Slow Shift by Nazarea Andrews (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📗

reads. They stay that way for hours, Chase’s fingers drifting through his hair, and he never smells sad.

He smells content, like pack and home and happiness.

~*~

“You’re taking me to prom,” Aurora says abruptly, a week after his birthday, and Chase blinks at her.

He’s faced werewolves and magic and fucking witches, and nothing had the ability to knock him off kilter quite as quickly as Aurora fucking Black.

“You have a boyfriend,” Chase says dumbly.

Aurora’s eyes narrow. “I have your tie. We’ll go shopping this Saturday.”

“But I spend Saturday with Tyler and Lucas!”

Aurora makes a noise that can only be described as a growl, and Chase sits back. “I’ll explain it. Go Friday or something. No worries.”

She nods once and collapses next to him on the couch.

“Jamison broke up with me,” she says softly. “He’s going with Douglas.”

“Shit,” he says and she laughs, a wet, sad thing. He nudges her gently and asks, “Wanna get drunk and complain about boys?”

She nods and he smiles into her hair as she cuddles close to him, small and angry. “Boys are the worst.”

~*~

“You’re going to prom,” Lucas says flatly. “With Aurora.”

Chase gives him a nervous look. “Um, that was a lot of judgment, Lucas.”

“There would be,” Lucas says tartly, making a face as Chase steadies him, going over a log. “What about Tyler?”

Chase flushes. “What about Tyler?”

The look Lucas gives him is so unimpressed it makes him wilt.

“I was non-responsive,” Lucas says mildly, “not dead. And not deaf.”

“How much do you remember?” Chase asks, the question he hasn’t asked until now, the question he isn’t sure he wants an answer to.

Lucas draws him to a stop, his face gentle. “Everything, sweetheart. I remember everything. So I’m going to ask you again. What about Tyler?”

“Tyler doesn’t want me like that,” Chase says, looking away. He feels sick, exposed. Every secret he never expected to be heard was and it makes him want to run. He shakes it off and focuses on Lucas, on the conversation. “Besides, he won’t care. It’s not like that with Aurora, you know it’s not.”

Lucas watches him and sighs. “Chase, you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

~*~

Tyler is watching him as he talks, and each word hurts a little more.

“We’re going to go with Ben and Brielle.”

“She’s already got her dress, I’ve just got to get a tux.”

“It’ll be fun.”

His boy is grinning and bright, almost luminescent in the moonlight as he walks Chase home, and his hands won’t stop moving. It makes something in him ache with familiar fondness—this clumsy boy with his easy grace so quickly forgotten when something excites him.

And he’s excited now.

He’s excited in a way that Tyler can’t make him, an excitement that’s from being normal, and Tyler can’t give him that, even though there’s a piece of him that aches too.

Chase bumps into him, their shoulders brushing and he doesn’t know when that happened, when the little sad-eyed boy he walked through the forest grew up into the broad-shouldered grinning young man at his side. “You ok?”

Tyler nods and smiles, tight and not quite real. “I’m glad you’re going. I know—you’ve been in love with Aurora for a long time.” He shifts and clears his throat. “She’s lucky to have someone like you.”

To have you.

Chase stares at him for a long time, some of that bright shiny excitement dimmer now. He reaches for Tyler, catching him by the nape of his neck, squeezing gently, before he says softly, “G’night, big guy.”

~*~

It sits in his gut, a sharp hook of knowledge, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

He’s known Tyler since he was fourteen, and he thinks that there is no one, not even Lucas or his dad, who knows him the way Tyler does, with a perceptive familiarity that makes his blood thrum, his heart flip, and his pulse steady.

But if Tyler knows him that well, then the opposite is true.

Chase knows Tyler. Even with his guilt-soaked secrets, he knows the older man, and he knows that possessive, jealous gleam in Tyler’s eyes.

He just doesn’t know what the hell to do with it.

~*~

Prom is...lackluster.

Even being here on Aurora’s arm, it’s strange. Neither of them are having fun, but he thinks at least they’re not having fun together.

“You miss him, don’t you?” she asks while they’re dancing to something ridiculously romantic that is almost ironic at this point, and he nods.

There is no way Tyler could have been here, no way he even wanted to be here, but it still makes him lonely and sad to not see him lurking near the tables, eyebrows drawn into a scowl and lips tipped into a small smile.

“Same as you miss Jamison.”

“You have a chance with yours,” she says.

He laughs. “Mine is ten years older and has been acting like my older brother since I stumbled into his falling down house and never left.”

She shrugs. “Yours looks at you like you hung the moon, Chase.” She glances at where Jamison and Douglas are pressed close, and Douglas is smiling at something Jamison is whispering in his ear, his eyes soft, and she clears her throat. “He smiles at you like that.”

“Aurora,” Chase says, but there’s no real argument he can make because he knows. Maybe he’s known since before Lucas’s cryptic conversation in the woods, maybe he’s known since the morning he woke up in bed with them, when Tyler held him close, like he was precious and treasured.

“Just—don’t be too scared to take a chance on him,” she says and pulls away. “Come on, I want to get milkshakes and watch Adult Swim wearing fancy clothes.”

He smiles at her. “You kinda complete me,” he says fondly.

She snorts. “Of course I do. We’re obviously better together.” She wrinkles her nose., “But not as—”

“No,” he agrees, and she grins at him. “Not as.”

~*~

The thing is, he isn’t scared.

He’s terrified.

But as the school year ends and the days lengthen and grow warm, he thinks maybe it’s ok.

~*~

He’s cooking when Tyler walks in. Without really thinking, he listens for Lucas and