The Italian place Claire picked screams "relationship checkpoint"—warm lighting designed to hide flaws, soft music that encourages confessions, private booths where couples either commit or combust. I clock the setup the second I walk in and know exactly how tonight's supposed to go.
Spoiler: it's not going according to anyone's plan.
Claire's waiting at the entrance in a navy dress that probably cost a week's salary but looks effortless. That's her thing—expensive taste wrapped in girl-next-door packaging. She rises on her toes to kiss me and I kiss back on autopilot, the muscle memory of eighteen months performing its designated function.
My chest does this fun trick where it feels both comfortable and suffocating simultaneously. Like wearing a sweater that fits perfectly but you're allergic to the fabric.
My phone's a live grenade in my pocket. Caroline's text is still glowing, and my response was sent before my brain could stage an intervention.
We sit and order wine because that's what adults do when they're pretending they have their shit together.
I watch Claire’s hands gesture and recognize this performance. We're both doing it—the relationship theater where you act interested while your brain is three states away planning your escape route.
Here's what I'm good at: reading rooms and people, knowing exactly what they want to hear. Survival skill learned young when being charming meant avoiding Kieran's shadow and my father's disappointment. Play the easygoing brother and the fun uncle. The perpetual second place who's just happy to be here.
I've built an entire personality around being underestimated. I thought I was done with that when struggling for Thalia, but this part of my nature seems to continue jumping out from time to time.
So I nod at appropriate intervals. Make encouraging sounds. Ask follow-up questions that prove I'm listening even though my brain is replaying this afternoon on loop—Caroline's laugh, the jolt when our hands touched, my wolf waking up for the first time with quiet insistent interest that won't shut the fuck up.
Different, weaker, probably, because Caroline's human and whatever bond or pull or cosmic joke this can't form properly across species lines. More invitation than demand. More "maybe" than "destiny."
"You're doing it again," Claire's voice cuts through my spiral with surgical precision.
I blink. Return to my body to find my fork suspended mid-air with pasta I don't remember acquiring. "What?"
"That thing where you're physically present but mentally solving the Da Vinci Code," she sips her wine, studies me over the rim. "You get this look, like you're three chess moves ahead of a conversation I don't know we're having."
Fuck. She's sharper than I give her credit for.
"Sorry, it’s work stuff," the lie tastes stale even to me.
"I see," she sets down her glass with deliberate care. "You've had 'work stuff' for months, and I'm starting to think it's code for 'I'm emotionally checked out but too polite to say so.'"
Direct hit, so I actually feel that one land. "I'm here," weak protest, and we both know it.
"Your body is," she reaches across the table, touches my hand with warmth I can't return. "But the actual you underneath the charming deflection and easy smiles? You left months ago, and maybe never arrived."
When did she get this perceptive? Or has she always been and I was too busy performing to notice?
My pulse kicks up because this is the moment. The relationship crossroads where I either commit or bail, where the decent thing would be walking away before I hurt her worse. But here's my fatal flaw: I'm really good at seeing the right choice and then doing the exact opposite because I'm fundamentally fucked up.
"I don't know what I want," the confession slips out unfiltered, bypassing my usual careful editing. "Thought I'd figured it out, built this nice stable life in Colorado, and then—"
I stop because finishing that sentence means admitting I met someone just hours ago who knocked me sideways with organic produce and designer heels.
Claire's face does something complicated. She's connecting dots I didn't mean to provide. "And then?"
"I realized I'm still processing shit that happened years ago," pivot to safer truth. "Still figuring out who I am when I'm not defined by being Kieran's brother or the kids' fun uncle or—"
"Or my boyfriend who can't quite commit?" She withdraws her hand slowly. The absence feels both relieving and devastating.
Boyfriend. We've avoided that label, drifting in comfortable ambiguity. Friends who fuck, partners who can't quite partner, placeholder relationship while I pretend I'm healing instead of hiding.
"You deserve someone who's sure," I say, and mean it. "Someone who doesn't catalog everything wrong with himself while you're talking about your nephew's dinosaur obsession."
"Maybe," her smile could break glass. "But maybe I'd rather have uncertain you than certain nobody."
And there it is—the grace I don't deserve, the patience I can't return, the offer to keep settling for my emotional unavailability because apparently that's better than being alone.
I should break up with her right now. Rip the band-aid off, set her free, stop being the asshole who keeps one foot out the door. But I don't. I'm a coward dressed up as a playboy hiding vicious self-awareness that sees exactly what I'm doing and does it anyway.
Fuck.
We finish dinner in manufactured peace. Conversation shifts to safer territory—her cases, my mergers, whether risotto is worth twenty-eight dollars when you could get an entire pizza for twelve. The subtext screams but we ignore it with practiced expertise.
I pay and we maintain this whole financial equality system that makes everything feel like a business transaction, which, let's be honest, is probably what this is.
I walked her to her car after. The parking lot's mostly empty, streetlights casting everything in that yellow film noir glow that makes real life look cinematic.
She stops at her driver's side door, turns to face me. "I'll see you tomorrow at work?"
Right. The work, where we share a floor and collaborate on cases and avoiding her would be obvious and pathetic.
"Yeah, tomorrow."
She steps closer, rises on her toes again and kisses me with tenderness that makes my chest hurt because I don't deserve it. It's not desperate or demanding, just soft. The kind of kiss that says I'm still here even though I know you're not.
I kiss her back because I'm not a complete sociopath. My hands settle on her waist and for one second—just one—I try to make myself feel what I should feel. Try to force my wolf to respond, my heart to engage, my carefully constructed defenses to crack.
Nothing happens, just comfortable friction masquerading as connection. She pulls away and smiles with visible effort. "See you tomorrow then."
She drives away while I stand there like a statue of Shitty Boyfriend memorializing my own emotional bankruptcy. I get in my car and sit there staring at my phone where Caroline's text glows with the possibility I have no business entertaining.
The Pink Peacock, 10 AM. Don't be late!
I wanna meet her despite everything that happened, despite it’s wrong to do, despite all the doubts my cowardly soul whispers to me at this very moment, so I can't fucking wait.