Grasp Heart

Chapter 22: Wild Love Interest #2 Appears

An ease relaxed the atmosphere after my lighthearted comment, pervading the conversation like cream through black coffee. Neither Terry nor Ray asked aloud what they certainly were wondering, but the seeding the idea that I was 'in the know' intrigued them enough to lay off about my boyfriend.

"If I brought Morgan out here, she'd complain the whole time," Terry muttered, settling back after Ray caught our third fish of the day: another steelhead, "You really don't mind the lot of us geezers?"

"Not in the slightest," I shrugged, sifting through the photos I'd taken of Ray's fish. I pocketed the device, satisfied, "All I ask is that I torment you with photographic documentation. Scott, where's your fish? Are you trying to spite me?"

"Nope," he said, conspicuously looking the other way.

"I'll get you yet."

"Yeah, yeah."

"She'll get a second Coho before you snag anything," Terry chuckled.

"There you go! He can hold your spoils for you in the group photo!"

Ray laughed and Scott sagged morosely back into his chair.

"I haven't been outdone yet. We still have the better part of the afternoon."

I perked up at the sound of an engine over the rush of flowing waters. It wasn't quite loud enough for the humans to hear just yet, but loud enough to determine that the car's engine was old. The noise lingered long enough for me to deduce that it was idling; a newcomer had entered the park area. The sound eventually cut off and I listened closely to the path for the soft footfalls that would track out.

On the edge of my seat, I waited. Silence.

It was the subtle clatter of stones almost directly behind us that finally made me jump from my seat, raise both fists, and turn around, wide-eyed.

"Hey," the man raised both his hands in surrender.

A hefty clatter signaled the drop of a cooler he'd been carrying.

"Ho!" Terry huffed, hand over his heart.

"Damn it all, Caleb," Ray breathed out.

Caleb scratched the back of his head self consciously, still keeping one palm aloft. Both hands were weathered and calloused but clean. Well, aside from some dirt or oil smudges around the fingernails. Likely permanent from whatever craft that had roughened them up.

Like his father, Caleb had long black hair, with casually loose strands about his face that showed he let it grow a little longer. The rest was tied up into a messy bun at the back of his head. Though that messiness had a carefree air to it rather than a true disorganization. He had the same tone of tan skin as Ray, but perhaps a little richer given his youth. He stared at me in open curiosity, with brown eyes framed by thick black lashes.

"Caleb, Sara, Sara, Caleb," Ray prompted when neither of us moved.

I swallowed, then eased up to offer my hand to him. He blinked, his full lips parting as if to say something, but didn't manage it. Instead, he dwarfed my hand with his large one. Immediately, my palm was smothered with a deep heat.

I almost gasped, but worked hard to temper my surprise:

Skinchanger!

The supernatural species that, like the mammalian species they most commonly morphed between, ran at temperatures hotter than humans. There had been marine-mammal skin changers documented and even some reptilian, but I could tell by temperature that Caleb could change into a land-mammal of some kind.