.
“You don’t like. When I’m naked.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you.”
“No conversation.” He tossed the shorts back at me. I knocked them away, and they landed on the floor. “I stay like this. You don’t like it. Leave.” He jerked his head toward the door.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at him. “You really think that’ll work?”
He walked toward me, hips rolling. I swallowed thickly, feeling like prey in this small room. He stopped right in front of me, and if I turned my head just right, I’d be face-to-face with his—
He said, “You’re sweating.”
“At least your observational skills are still intact. Which is more than I could say for—”
He took another step forward. I spread my legs to keep him from bumping into them, and he moved between them. I could hear him breathing, could see the muscles in his stomach tightening, the sharp jut of the bones in his hips covered in shadows. “Found me.”