Page 54 of Wolf's Providence

What the hell was wrong with us? This wasCaleb. Iknewthis man. I’d hadsexwith this man.Twice. I’d slept beside him more times than I could count. As manandwolf. Why were we acting like strangers?

After pulling off my socks and lounge pants, and dressing in jeans and boots, I left my room, determined to make the weirdness between us disappear.

Grabbing my phone and keys, I gestured for Caleb to follow me. “Come on, you, let’s go get some fresh air and food. Maybe if I feed you properly, you won’t keep pacing in my kitchen.”

Caleb opened the Jeep as I locked up, and following my directions, he drove us to the grocery store. I watched him as he scanned our surroundings the whole way. He took note of everything—cars, houses, pedestrians. I wasn’t sure if he was looking at them out of curiosity or if he was analyzing them all as potential threats. Whispering Pines was a quiet town with a good tourist population, but trying to see it through Caleb’s eyes, it felt foreign.

“Do you like it here?” he asked suddenly, nodding towards the tree-lined street that led to the grocery store.

“I do,” I answered easily. “There’s enough trade to keep an artist in business,” I jested slightly. “A good tourist trade to matter and make a difference, but not too much to take away the sense of the familiar, if you know what I mean?”

“I don’t,” he admitted, glancing at me curiously.

I thought about how to explain it. “Mostly everyone knows everyone, local, I mean. But we have enough passing trade from the hikers and such that it keeps the day-to-day fresh. Sure, I may see the owner, Phil, from the bakery everywhere I go,” I teased, referencing my first conversation with Caleb, “but I also see new people all the time.” Seeing he didn’t like that idea, I hurried on. “Whispering Pines is a tight community, but in a good way. We’re not living in each other’s pocket, but we’re aware of where the pockets are if we need them.”

I thought about the meeting in the town hall over the break-ins and my own break-ins added into that.

“When they broke into my store and my house, the community pulled together to help me. I got packed off to Lorna’s, and the community banded together to fix the mess.” Looking at the shoppers as they came and went into the grocery store as Caleb parked the Jeep, I sighed. “I don’t think you would get that elsewhere.” I thought about it. “Or bigger towns.”

I saw him give a slight nod, his eyes lingering on the unfamiliar faces for a different reason.

“Whispering Pines is small enough for that sense of community but big enough not to haveeveryone know your business,” I clarified. “And not too big that no one knows who you are.”

He sniffed dismissively. “Sounds like a pack.”

The idea surprised me. Did it? Was that what community was? Pack-like?

“You ready to do this?” he asked, eyeing the grocery store.

“It’s just grocery shopping,” I chided him with a roll of my eyes, “not a military operation.”

He closed his eyes briefly at the slight reprimand. “This is just…different.”

“Different how?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Caleb’s steady gaze met mine. “From what I’m used to.”

His reply left me with a faint sense of unease. A harsh reminder—as if I needed one—that this wasn’t his world any more than his was mine. Had I given any thought before this about how the divide between us was so…wide?

“Come on,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “Let’s go food shopping.”

The groan he made was pretty much the same groananyman made when told they were going grocery shopping.

Maybe the divide wasn’t as wide as I thought.Grinning, I collected a cart while Caleb surveyed the store with a look of distrust and trepidation.

Grocery shopping with Caleb was strangely fascinating. He put more fruit and veg in the cart than I would. He added way more meat than I would, and when I added the snacks I usually bought for Alistair, he picked them back out of the cart.

“Still don’t know if he’s the reason your house was broken into by not beingbrokeninto,” he grumbled. “It’s how I found your key, remember?”

I’d told him about the other break-ins in town during our recent time together, and he’d said nothing, but I knew he had taken the story of my awkwardness when confronted with the townspeople and stored it away to analyze later.

“He’s just a boy,” I reminded him softly. Putting one bag of chips back in the cart.

“Who’s vandalizing other people’s property,” he reminded me, but he let the bag of chips stay in the cart.

By the time we got back to my house, I could tell he was still as tense but seemed tired.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?” I accused him as he started unpacking the groceries. His quick glance up at me confirmed my suspicions. “Caleb! You don’t need to stay up all night and guard me. Honestly, you’rejustas scary being woken in the middle of the night as you would be patrolling outside.”

---