Page 10 of Coached By the Grumpy Gargoyle

Bram

I wake up warm. That's a first.

Gargoyles are never warm. Something is wrong with me. Something is very, very wrong.

This morning my skin is still holding heat like a woodstove, and I lie there half asleep inside my own heat bubble for one long, stupid second, reaching an arm across the bed.

Nothing.

I open my eyes and slide my hand farther across the mattress. There's nobody there. I leave my hand on her side of the bed for a moment, listening for movement downstairs.

Again, nothing.

I sit up. The moonlight across the floorboards has given way to the flat gray of a November morning, and the floor at the foot of the bed is empty. Her clothes were there last night. I could swear it. I look toward the landing, then the glass doors, as if she's going to appear and explain why I'm waking up alone.

Last night she fell asleep under my wing. I lay there a little longer, with her heartbeat steady against my chest, thinking, with the last working corner of my brain, that I was going to make her waffles the next morning.

Waffles, coffee, fresh berries. I was going to feed her and pamper her. Looks like she had other plans.

Plans that didn’t include me, apparently.

I go downstairs, listening as I make my way through the nest. In the hallway, there's my shirt, alone on the floorboards with its torn seam, like the last man standing after a party. Her coat, purse, and shoes are gone.

Okay. I know what this means. It means she got dressed, gathered everything up, and let herself out, and I didn't hear a damn thing.

The notepad hangs by the kitchen doorway. I check it, but not with much hope.

I stand in my own kitchen in the gray light and look at a blank pad of paper for longer than I will ever admit to another living soul, like maybe she wrote in invisible ink.

She left without a single word.

Not even a thank you. I'd have framed a thank-you note.

She could have woken me. Said she wanted to go. I'd have taken her home, and we could have endured an uncomfortable trip together like adults. Instead, she snuck out like a thief in the night.

Shit. Looks like Rory Hale has no appetite for my breakfast feast. Or my company, apparently.

I can’t help but feel the sharp pang of disappointment as I realize she may want nothing more to do with me than a one-night stand. It stings, sure. I was already planning on feeding her and taking her for another long flight to a little island offshore this weekend.

Guess it won’t happen now.

I drag a hand down my face, and something scrapes. Stone on stone. A small hard catch against my jaw where there should be nothing but knuckle.

I hold my hand up to the window light. There's a band around my left ring finger. The raised stone is smooth and seamless, rising from the granite at the base of my finger. I turn my hand over. It goes all the way around.

It was not there yesterday. I spread my fingers, then curl them slowly. The band moves with me, part of my hand. Part of my body.

I press my thumb to it. There's no edge to get beneath, nothing to pull off. I know that before I try, but I try anyway.

Because I know what this is. Every gargoyle knows what this is. It's the first lore anybody teaches you, before flight, before anything, back when you're still small enough to climb the furniture.

Gargoyles mate once. The bond begins on contact. It completes on its own, silently. Irrevocably, etched on a gargoyle’s skin as permanently as stone carvings. I stare at the mating band.

Fuck. There’s only one explanation for a mating band appearing on my finger.

Rory Hale is my mate.

I put my other hand flat on the counter. This is the part where I would have gotten upstairs and woken her. Shown her my hand. Tried to explain why I'm standing beside the bed looking like I've forgotten how to speak. The part where I would have told her what this means to me, what this means to her if she’d given me a chance.