She'd fallen asleep on his shoulder, and it was all Finn could do not to shift into jaguar form and curl his body protectively around hers. And that would certainly get the stewardess's panties in a twist, the shifter thought with wry amusement.
Instead of causing an international incident, Finn settled for gently stroking his companion's hair and replaying the preceding conversation over and over again in his mind. The inevitable conclusion was as simple as it was profound—he and Ixchel were friends.
It shouldn't have come as a startling realization, but the vet was the first human around whom Finn had allowed himself to let down his guard in...well...ever. And Ixchel had responded by sharing the details of her own checkered past, even though she clearly expected to be judged lacking in the process.
Although why I'd think less of her when she didn't do anything wrong is beyond me.
But Finn would be the first one to admit that families were confusing. So it was no surprise that Ixchel's troubled brothers and murdered parents had left the vet feeling regretful even though the teenaged version of Ixchel had done the best she could with the few tools she'd had on hand.
The next time she faces her brothers, I'll be by her side, Finn resolved. And if those bastards didn't man up and apologize to their sister for being arrogant assholes, then the shifter would make their lives a living hell until they did the right thing.
It was simple, really.
What was less simple was the elements of Finn's own history that he'd glossed over in his own version of sharing. The manipulations, the sneaking around, the outright thievery that made up such a large portion of his past...and present. Based on Ixchel's reaction to her brothers' behavior, the shifter could guess that she wouldn't be thrilled to know that the cash paying their way to Mexico originated in ancient Egyptian funerary goods. That the clothes he planned to buy in order to replace that adorable but eye-catching lab coat would be funded by a Monet recently snagged out of a major museum.
I should've just told her. The shifter had started to spill his guts when Ixchel had finished her own tale of woe. The vet probably would've understood how a newly made man dropped into the human world with no family or means of making a living would turn to crime to pay the bills.
And it was a point in his favor that Finn had never been violent. He didn't even carry a gun, and the bullet hole that throbbed whenever he turned his arm the wrong way was the only wound he'd ever received in the pursuit of ill-gotten gain.
After all, as a were-jaguar, it was simple to slip in through upper-story windows, to slink around laser-based alarms, to leap over ten-foot fences. He was a darned good cat burglar and didn't need firepower to snag what he was after.
But Ixchel likely wouldn't see that as a selling point in a potential mate. And Finn wanted to get closer to the vet too much to risk losing her over his profession. Surely he could keep the two avenues of his current life separate until Ixchel trusted him a little more...and until he thought through an alternative way to make a living.
Keep telling yourself that, you schmuck. Omitting this rather important element of his own life story had been a bad choice and Finn knew it. But a cat would almost always choose present pleasure over the nebulous "right thing to do."
And, at heart, Finn was very much a cat. So he continued stroking Ixchel's hair in silence until he, like his companion, drifted off into a doze.