16. Ben
SIXTEEN
BEN
Look Who’s Coming to Dinner
Giselle was coming to dinner.
Giselle was coming to dinner!
After everything that had happened, I was certain I’d never hear from her again, despite her comment about a second date.
Her whole demeanor had confused me. She’d smelled like she was in crisis, and her heart had thudded so loudly that it made it hard to catch what she was saying.
And yet she’d sat on my kitchen floor with me, talking just as soothingly as she had in the car. If it weren’t for the fact that other people had interacted with her in front of me, I would have thought I’d hallucinated her because she was so perfect.
It wasn’t healthy to put people on pedestals, but I wasn’t doing that.
In fact, I had reasonable expectations for how a human should react to everything that had happened, but Giselle kept defying them at every turn.
There she’d been, a human woman alone with a wolf shifter twice her size, and she’d offered me comfort.
It made sense that she was extra cautious about placating me before she left.
Tons of women had to play it safe that way.
I had been so sure that was why she’d been so nice, that I’d sent her a text the next morning, thinking it would give her an opportunity to let me down gently while feeling a whole lot safer in her own territory.
Had I been surprised when she didn’t do that?
Of course, but I figured that maybe she was going the ghosting route, so I resolved to let her be the next one to text—if we ever texted again at all.
So, the last thing I was expecting was for her to call me on Monday, her tone serious.
For the umpteenth time, what I expected to happen did not happen. She told me the man who’d kidnapped her had shown up at her school.
“Here’s the basil you asked for, Daddy.”
I broke myself out of my contemplation to take the green leaves my son had collected from the window planter we had outside the kitchen, and although it was quite different from the sprawling garden my wife used to plant, it was a wonderful little reminder of her.
Besides, I couldn’t make the pesto without it.
While half of what I was using was store-bought, it always made a difference to have the fresh stuff.
“Thank you, Junior. I mean Benny. ” I winced slightly. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry. I know you’re trying.”
“I am, buddy. Thanks for recognizing that.”
Suddenly, his little arms wrapped around my hips. “You’re always trying, Daddy. And I always see that.”
Fuck.
Kids really said the darndest things, didn’t they? I put everything down and picked up my kid, nearly crushing him with a hug.
“Ah, Dad! Too tight, too tight!” He laughed in that special way that vanished once kids became preteens.
“Sorry,” I said, putting him down and patting his head. “Hey, what do?—”
“Haggies?”
That question came from the entrance of the kitchen, where Veronica was standing on shaky legs with Natalie by her side.
She had a few developmental delays, so she’d only started standing and walking a couple of months earlier, but her doctor said that wasn’t too concerning after the trauma that happened in her infancy.
I hadn’t realized it would affect her physically.
She was only nine months old when all of it went down, as opposed to Benny nearly being five, but the way the doctor had explained it, some part of her knew she’d had a loving mother and then suddenly didn’t.
She went from being breastfed by a shifter to having human formula in the six weeks it took me to find a wolf wet nurse for her.
Well, for Natalie to find a wet nurse. I was still ashamed to this day that I’d dropped the ball and hadn’t made sure Veronica’s every need was met before going off on my vengeance quest, and I would spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
Because although she hadn’t started out as my daughter, now, she was as much my child as Benny was.
“You want huggies?” I asked, opening my arms. Although I didn’t correct her implicitly—who the hell corrected a baby?—I repeated whatever she said back to her like she hadn’t said it with a toddler accent. It was what her speech therapist said to do, and it had worked wonders so far.
“Haggies!”
“Well, come get ’em, girliepop!” I said, racing towards my daughter with big, loping steps as her little, chunky legs hurried to me.
It was so nice to see her at a good weight.
I’d figured, since our kids were essentially human until puberty, that formula would be enough, but nope.
She’d been far too skinny by the time she was back on the nip again, and it had taken her nearly half a year to catch up.
If we had more science and labs on our side, I would love for someone to research all the differences between a shifter baby and a human baby, but considering how hard it was to find a shifter doctor, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that.
“Ew, Dad. Don’t say girliepop!”
“Why not?” I asked as I spun around slowly, bouncing Veronica up and down just the way she liked.
“Because you’re old. ”
“I’m thirty-one!”
“Yeah, like I said, old! It’s cringe.”
“I don’t acknowledge cringe,” Natalie said with a deadpan from the doorway. When I first met her, I thought she hated me for her sister’s death along with everything else, but I learned that was simply who she was.
And also that she was Russian.
“Cringe is just allowing how you experience joy to be controlled by others. It is weakness, and I do not allow that idea in my life.”
Benny probably only caught about half that sentiment. “Uh. Okay.”
“All right, all right, you little monsters,” I said, cobbing Veronica’s appropriately round cheek. What was it about baby cheeks and feet that needed to be smooched and tickled? “Clear out of the kitchen so I can finish up dinner. Remember, we have a guest coming.”
“Yeah! Missus Fischbacher! The coolest teacher in the world!”
“She is pretty cool,” I said, feeling a complicated wave of emotions wash over me.
Life was so often like that, wasn’t it? It started off so simple, but with every year, more layers of complexity were added to it until it was nearly unrecognizable from what it had been in my youth.
“So, Daddy wants to focus and make dinner extra special for her. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, Natalie ‘n’ me are gonna take Victoria and go play frisbee outside, so we’ll be out of your hair.”
I smiled at the idiom he must have heard from Natalie, but unlike with Veronica, I corrected his grammar a little more directly. “It’s Natalie and I.”
“No, you’re the one who’s staying inside to cook dinner! I’m the one who’s gonna be outside!”
“Cheeky brat,” I said with a grin as I put Veronica down. Squealing, she tottered over to Natalie. “Have fun.”
“Will do!”
“I will make sure that they are sufficiently exerted,” Natalie said with a firm nod. I still had a hard time telling when she was being completely serious, and when she was playing up her stern nature. I think she liked it that way.
“Thank you, Natalie. For everything you do.”
“Yes, you would be lost without me.”
“I definitely would.”
With that, I was left to cook and be with my thoughts. Which, naturally, went right back to Giselle.
When I found out that our attacker was at her school, I almost threw down my phone and shifted right there, intent on getting there as quickly as possible. But I was grateful that I hadn’t, because Giselle explained that she was safe, he apologized, and we didn’t have to worry about him anymore.
I was a bit dubious, and I wanted way more information, but she wasn’t comfortable discussing it over the phone. Before I could even open my mouth to reply to that, she asked if it would be all right to come over on Friday so we could discuss it at length after the children were put to bed.
I had no idea what came over me, or if I was just straight-up delusional, but I asked if she wanted to eat dinner with us as a family, then the kids could go spend the night at Natalie’s so she could tell me everything she learned about not-Charles.
So, that was how I ended up making fresh pesto for the handmade pasta and rosemary-garlic grilled chicken.
I wasn’t the most accomplished cook, but when I was young, I’d wanted to learn to make a few basic dishes so I could be self-reliant.
Then, when Millia was pregnant, she didn’t crave strange combinations like some women did, she craved home-cooked food, but good home-cooked food.
So, I had a regular rotation of dishes I could cook well—chicken parmesan; venison stew; shepherd’s pie; glazed salmon; Cornish hen stuffed with pineapple rice; seared garlic asparagus; bang-bang broccoli; whole roasted cauliflower steaks and other veggie recipes; and a dozen different ways to use nature’s shapeshifter: the potato.
Last but not least, pasta. That was a list unto itself, but half of them were just cutting or twisting the dough her Nonna had taught me to make into different shapes.
Sometimes, cooking made me feel closer to her.
Not quite like she was alive and laid out on the couch, her belly so huge she couldn’t even look over it, but there was a part of her with me when I cooked.
Perhaps that was why I’d offered. It was the only way for my wife to meet the woman I might be crushing on.
Holy shit, did I just think that?
Apparently, I had, and I had no idea how I felt about it. Or if it was even true.
I had agreed to go on a date with Giselle, that was an unmitigated fact.
I was attracted to her, not only because she had an ethereal sort of beauty to her, but also because of her kindness and her strength of character.
Now, after every insane thing that had happened, I was more drawn to her than ever before, more aware than ever how far out of my league she was, but did that mean I had a crush?
I didn’t know.