Diana wanted to be waiting for Lanie at the airport when she flew back into Albuquerque. She’d never done that before. She’d always taken for granted that Lanie would find her if she wanted her, but she couldn’t keep using that tactic and expecting things to be different.
And she did want things to be different. She understood, finally, that the puzzle pieces connecting them had been put down in the right sequence all along. She’d been the one blowing them away from each other. She’d let fear ruin her, and she wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Diana stood in baggage claim near the stream of passengers arriving from inbound flights, hoping she’d chosen the right place. After forty minutes, she began to worry that she hadn’t. She looked down at the memo saved in her phone and verified the flight number and time. The sign did say international arrivals.
Finally, Lanie came through the corridor, chatting amiably with a woman holding a briefcase and not looking her way.
Diana called out to her. Blurted, really, not knowing what else to do.
Lanie stopped. Looked. Recognition dawned on her face followed quickly by a beaming smile. She turned to her companion. Evidently, she gave her regards because the lady went her separate way.
Lanie hurried around the barrier, reaching for Diana before Diana could even think to thrust the bouquet she’d been holding at her.
A dozen roses crushed between them as Diana added her own force to the embrace. With an arm wrapped around Lanie and her face buried in her flight-mussed hair, they rocked.
Lanie whispered, “What are you doing here?”
“I figured I shouldn’t make you do all the chasing. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah?”
Diana sniffled. She wasn’t going to cry. She’d committed herself to that goal as soon as she’d climbed into her SUV that morning and headed east. She’d said she wasn’t going to cry, and that she wouldn’t make any more excuses for why they couldn’t be together.
“Do you have a bag?” she asked weakly, and they moved out of the way of the foot traffic.
Cringing, Lanie did her best to fluff up the heads of the roses. “Yeah, it should be bobbing around the conveyor now. I was all the way at the back of the plane. Took forever for me to get off.”
Diana grabbed her free hand and searched for the appropriate carousel. Finding it, she edged Lanie up and swiped her bag as it bobbed toward them.
“Surprised to see you,” Lanie said as they made the trek toward Diana’s vehicle. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled to see you. I just wouldn’t have expected you to come.”
“I’m trying to do better.”
“And…why’s that?” Lanie asked, slowly. Warily.
Diana supposed she deserved that.
Diana didn’t say anything as they approached her SUV and loaded up. She didn’t say much of anything until they were nearing Maria and the beast part of her had calmed down enough for her to put her words in a sensible order.
“I made a lot of mistakes. I want to fix them, if you’ll let me. If you can…stand me.”
“Standing you has never been a burden, Diana. You know that.”
“Maybe not, but I worry that one day, you’ll change your mind, and I’ll be left on my own like my father told me I’d be. The fear of that—well, you don’t know how much it just fucking cripples me. It’s not an easy thing for a shifter to find a mate that our animal halves agree that we should pursue, and even if our drive to keep her is high, the fear of not being enough still rears its ugly head.”
“Of course you’re enough,” Lanie said, grabbing her right hand. “Why the hell did he tell you otherwise?”
Diana didn’t say anything. She didn’t have the words to explain Randall Shapely’s motivations or how, as fathers went, he was one of the worst sorts. It didn’t matter, anyway. Lanie was smart. Eventually, she’d figure things out on her own.
“You’re everything I needed,” Diana said, “and I never even knew I wanted. I thought it would be easier to give you up on my own than to have you stay for years, and then leave after I’ve become too dependent.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I was trying to show you that. You wouldn’t let me.”
“Put yourself in my shoes. No. Actually, don’t. Never do that. Just…keep being you, and I’ll try to accept that you see something in me worth having.”
“Oh, God.” Lanie rolled her eyes.
She didn’t say anything else until Diana had parked behind her building and gathered her things from the trunk.
“Wow. They hung more lights.” Lanie’s assessing, intelligent glaze flitted to each corner of the courtyard and the entrances of the alleyways. “It’s festive, huh?”
“Yeah, it is.” Diana hooked her arm around Lanie’s and guided her to the door of her unit. She suspected her place was a mess, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that. Lanie would understand.
She hoped.
She unlocked the street level door.
Lanie bounded up the steps and through the top door that had been left open.
She stopped on the mat, just like Diana expected. “Christ, what happened? There…seems to have been a struggle.”
Diana joined her at the top and pushed Lanie’s suitcase out of the way. “Yeah, it’s just temporary. I pulled a few things out of storage to make myself a little more comfortable while I renovate, and I haven’t had a chance to put things in place yet.
Lanie turned to her with one eyebrow raised high. “Renovate?”
Diana shrugged. “Why not? It’s a good location. All the Coyote kids know where I am and certainly aren’t shy about coming up to ask for snacks. It’s within walking distance of everything that matters, and…it has good water pressure.” She shifted her weight nervously. “I thought…maybe you could help me with the layout. Blue’s going to help me buy the whole building outright, which means I’ll become a landlord to those assholes downstairs, and—”
“Yes.” Lanie whipped around to look at her and repeated that gorgeous word. “Yes.”
Diana blinked at her, uncertain.
“Ask me, Diana. Ask me whatever it is you’re holding back.”
Diana shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants and shifted her weight again. She didn’t bother asking how Lanie always knew there was something left unsaid. Of course Lanie would know. She was one of the very few people on the planet who was equipped to know.
“Maybe it’s a…pipe dream,” Diana started. “But I thought maybe we could try living together again. Just sometimes, maybe. I know that Maria is kind of in the middle of nowhere, and—”
“Sweetheart, I can work from anywhere.” Lanie moved against her, gripping Diana’s wrists, freeing her hands from her pockets. Twining Diana’s fingers with her own. “What else do you want to tell me, Diana?”
“That…I want you here, and that you terrify me because you’re so fucking brilliant, and I’m a wreck.”
“It’s sweet that you overlook all my flaws.”
“You don’t have any.”
Lanie laughed, loud and long, doubling over at the waist, face going red from the exertion. Diana was finding it difficult not to take the response personally until Lanie straightened up and grabbed both of her hands. “That is exactly why I love you. You want me anyway, even as I am.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Lots of people.”
“They don’t matter. You’re mine.”
Lanie grinned. “Am I?”
“Yes. And I’m not going to punish myself anymore. I’m going to let myself believe that you’re mine for a reason, and I’m going to be good to you. The best to you.”
“That was all I ever asked for, Diana.”
“I know. I wasted our time, but I’m going to make up for it.”
Lanie’s brows snapped together. “Oh?”
Diana shifted her weight. She knew Lanie wasn’t going to refuse her, but getting the words out was still difficult. Diana was truly putting herself out on a ledge. “We…could get married after the full moon?” She could hear the pounding of her heart in her ears and she stared at the floor because the floor couldn’t judge her for being so emotionally disordered and messy. She was afraid to see doubt on Lanie’s face when for so long, there’d been conviction. “I kind of have my hands tied before then, you see.”
“Yes.”
Diana looked up again.
Lanie’s smile was serene.
Smug, even.
“Yes?” Diana confirmed in a weak warble.
“Of course,” Lanie said emphatically, and then repeated in a tender whisper, “Yes.”
Oh.
The wild beast inside of Diana pawed at the seams of her consciousness and seemed to dance in told-you-so triumph. The human side of her couldn’t help but smile and to breathe. Finally, deeply breathe.
“Anything I can do to help?” Lanie pulled Diana’s head down so they were forehead-to-forehead, lips-to-lips. “With your full moon problem, I mean.”
“You’re always trying to troubleshoot my problems.”
“Just being a team player. Obviously, I’m going to do whatever I can to get you to come home to me sooner.”
“I see.”
She liked the idea of Lanie being at home—in her kitchen, on her sofa, in her bed—very much.
“I’m sure I could think of something you can do,” Diana whispered. She pressed her forehead against Lanie’s and closed her eyes. They rocked a few gentle beats in time to the holiday music in the town square she hadn’t even been paying attention to before.
She let herself be soothed by the woman standing on her welcome mat. More than that, she allowed the doubts to be chased away by her triumphant inner coyote that had been trying to get her to be brave all along.
Diana had been brave about every other thing in her life, but Lanie had been her biggest obstacle. The heart was such a delicate thing. It didn’t matter if the person who owned it had sharp teeth and claws on occasion.
“Tell me what to do,” Diana whispered to her. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Love me as much as I love you. That’d be a proper start. We’ll figure out the rest one day at a time. Between the two of us, that should be a piece of cake. Okay?”
Diana nodded. Agreeing to that was the easiest decision she’d ever made.