The Choice #3
The first time was in the woods outside Portland, two months ago, and I cried.
Not because I was scared. Because he let me watch.
The man who spent fifteen years making sure nobody saw this stood in a clearing and took his clothes off and folded himself into something else, and he did it in front of me, on purpose, like it was a gift.
It never gets normal. I don't think it's supposed to.
I told him that once, that I don't think I'll ever be entirely used to it.
He said good. Keeps him honest. Every time, there's a moment when the man I know becomes something older and stranger, and every time, there's a moment when I have to decide again that this is him, and every time I decide it, it gets easier.
He goes out when the moon is high. I sit on the porch with a blanket around my shoulders and I watch him cross the clearing, and I watch his body come apart and put itself back together in the shape of a wolf, and the sound of it is still the sound from the parking lot, the wet crack of a body unmaking itself, but there's no threat in it now.
No countdown. He chooses it, the way he chooses everything, deliberately.
The wolf that is Dean comes back to the porch.
He's enormous, dark against the snow, and he pads up the steps and sits beside me, and his head is level with my shoulder, and I put my hand on his fur and he lets me, standing very still the way he stands still when I'm bandaging a wound.
"Hey, Wolf Boy," I say.
The wolf huffs. I take that as agreement.
I've learned to read the huff. It's the wolf equivalent of rolling his eyes, which I've decided to interpret as affection.
Three months in, I'm fluent in a language with exactly one speaker, and the speaker is mostly fur.
This is either the healthiest relationship I've ever had or the strangest, and I've stopped caring which.
He stays a while, warm against my side, both of us watching the moon. Then he gets up and goes into the trees, and I hear him running, something huge moving fast through the dark, and I wait on the porch until he comes back.
He comes back human, naked and cold and shaking a little, and I throw the blanket at him.
"You're going to catch your death," I say.
"I heal fast."
"Your ass is blue."
"Worth it."
He wraps the blanket around himself and sits beside me, and I lean against him, and we watch the moon together.
The same moon that once meant danger. The same blue-white light that turned a Montana parking lot strange.
Now it just means this. It means him, warm beside me, and a cabin with a porch that faces the sky, and snow beginning to fall.
"Do you regret it?" he asks.
"Regret what?"
"Following me off the plane."
"Absolutely." I don't look at him. "Worst layover of my life."
He laughs. It's the sound I'm still trying to earn, three months in, and I don't think I'll ever stop trying, and I don't think he'll ever stop being surprised that I want to.
"You're here," he says.
"Airline still gets one star."
He laughs again, and then he's quiet, and the snow falls, and the moon rides high and white over the trees, and I'm warm and I'm not going anywhere.
Later, inside, by the wood stove, with the one bed and the snow on the window, I undress him.
That's the thing I've learned about Dean Keller.
He lets me. He lets me take the blanket from him, lets me put my hands on his shoulders, lets me trace the scar where the silver blade went in, a pale line now, the only mark that never faded.
He stands very still and lets me look at him, and I know what that costs him, and I don't waste it.
The stove ticks. The wind moves through the trees. The bed is too small for two people, which means we have to hold on to each other, which I think was the design.
I kiss him slow. He kisses me back the way he does everything, deliberately, like he's been thinking about it, and his hands come up and cup my face, and his thumbs trace my jaw, and I can feel the heat of the stove and the heat of him and the cold pressing at the window.
"Hey," I say against his mouth.
"Hey."
"I'm glad I followed you off the plane."
He makes a sound low in his chest, and his hands slide down, and he pulls me against him, and the kiss deepens, and his hands find the hem of my shirt, and I let him take it off, and he looks at me the way I looked at him, and his eyes go dark and careful.
"I want to take my time," he says.
"Take it."
He does. His mouth moves down my throat, over my collarbone, and his hands are slow and sure, learning me again like it's the first time and the hundredth time at once.
The firelight moves over his face, over the scar through his eyebrow, and I watch him look at me like I'm something he's been waiting to see.
"I love the way you look at me," he says.
"Like what?"
"Like I'm not something to be afraid of."
I put my hand on his jaw. "You're not."
He kisses me then, deep and slow, and his hands slide down my back, and he lifts me onto the bed, the too-small bed, and he comes down over me, and the weight of him is warm and solid and right.
The stove ticks. The wind moves through the trees.
The snow falls past the window, and none of it matters except his mouth on my neck and his hand on my hip and the sound of my own breathing.
His hand moves between my legs and I'm already wet, have been since he came back from the trees with snow on his shoulders and the moon in his eyes, and he finds my clit with his thumb and I gasp and arch into his hand.
"Dean."
"I told you I was going to take my time."
"You're taking forever."
"Forever's the point."
He works me slow, his thumb circling while his mouth finds my breast, and I can feel myself building, heat coiling low and tight, and I hold on to his arm, the one with the scar, and when I come it's with his name, or maybe just a sound, and he watches me, grey-green and close, and kisses me through it.
Then it's my turn to touch him. I push him onto his back and take him in my hand, and he's hard and hot, and I watch his jaw tighten as I move my thumb over the head of his cock, and he makes a sound low in his throat, the sound he only makes when he's not thinking about being careful.
"Megan."
"Time's the point," I say.
He laughs, ragged, and then he's pulling me up over him, his hands on my hips, and I sink down onto him slow, and we both go still for a second, the way you do when something is exactly right.
"God," he says. "Megan."
I move. Slow at first, learning the rhythm, and his hands guide me, and the stove ticks and the snow falls and the moon rides high and white over the cabin, and this is nothing like the lodge.
There's no clock. No claw marks on the door.
No fight waiting in the snow. Just him, looking up at me with his hands on my hips and his eyes open, the man who spent fifteen years alone on nights like this, letting me take my time with him.
I lean down and kiss him, and he comes up to meet me, and I move faster, and it builds again, and he's saying my name like it's the only word he knows, and I come with him inside me, and I feel him follow, his hands tightening on my hips, his whole body going rigid, and then he pulls me down against his chest and holds me there, both of us breathing hard, the firelight moving over us.
"Hey," I say against his shoulder.
"Hey."
"I think I'm getting the hang of you."
He makes a sound that's half laugh and half something else, and his arms tighten around me, and we stay like that, tangled in the too-small bed, with the snow falling past the window and the moon riding high and the whole world white and quiet and ours.
After, I lie with my head on his chest, and his hand is in my hair, and the stove ticks, and the snow falls past the window, and his heart is slow and steady under my ear.
"I used to be alone on these nights," he says. His voice is rough, the way it gets when he's said more than he planned. "Every full moon, I'd come up here by myself, and I thought that was the price."
"And now?"
He's quiet for a long moment. The wind moves through the trees. The snow keeps falling.
"Now I have a lunar calendar on my phone and a woman who calls me Wolf Boy."
"Don't make it weird."
"Never." He pulls me closer, and I can feel his smile against my hair, and the snow falls, and the moon rides high over the cabin, and the same blue-white light that once meant danger means this: his arms, the wood stove, the one bed, the sound of his breathing.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"Turns out 14B wasn't such a bad seat after all."
I smile into his chest, and I hold on, and I don't let go.