Page 22 of Puck of My Life

It didn’t upset me or have me scared or worried or any of the things you’d expect from hearing that the person that you were with wasn’t actually human. It was more about me thinking of more questions with each passing minute. Archie would answer every one of them. He hadn’t been holding back. But he was going out of town for work, and they didn’t feel like text-message kinds of questions.

I loved that he trusted me enough to put that all out there from the beginning. We’d had enough misunderstandings in the past, or maybe misunderstandings wasn’t the true word—obstacles? But in any case, we were moving forward. And I was so overjoyed to have him in my life.

“Hey, Walter.” Louisa stood at the side of my desk. “Truman needs you.”

Great. I hadn’t even finished what I was working on and I was getting something new.

“Thanks. I’ll head on over.”

When I went inside, he told me to shut the door, which was never a good sign. This wasn’t about a new assignment. Either I was being asked to fix someone’s fuck-up or I had fucked up. Neither was good.

“Have a seat.”

“Am I in trouble, sir?” Great. I sounded like a high school kid being called into the principal’s office.

“Did you do something wrong?”

I shook my head.

“You're not in trouble. I just wanted to know why you didn’t tell me you knew the team.”

“Oh, I—I didn’t. I mean, I don’t know the team. I mean, well, I know Archie, but I didn’t know he was on the team.” The more I stumbled, the more it sounded like I was lying. “We met when we were kids. So if you’re asking who did I know, it’s Archie.”

“I knew that.”

It didn’t surprise me that he did. We weren’t exactly apart through the end of the night at the auction. He’d held my hand, touched my lower back, and stuck by my side the last twenty minutes. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a picture on the Internet of us together. But there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Was there? The article wasn’t about specific players. It was about a fundraiser.

“When you said you’d known him since you were a kid, what do you mean?”

“We met eight years ago when I was a teen.”

“Eight? Not a little kid then?”

“Well, and ‘know’ is a bit of an exaggeration. We met once, and then we ran into each other again at the charity event. And we moved kinda quickly from there.”

“Apparently.” He chuckled. “I’m assuming by moving quickly, you mean that little mark I see peeking out. Is it what I think it is?”

I reached up and touched it. Sure enough, my mark was visible.

“Depends. What do you think it is?”

He leaned forward. “A mating mark.”

I froze. I hadn’t expected him to know what it was. I initially thought I was going to have to defend the injury and prove I wasn’t being harmed by him. But he did recognize it.

He stared at me.

I stared back.

“That’s why you smelled me yesterday.”

“You caught that, did you?” It would’ve been impossible not to.

“Yeah.” I had so many questions. “Does that mean you’re like my mate?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what his beast is. But I’m a shifter, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh, thank gods. I didn’t think I’d have anybody to talk to about this. I can talk to you about this. Right?”