Chapter 6
DEAN
Come out tonight.
We’re going for pizza.
Mezzanotte, dude.
Okay, by the third text from Lucas, I was already imagining melty golden cheese, pepperoni crispy on the outsides, scooped after baking in the brick oven so the grease pooled succulently in the middle.
Mezzanotte had the best sausage I’d ever tasted in my life.
That’s what you got when you went to a werewolf restaurant—perfect, fresh, delicious food every time.
But I was willing to ignore my growling stomach, right up until we got the group text from Craig. Riley’s phone buzzed too, and they frowned down at it.
He was cancelling. He had family stuff. Again.
Riley looked at me with a wry smile. “We can still practice?” they suggested.
But there was cheese. And maybe I was hoping Landon would be there, which was . . . not the smartest thing I’d ever done. He didn’t seem interested, and I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but I still couldn’t shake the way I’d felt staring into his eyes and—
There was something there.
Or maybe there wasn’t, and I was building it all up in my head because he was a place to put my desire that was every bit as untouchable as I’d left it for the past three years.
Fuck, maybe that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about him—if he wasn’t interested in me, he wasn’t a real possibility, so my fantasy was safe.
I could think about him without feeling guilty for actually doing anything.
I sucked in my cheeks and looked at Riley with narrowed eyes. Sure, we could practice. It wouldn’t hurt.
But cheese.
“How do you feel about pizza?”
With Riley at my side, I wasn’t just crashing another of Luke’s work gatherings. That didn’t make me feel any less awkward as we approached—like I was a lion kicked out of his pride, begging for scraps.
When had it gotten like this? After Henry died, I’d just kind of drifted. Old friends fell off, and I didn’t make new ones like I once had. Lucas hadn’t left for a second though. Did his coworkers think it was weird that I tagged along so much?
It was a little pathetic, me sulking around a bunch of friendly weres who had an actual reason to hang out. These were Lucas’s friends, not mine.
But there was still cheese. Who could blame me for wanting cheese?
Julia saw us first, but when her attention landed on me, Lucas twisted around and hopped out of his seat. “Come on, come on,” he waved us over, practically shoving me into the curved bench seat first right next to Landon, leaving Riley to budge in beside me.
It was a tight fit already, and there I was, my leg pressed against Landon’s beneath the table. Lucas had to sit me beside the new guy, didn’t he?
“I’m going to go get another pitcher of beer. You two sit. Special requests?” Lucas pointed around the table at everybody, but everyone shook their heads.
“Everyone, this is Riley,” I said, nodding to them. “Riley, this is Julia, Tate, Brandon, Rachel, Kelly, Oscar, and Landon.”
Oh shit. I knew all their names.
When had I learned all their names?
While I was contemplating where the fuck I belonged and how I could go around the whole table without missing a beat, Riley waved and bumped fists and greeted everyone.
Finally, they leaned around me and stuck their hand out to Landon.
They smiled brightly as they shook his. “Hiya. Thanks for letting me crash. Dean promised cheese, so—”
They flipped over their utensils, setting the butt ends on the table, ready to dig in. A couple people laughed, and they fell into easy conversation. Oscar and Julia asked Riley questions—polite stuff—what they did, how we knew each other, that kind of thing.
Riley talked about the band excitedly, and it struck me, watching them lean in across the table, that it’d been a long freaking time since I’d felt that enthusiastic about anything.
Then, beside me, Landon shifted.
I leaned back on the bench, adjusting. “Do you need more space? We’re packed in kind of tight. I can get a chair—”
I hadn’t even turned to look where I might find a chair before Landon was shaking his head. Even though he was shoved back in the corner, his knee pressed against my outer thigh. More, even as his cheeks went red and he pressed his knee in harder.
“No,” he said quietly. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. You don’t need to.”
I frowned at him, but he was staring at his empty plate—one of those thick white restaurant numbers just begging for a huge slice of pie.
“Okay. Sorry.”
His gaze shot up and he blinked at me with wide amber eyes. “Why sorry?”
I wanted to laugh, but the feeling came up on me all bubbly and erratic, so I swallowed it down.
“Honestly? Don’t know,” I admitted. There were a lot of things I was sorry for, but not a damn one of them had anything to do with Landon. “I don’t want to trap you.”
He looked me over, and the tiniest smile appeared on his face. “It’s not like you’re manspreading or anything. You’re fine.”
He wiggled his foot under the table, and I wondered if he meant to knock it against mine.
“Okay,” I said, “but I could get a chair.”
His smile widened, and my heart did a flip in my chest. “Duly noted.”
I nudged his foot too.
Luke came back, not just with a pitcher of beer, but with a whole huge pizza balanced in his other hand.
He’d waited tables in college, and a panther’s reflexes made that way easier than it was for most people.
He lowered the enormous round tray with a flourish, setting it onto the stand that held the whole pie above the table itself, so everyone could reach for a slice without sacrificing table space.
“Bon appétit.” Lucas bowed, grabbed a chair from against the wall, and sat on Riley’s other side.
For a few seconds, everyone was quiet. Then, beside me, I heard a soft, “Holy shit.”
I grinned wide at Landon as he licked a string of cheese off his bottom lip.
“Good, right? This place is my favorite.”
I picked an extra big piece, and not even that first perfectly greasy, sharp, cheesy bite was enough to distract me from Landon’s little, “I know.”