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“Oh! You’re home!” comes Jules’s surprised voice. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be —” Then she breaks off, and I open my eyes.
Jules is barefoot, dressed in an oversized T-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. Her tantalizing raven waves are pulled back in a loose braid, though a few strands have worked their way out and curl around her face.
It’s a far cry from the neat black uniform she usually cleans in, but I like this look better on her. She’s taken all the shelves out of the industrial refrigerator and appears to be in the middle of scrubbing them. Her soft brown eyes are scrunched with concern as she looks me up and down.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You look kind of . . . pale.”
“Fine,” I rasp, clenching my fists at my sides as my restless wolf claws to the surface. God, it hurts to look at her without being able to touch her. “I just . . . traffic,” I finish lamely.
Jules’s face relaxes in understanding, and she nods. “I’ll just, um, get these out of your way.” She gestures at the hodgepodge of clear shelves and caddies that are strewn all over the counters.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, shaking my head. “Come have a plunge with me.”
Jules’s eyebrows shoot up, and I realize what I’ve said. I know immediately that it’s a mistake, but I refuse to take it back.
“Like, in the lake?” A slow nervous smile spreads across her face as she glances out toward the pond.
“Yes.” Then an odd noise erupts from my throat. It’s a violent, spastic sound, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve laughed in . . . I don’t know how long.
Jules is staring at me with a mixture of shock and delight. “Uh . . .”
She’s hesitating. Why is she hesitating? I wonder, mentally cursing myself for asking her to take a cold plunge in an ice-capped lake. If I’d asked her to do something less daunting and she said no, at least I’d know it was because of me and not because it’s fifteen degrees outside.
“Okay.” Jules laughs as she cringes, her eyes dancing with nerves and . . . something else.
My stupid heart leaps and soars. She said yes. I can’t believe she said yes.
Jules scurries upstairs to change. I pull on some sweats, grab towels, and then head outside. I preheat the sauna on the lower deck and make my way down to the small wooden dock protruding from the ice.
It’s been a long time since I took a night plunge, and I forgot how peaceful it is at dusk. A few deer nose lazily at some twigs, but they take off as soon as they catch my scent. Even when I’m in human form, other animals can sense a predator.
I’ve got a pretty decent-sized hole made by the time Jules emerges from the house wearing a pair of oversized sweats. Her hoodie isn’t zipped all the way, and it hangs off one delicate shoulder, exposing the thin strap of her bathing suit.
Mine.
The word reverberates in my head like a prayer, and for once I don’t shove it away. It might not be appropriate or even sane to be having these feelings for Jules, but if there’s one thing I realized being gone, it’s that I don’t want to leave her again.
“Are you ready?” I ask once she’s within earshot.
Jules makes a scared face and hugs her sweatshirt tighter. “Brrr.”
“It’ll be over quickly. I promise.”
She gives me a playful squint. “What’s the point of this again?”
“For me?” I shrug, but Jules is looking at me with genuine curiosity, so I can’t just brush off the question. “Clarity,” I answer honestly. “It’s like a reset button for my brain.”
Too bad I already know the cold water can’t erase the burning need I feel for this woman.
“Because your brain can’t think of anything except how cold it is?”
I grin. “Basically.”
“All right, then,” says Jules, eyeing the hole I’ve made nervously. “You first.”
I’ve plunged enough times that I’m no longer intimidated by the prospect of the cold. It hits your nervous system like a sledgehammer at first, but as soon as your body realizes it’s not dying, the cold really isn’t so bad.
I tug off my sweatshirt and strip out of my pants until I’m standing in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. I normally plunge naked, but after the incident in my basement, I don’t want to make things awkward if Jules doesn’t return my feelings.
