Page 45 of Match Made In Growl

He'd already made the wrong choice once. He just wasn't sure which one it had been.

26

STEPHANIE

Two weeks passed, and Steph watched Criss Holt become someone she didn't think he knew how to be.

Not all at once, though. It was in pieces. She had glimpsed it from the distance she'd put between them. She saw him crossing the square one morning with a set to his jaw that had nothing to do with charm. Saw him leaving Emmett's office twice in three days, serious-faced, no grin for the clerk on his way out. Saw him at the Griddle & Grind once, sitting alone with coffee he wasn't drinking, staring at his phone like the screen held instructions for something difficult.

The town noticed too. Twyla mentioned it first, sliding Steph her usual coffee with a look that had agenda written all over it.

"He's not sleeping," Twyla said, wiping the counter in slow circles that were clearly just an excuse to stay close. "Comes in here at six every morning looking like he's been up since three. Orders black coffee. Doesn't flirt with anyone."

"That's a public health concern."

"It is, actually. Half my regulars are in mourning." Twyla set the rag down. "He asked about you."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you're working. That you look tired too. That even stubborn people deserve each other and life's too short for two people who smell like that together to be sitting in separate rooms."

"We don't smell like anything together."

Twyla gave her a look that could have powered the café's ovens. "Honey, I'm fae. I can smell a bond forming from across the square. You two have been lighting up my senses since the night you left my friend's tavern together, and it's only gotten stronger." She held up a hand before Steph could respond. "I'm not meddling. I'm observing. There's a difference."

"There really isn't."

"Fine. Then I'm meddling with love." Twyla leaned on the counter. "He's doing something, Steph. I don't know what. But he's got purpose in his step now that wasn't there a month ago. Whatever happened between you two, it woke something up in him."

Steph drank her coffee and said nothing, which Twyla interpreted as permission to continue.

"He comes in, sits by the window, watches the square. Writes things down in a little notebook. Meets with Kieran late at night, because, yes, I snoop. And drove out past the northern ridge three times this week." Twyla's light brown eyes softened. "He's fighting for something. I just thought you should know."

The information settled into Steph's mind alongside everything else she'd been carrying: the treaty stone, the altered records, the Veil that wouldn't let her leave, the bond research she'd done at the Book Nook that she hadn't told anyone about. She shoved it down, reminding herself why she needed to forget that and focus on this. The site. So she went where the work waited and the dead kept their patience.

But it stayed with her. All of it. Him.

She saw him again a day later, outside the Mercantile. She was coming out with replacement batteries for her headlamp. He was going in. They nearly collided in the doorway, close enough that his scent hit her before his face did, cedar and spice, and her body responded with the immediate, full-system recognition she'd read about in the Ashworth text. Every nerve ending oriented toward him like iron filings to a magnet.

He looked tired. Twyla hadn't been exaggerating. The shadows under his eyes were deeper, and the angles of his face appeared sharper than they'd been. But his amber eyes, when they found hers, held something steady that hadn't been there before.

"Steph." His voice was careful but still sounded like the voice of a man respecting a boundary he didn't want to respect.

"Criss."

They stood in the Mercantile doorway with people moving past on both sides, and neither of them stepped away.

"I need to say something," he said. "And I need you to hear it without arguing, which I know is asking a lot."

"You've got thirty seconds."

"I understand why you're angry. You had every right to be. I made a call about what to tell you and when, and it was the wrong call." He held her gaze without flinching. "There are things happening right now that I can't explain yet. Not because I don't trust you, but because telling you before I have proof would put you in a position that's worse than the one I already put you in."

"That sounds like the same justification in different clothes."

"I know how it sounds. And when this is done, if you still think that, I'll take it. But I'm asking you to give me a little more time. And when you know the full truth, I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me for the way I've handled this."

His hand came up, almost reached for her face, and stopped. He let it drop back to his side. The restraint in the gesture was so visible, so deliberate, that it ached to watch.