Chapter 25
Tuesday gave him a good twenty seconds, and when he didn’t say anything, she grabbed his hand and tugged him alongside her.
Thankfully, he walked with her.
“It’ll be fun. I promise.” She blew out a breath. “But if for some reason you don’t like it, we can do the Aquarium.”
Knife had to sign a release form, and then be fitted for shoes and a harness, but she knew who to ask for, so the process was painless.
While April, Tuesday’s cousin, helped him with his harness, Tuesday donned her shoes and harness, and collected his shoes before taking everything they wouldn’t need to a locker.
Her padlock was in her backpack, along with two stainless tumblers already filled with ice water.
She kept the water and put everything else into the locker.
April was finishing with him when Tuesday returned, and she handed him his water, then demonstrated how to clip her bottle to her harness before checking every buckle one last time.
He did the same, and April told her, “Technically, I’m supposed to handle a quick orientation.”
They’d talked about this before, but Tuesday repeated what she’d already told her cousin. “I’ll make sure he knows everything he’s supposed to. You can keep an eye on us for five minutes to make sure. That’s how long you’d spend with instructions, right?”
She nodded, and Tuesday walked him away from the kiddie beginner walls and showed him someone halfway up.
“He’s on an auto belay. Lets you climb and move around. Doesn’t hold you up or help you, but won’t let you freefall — it’ll take you down slow enough for a controlled landing.”
“Not tonight,” he told her, his gaze on her groin, his voice low and growly, “but another time, you’re going to hang from my pulleys in that harness and nothing else.”
Her face flamed red because she knew her cousin had heard from twenty yards away, but Tuesday pretended he hadn’t said anything and continued with her orientation, explaining the hold colors and what they meant — how one course could give different difficulty levels.
Finally, she talked him through how to hook up, and made him clip in and then clip out a few times before she clipped in beside him.
“I wanted to do this outside,” he said.
She smiled. “We’ll get there. Focus. Remember, colors are important. Stick to medium difficulty for now. I know you’re strong, but walls teach you things bodies don’t already know.”
His first attempt was textbook beginner — all upper body, his arms doing work his legs should’ve been doing, but he muscled his way to the top despite using terrible technique.
He came back down, watched others climbing a few moments, and went up again.
She went up beside him this time, noting he had his legs under him better, and he was reading the wall two moves ahead. He made it to the top and looked over at her with a smile.
“Better,” she said, and she made the trip down.
“It’s more of a challenge than it looks,” he told her back at the bottom. “It’s strategy and strength. You’re right, this is fun. Thanks for bringing me.”
Tuesday smiled, happy he got it. “Oh, we’re just getting started. Here’s the next lesson.”
She went up the same route fast. Not showing off, just demonstrating how it looked when you knew the route and used your legs properly, letting them support and lift you the majority of the time.
When she landed, he said, “Right. Thanks for that. It helped.”
They worked the medium routes until he’d internalized the basics — weight over feet, hips close to the wall, read ahead, trust the holds that look sketchy because they’d been tested and graded, and a hundred people had stood on them before.
He was a fast learner, which she’d expected, and he was coachable, which she appreciated more than she knew how to say.
Doms are control-freaks. They just are. He’d been uncomfortable as fuck riding in her car even before she went over the speed limit simply because she controlled the car and he did not.
And yet, he was completely out of his element here, learning everything from her and what he could observe in others, and he was entirely open to it. No ego, no trying to pretend he knew something he didn’t.
During lunch, she’d explained a lot of Korean food things, but he also taught her a few meat things she hadn’t known. It wasn’t an even back-and-forth, but still, they taught each other things.
But here? He was literally the virgin, and she was the one with experience, but he was fine with it. Was enjoying the learning process, the challenge of it. He didn’t let his ego make decisions his body wasn’t ready for, and she was impressed.
Eventually, she took him to the harder routes, but only when he was ready.
The scale of the outdoor walls changed the problem entirely, but she knew both of their wolves appreciated being under the sky instead of inside the building.
Tuesday had done this long before she changed for the first time, so she was already experienced before her wolf came onto the scene. She hadn’t been able to climb for nearly a year after her first change because her wolf freaked the fuck out at being so high.
Wolves like to have all four feet on the ground.
She wondered how his wolf was dealing with it, but this wasn’t the place to ask.
They found two open routes beside each other outside, and she clipped in next to him and went up slowly, beside him.
He hit a crux section close to the top, but she stayed silent, counting to twenty in her head before she offered help — and he figured it out on his own.
She felt proud of him for it, and Tuesday decided she’d need to think about that later.
Once he’d… if not mastered, at least made it to the top of the hardest and tallest outdoor route, she told him, “There’s more.”
He furrowed his brows, and she said, “Back inside. No ropes. More challenging.”
He lifted his brows, and she led him to the bouldering area.
She let him look around and figure out why this would be more challenging when it wasn’t anywhere near as tall.
Here, the floor was padded with crash mats, and climbing got technical in ways height alone couldn’t accomplish. The angle of the wall made gravity your adversary in different and more immediate ways, and overhangs changed the physics of everything.
The best way to explain was to show him, so she walked straight to the hardest section, chalked her hands from the bag clipped to her harness, leapt up to grab the only jug in this section, and just went for it.
The overhang demanded everything — compression, tension, the kind of body awareness that came from years of understanding how weight moves through a frame.
She matched a hold that required her entire body to counterbalance, moved through a sequence that looked improbable and was, and finally lifted herself enough to top out.
She danced a little jig, dropped back to the mat, and looked at Knife.
He was watching with his arms crossed and his head tilted slightly, and she could see the wheels turning in his head.
“Show me the entry move again,” he demanded.
She showed him, and ignored what his growly command had done to her libido.
He tried it three times before he managed it, and he looked at her with satisfaction — and maybe a touch of competitiveness that she found sexy as hell.
They spent the next hour in the bouldering area, and Tuesday thought this was what the day had been building toward — not the restaurant, not the bridge, not even the outdoor walls.
This. Two wolves in human form pushing bodies that could do far more than mere humans, in a public space that required them to appear human, the constraint itself sharpening everything, and both of them entirely, completely present.
Her shoulders and forearms were beautifully exhausted by the time she finally called it.
“Good?” she asked.
He chalked his hands and looked at the problem he’d been working for the last twenty minutes — an overhang sequence that kept spitting him off, but she wasn’t going to solve it for him today even though she easily could.
She’d been giving him beta all day, and he’d feel better if he figured this one out himself.
Also, it’d give him a reason to want to come back with her.
When he hesitated again, she told him, “Dinner is next, whenever you’re ready.”
“One more time,” he said. “Then food.”
She’d figured that would work.
- - - ? - - -
Knife didn’t discover new hobbies. He just didn’t.
He rode with his brothers, he hung out with them, and he had his work.
He cooked meat for fun and then ate it. If his bike needed work, he handled it himself for simple mechanical issues.
Deeper, complicated problems, he usually helped Bubbles work on it.
But Tuesday had shown him something he could turn into an occasional outlet. The fact it required strength, coordination, and a shitload of thought appealed. His wolf had hated it at first, but eventually, he’d seen the appeal as well.
But now both wolf and man were hungry, and it felt good to be back in his own shoes, walking.
And he looked forward to seeing what restaurant she took him to.
They strolled past the aquarium and along the river, and Tuesday told him how she’d learned about Chinese family-style dining when her dad took her to a place in San Francisco, when she was still in elementary school.
“One of his teammates, this guy’s wife’s family owned the restaurant.
They put like, ten of us at a big round table with a huge lazy susan in the middle.
They brought out dish after dish, and then you’d just rotate to what you wanted and put some on your plate.
When a dish ran low, they’d bring another.
Everyone ate from everything, and I so wish we’d adopt that here.
“Food is meant to be shared,” she said. “You get more of the table that way. More of the experience.”