Page 423 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

"Okay. Yes. Take me to the creepy midnight diner." I grab two fistfuls of his hoodie and pull him down until he bends, until his forehead is against mine and his teeth are inches from my mouth. "But if it's too much, we leave. I don't care if the pancakes just arrived."

His jaw shifts against my palms.

Deal, he half-signs, or at least I think it's the sign for deal. His version of mumbling.

"What's that? I didn't catch it."

He rolls his eyes and signs it letter by letter, exaggerated.

D… E… A… L.

I kiss his teeth.

He makes that low sound in his chest, the one that isn't quite a purr yet but is trying, and opens my door for me with his scuffed-up hand.

As the forest gives way to a lot ahead of us, the neon red sign for the diner shines out of the fog.

Dolly's.

There's a single rusted pickup truck in the lot, parked crooked across two spaces, covered in vaguely threatening, edgy bumper stickers. Across from the truck, a shielded payphone by the door with cracks in the plexiglass and the receiver hanging off the cord. Two other cars across the lot, parked next to each other, one, um… rocking.

It looks exactly how you'd want a diner at midnight in the middle of nowhere to look.

Haunted as hell.

Which always means you're about to have the best pancakes you've ever had in your life.

Wraith parks close to the entrance and sits there for a second, letting the engine idle, glancing warily around the diner and the parking lot. His knee bounces once, twice, and he stills it deliberately, pressing it hard against the underside of the dash.

"You okay?" I ask.

He nods. Then he signs, quick and a little messy, which is how I know he's anxious.

Don't want to scare anyone.

"I know," I say softly, leaning on his arm.

Or embarrass you.

"You won't. I promise. You could never embarrass me."

He watches me, eyes searching my face. Even if I accidentally taste bacon and go feral?

That makes me snort. "You've been hanging out with Whiskey too much," I say, pushing his arm playfully.

And he has been. I've caught him sneaking out a few times here and there, always with Whiskey, and I know it's because Whiskey is using himself like a human meat shield so Wraith can get desensitized to going out in public while Whiskey absorbs all the attention.

I can do that, too.

Wraith rolls his shoulders back, one at a time, like he does before anything he's amping himself up for. Games, medical trauma, stepping outside. Bracing himself to get stared at, or worse.

For me.

With a deep, uneasy breath, he kills the engine and comes around to the passenger's side to help me out, always gentle and chivalrous, even now.

We're almost to the door before I realize it feels like I'm wearing a backpack, and it hits me out of nowhere that I'm still wearing his heavy canvas coat, and he's in a henley.

A hoodless henley.