By ten-fifty the restaurant had thinned out. Joey and the others drifted off with waves and goodbyes, and our table was down to five people and too many empty glasses, all of us pleasantly loose around the edges.
Keane, slightly drunk, was telling his hero story for the third time. "And then — bear in mind you're all hearing this from the co-pilot who was actually there —"
"It was a great story," Daisy said generously, chin propped on both hands, eyes at half-mast. "You told it... very well. The captain saved everybody."
Keane stared at her. "Daisy. I'm the hero of the story."
"Are you?" she said dreamily, and raised her glass to him like a toast.
He sank back into his chair with the face of a man conceding a lost cause and muttering about drunk juniors. Daisy's boyfriend appeared at eleven sharp — a soft-spoken accountant type who materialized with her coat already over his arm, exactly like a man who had been briefed. She beamed at him, squeezed his hand, waggled her fingers at the table. "Night, everyone! Don't crash the crew hotel!"
When she was gone, Keane frowned after her with both arms crossed. "Luna. When did Daisy get a boyfriend?"
"No idea," I said honestly. "But it looks like it's going well."
Keane nodded slowly, stroking his chin like this was a safety issue he intended to file a report about. Beside me, Victor checked his watch against the candlelight.
"It's late." Then, almost as an afterthought, in a voice pitched for exactly one listener: "People drink. Driving would be unsafe."
Keane's head came around. "You didn't drink."
"I never said I did."
I watched the realization travel across Keane's face in real time — the widening eyes, the flick to me, back to Victor, back to me — before he broke into a grin of pure delight, nodded solemnly, and stood up so fast his chair skated.
"Right! My ride's outside. Long day. You two —" he swept an arm at the table, at the wreckage of the evening, at us — "carry on."
And he was gone, whistling, before either of us could execute him.
I coughed and reached for my bag with elaborate unconcern. Victor spoke before my fingers closed on the strap.
"You've been drinking. I'll drive you home."
"You've been—" I looked up. He was already standing, already rounding the table, already reaching for my bag with the calm of a man picking up his own luggage.
I pulled it into my lap. "Slow down. I've got it."
His hand hovered, withdrew. The corner of his mouth lifted, barely.
One minute later we were standing in the cool night air by his car, and I was looking longingly at my own white sedan parked three spaces down. "Honestly, I'm fine. I'll drive myself."
He had his hand on the door handle and it went still. He turned all the way around to face me.
"You drank."
"You drank nothing," I pointed out. "And you're fine to drive, so give me the keys, and I'll—"
He leaned down until we were level, eye to eye, close enough that the streetlight made a small gold space around us both. His voice dropped into the register he used to use when the cabin was scared and he wanted it calm, except there was nothing calm in it for me.
"Luna Winters. Behave."
My full name. My knees filed a formal complaint. A night wind slid through the parking lot and dragged my hair across his jaw, and I watched his throat work, watched him lose the thread of the argument for a full second before he recovered it — reaching up to tuck the strand behind my ear like it was his to arrange.
"Then I'll drive your car," he said, nodding at my sedan, patient as fog. "Your car, your home, your rules. Agreed?"
My fingers were crushing the strap of my bag. I weighed my options — cab, subway, calling my mother, faking a seizure — and surrendered with a nod.
Which is how Victor Ironclaw, Alpha of the Ironmoon Pack, ended up behind the wheel of my little white sedan, adjusting the seat down three inches and the mirror to his height, while I sat in the passenger seat of my own car feeling like a hijacker's accomplice.
The city slid by the window. Neither of us spoke. The car smelled like him now. It would smell like him for weeks — cedar and storm-threaded night air filling a space that used to smell like crayons and baby lotion, and my wolf turning in slow circles behind her locked door, whining at the window like the full moon was close. It wasn't. Not for eleven more days. She didn't care.
He must have touched something on the console, because the dash lights came up soft and warm. I kept my eyes on the window and watched him in the reflection anyway — the sharp, elegant profile, the focused stillness of a pilot with forty souls on board, except the only soul aboard was me and he wasn't flying the car at all, he was flying the silence.
Why didn't you drink tonight? You don't have any allergies. You never used to need an excuse.
I didn't notice myself falling asleep. I noticed waking up — the car already parked, the engine off, the underground garage humming around us, and Victor in the driver's seat, turned toward me, watching me with an expression so open and so undeniably fond that I forgot how to breathe for a second.
"Are we... here?"
"We're here."
"How long was I out? Why didn't you wake me?"
"Twelve minutes. You needed them." He nodded at my watch. It was nearly midnight.
I unclipped the seatbelt and reached for the door — and stopped. My hand hung in the air.
"Victor." I turned back. "How are you getting home?"
His fingers, tapping the wheel, went still. I watched something calculation-shaped move behind his eyes, watched the corner of his mouth prepare itself.
He leaned back, folded his arms, tipped his head against the rest, and sighed like a man accepting hardship.
"I suppose I could sleep in your car. Just for tonight."
"You could take a cab. I'll pay."
"I don't ride in other people's cars."
I stared at him. He stared back, serene, immovable, twenty-eight floors of trouble in a charcoal coat.
And that's when the arithmetic finished. I had walked straight into it and closed the door behind myself — the man had refused to drink, engineered the ride, chosen my car, and now he was legally stranded in my parking garage at midnight like a very large, very handsome package I'd signed for.
I'd dug the pit myself. I bit my lip, weighed it all, and gave up.
"...Fine. Come upstairs."
I had not finished the sentence before he sat bolt upright, opened his door, crossed the front of the car, and had my door open before I'd even found the handle — fast, smooth, a man terrified I'd retract the invitation between syllables. His eyes over the top of the door were doing a very poor job of looking neutral. They were gleaming. Triumphant and pleased and warm, all at once, and far too young for his face.
I stepped out and the wine lurched. My hand flew out for the door — and found his arm instead, steady as a wing strut, and then I was briefly inside a hug that smelled like the whole sky at night.
"Really drunk?"
"Or should I carry you up?"
"I'm not drunk." I pushed back and fixed my hair, which did not need fixing. "I stood up too fast. It's fine now."
He let me go with visible reluctance and followed me toward the elevator, hands in his pockets, humming.
It wasn't until the doors closed that my stomach dropped. The floor numbers climbed, and so did the arithmetic in my head. Charlotte was home. Linney was home. My mother — who saw everything — was home. And here I was, importing the man I'd spent three years hiding my daughter from, into the building where I hid her.
Lottie's reaction to him at the airport had been a five-alarm event. What if she woke up? What if they—
Ding. Twenty-eighth floor.
The doors opened, and my mother was standing directly in front of them, robe and slippers, arms crossed, wearing the expression of a woman who has just won a bet she never told anyone she placed.
"Mom," I said.