Chapter 7 #2
“The whole campus knows.”
“The whole werewolf-adjacent campus, probably, yes.”
I press my fingers against my eyes.
Here’s the thing, I’m not furious. I want to be—it would be simpler—but she’s right.
This isn’t her story to tell. If Boone recognized me as his mate—and I have a notebook full of evidence and ninety years of scholarship that say yes, probably—then that conversation belongs to him and me, not to a third party who figured it out from context clues.
I get that. Doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed.
But I need to talk to him. Now.
“You could’ve said something subtle,” I say. “Like, hey Maisie, you might want to look into werewolf courtship behaviors. Purely academically. For fun.”
“Would you have listened?”
I think about the first time—me insisting it was just tutoring, just studying. Definitely not anything. Nothing weird about it at all.
“No,” I admit.
“That’s why I let it go.”
I take a breath. Let it out. “Okay. I’m not mad at you.”
“You’re a little mad at me.”
“I’m a little mad at you,” I agree, “but I get it. I just want to talk to him.”
Delilah nods, suddenly serious. “Are you okay?”
I consider it honestly. “Yeah,” I say. “I just want to understand what’s actually going on.”
She holds my gaze for a second. “Don’t let him be too noble about it,” she says. “Whatever he says about giving you space to choose—and I think he will say something like that—don’t let him talk himself into a corner when what he actually needs to do is be straight with you.”
“You know him pretty well for someone who’s met him four times.”
“I’m a witch,” she says. “We observe.”
I text him to confirm we’re still on for tonight. He responds in under a minute.
Boone: Obviously. Bringing the new Thai place, you’re going to love it.
And then, almost immediately.
Boone: Hope that’s okay.
I stare at my phone.
Then at my notebook, still open on my desk, at the line connecting food provisioning behavior to a half-dozen examples.
Maisie: That’s fine.
Maisie: Very thoughtful of you.
He sends a thumbs up and a wolf emoji, which I’ve found inexplicably charming for weeks and am now viewing in a completely different light.
By the time I head to his apartment, it’s getting cold, leaves blowing across the old stone paths. I walk with my hands in my pockets, running through everything I read, everything I noticed, and the specific strategy I’ve been working out since I left the library.
He opens the door before I knock. “Hey.” He’s in jeans and a henley, sleeves pushed up. I catch the smell of Thai food from the kitchen, and underneath it something else—warm and steady, the same scent I’ve been breathing in off his sweatshirt for two weeks without knowing what I was doing.
I know now. "Hey," I say, dropping onto his couch. Okay. Let's see.
"Food's in the kitchen," he says. "It should still be—"
"I'm actually kind of cold," I say.
He's already reaching for the sweatshirt draped over the couch arm before I finish the sentence. He holds it out. I look at it for one second, then at his face. He looks completely normal. Like handing me his sweatshirt is the obvious response to me being cold. Like this is simply what you do.
It is what he does. Every time.
"Thanks," I say, pulling it over my head.
He nods and sits across from me. "So we should probably get through the reproductive biology section before—"
"Oh, I completely forgot to eat lunch today," I say. "I had an eight-thirty and then back-to-back classes. Just kind of missed the window."
His phone is in his hand before I've finished.
"I ordered Thai, there's plenty," he says, already heading to the kitchen. "I'll get you something now, the main course needs five more minutes—"
"Boone, I'm fine, we can just—"
"You've been up since eight and it's almost six." He comes back with a container of spring rolls and sets them in front of me like this is the most natural thing in the world. "Eat."
I eat a spring roll.
I look at him.
He looks satisfied in a way he's completely unaware of, settling back against the cushions and reaching for the textbook.
I let it go for about four minutes while we perform a reasonable impression of studying. Then I say, very casually, "Oh—you know Donovan? From my Bio section?"
Boone looks up.
"He asked me yesterday if I was going to the Halloween thing on the main quad," I say. "The big one with the bonfire."
Boone goes still.
"He was pretty nice about it," I continue, watching him in my peripheral vision while pretending to read a paragraph I've absorbed zero words of. "I think he might have been asking as a—"
"What did you tell him?"
Perfectly measured. Totally even. Except underneath it I can hear the effort.
"I said I wasn't sure yet." I look up. "Why?"
"No reason." He turns back to his textbook. His jaw is set. "Just wondering."
"Because if I don't have other plans, I might go," I say. "It's supposed to be really good, someone was telling me—"
"You have plans," he says.
I set my textbook down. "Do I?"
He meets my eyes. The amber has gone a degree warmer than usual, and I know what that means now. "You do," he says, certain in a way that has nothing apologetic in it. "With me. I was going to ask you."
"You could have asked me when he asked me," I point out. "You have my number."
"I'm asking you now."
"Under duress."
"Maisie." He says my name in the voice that makes it a full sentence, quiet and direct. "Please come to the Halloween thing with me."
I look at him. The set of his shoulders. The gold-warm color of his eyes. The way he's leaning slightly forward.
"Okay," I say.
He relaxes. Just slightly. "Good."
"You were jealous," I say.
"I was planning ahead," he says.
"Boone."
"Strategically."
I laugh, and whatever careful distance I'd been maintaining breaks. He smiles back, easy and real, and suddenly the textbook doesn't seem very important.
I'm not entirely sure how I end up with half my legs across his lap.
One minute we're actually studying—or something that looks like it, books open, notes out—and the next we're arguing about the practical exam format.
Then I make a point about cellular adaptation that he calls unnecessarily pedantic.
Then I throw a pillow at him. Then he catches it without looking because he's infuriating, and then he tugs on my ankle until I stop trying to take it back and I end up sideways on the couch with my legs over his thighs.
Which is, I realize, entirely too comfortable.
"You know," I say, to the ceiling, "for someone who's supposed to be helping me study, you're extremely distracting."
"You started it."
"The pillow was a proportionate response."
"To what?"
"Your face," I say, which makes no sense, and he laughs, low and warm, and I feel it through where my legs rest against him.
"My face," he repeats.
"You know what you look like," I say. "You do it on purpose."
"I genuinely don't know what you mean."
I tilt my head to look at him. He's already looking at me, easy and certain, and the apartment smells like food and him, and outside the window it's properly dark now, and everything is just—easy.
That's the word. The kind of easy that happens when something fits right and you've stopped bracing for it to get weird.
"Come here," he says quietly.
I don't think about it. I just sit up and close the distance and kiss him, one hand at his jaw, and he meets me the way he always does—like he's been waiting, and he's not in any hurry now that it's happening.
Except this time something's different.
This time his hand doesn't settle carefully at my waist. It grips.
Both hands—one at my hip, one sliding to my lower back—and he pulls me across his lap in one move, like the question of where I'm supposed to be has already been settled and he's done waiting for me to catch up.
I end up straddling him, knees on either side of his thighs, and I feel the sharp breath he takes against my mouth.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi." He pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes are already going gold at the edges, and the expression on his face does something immediate to my nervous system. "You okay up there?"
"I'm great up here, actually."
"Yeah." His hands tighten at my hips. "You are."
I kiss him again, and this time I don't hold back—both hands in his hair, tilting his head where I want it, kissing him slow and deep until I feel the low sound in his chest that isn't quite human.
He groans against my mouth, his hands stop being careful, and one slides up under the back of the sweatshirt, palm hot against my bare skin, while the other drags down over my hip like he's been thinking about exactly this and is done pretending otherwise.
"You've been wearing my sweatshirt all week," he says against my mouth. Low. Rough. "Do you have any idea what that does to me?"
"Tell me."
His grip tightens. "Makes my wolf absolutely insane.
" He kisses my jaw, then my neck, slow and deliberate.
"You walk into class smelling like me and every male in fifty feet knows it, even when I'm not there.
" Another kiss, lower, against my pulse.
"Meanwhile, I'm sitting in the library losing my mind every time you lean across the table. "
"You should've said something."
"I'm saying something now."
He pulls back just enough to look at me again, checking the way he always does, and whatever he sees makes the gold in his eyes go steady.
"Can I—" He hooks his fingers under the hem of the sweatshirt and waits, hands still.
"Yes," I say. "God, yes."
He pulls it over my head in one smooth motion and tosses it aside. The way he looks at me after—that slow, full, unguarded once-over—makes my face hot in a way that has nothing to do with embarrassment.