Page 121 of Fate, Interrupted

“I already booked a room at the hotel there,” he says.

I turn toward him. “You did?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

I stare at him. “You booked a hotel room this afternoon.”

“Yeah.”

“Before you came to my house.”

“Yep.”

“That is either extremely confident or extremely presumptuous. I need to figure out which.”

“Could be both,” he says.

“It really could,” I say. “I respect it, and I’m slightly alarmed by it.”

“Running away doesn’t mean being disorganized,” he says.

“That should be the title of a motivational book,” I say. “In the self-help section. Right between You’ve Got This and Believe in Yourself. Tagline: Silas Coulter’s Guide to Efficient Escape.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says.

We pass another mile marker, and then another, and then a cluster of lights appears on the right side of the road—a low building sitting off the highway with a lot full of pickup trucks and neon beer signs doing cheerful, uncomplicated work in the windows. Warm yellow light spills through the glass door into the night.

Silas slows.

“Food now,” I say, before he can finish the question.

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

He turns into the gravel lot and parks near the entrance. I get out of the truck and stretch my legs and breathe in cool night air that smells like cut grass and distant rain. There’s freedom in that smell.

The bar’s door opens with a soft jingle, and warm smells wrap around us immediately: grilled food, the cold, yeasty smell of beer, and the low murmur of country music from a speaker above the bar. A handful of people are scattered around the room, a couple of guys leaning over a pool table, a woman nursing a beer at the far end of the bar, the bartender doing a wipe-down with a focused energy.

He looks up when we step in.

His gaze moves to Silas for a moment—not hostile, not alarmed, only the brief assessment of a bartender clocking new arrivals. He nods.

“Evening,” he says.

“Evening,” Silas says.

And that’s it.

There are no second looks, no change in posture. I’ve learned to watch for a subtle recalibration of energy in the rooms where wolves and humans end up together. I hadn’t realized how much I’ve become used to it but also come to dread it. The bartender nods and moves back to the counter and his vigorous wiping.

I want to tell Silas how extraordinary I think that is, how the ordinariness of it is the extraordinary thing, but I don’t. Tonight I don’t want talk about it. I just want to feel it.

We slide into a booth along the wall.

The waitress appears with menus and a cheerful “kitchen’s still open.” I point to a picture on the laminated card, and Silas orders the burgers with fries for both of us, with large ice waters, please. The waitress takes our order without writing it down and is gone before I can blink.