10. Juan

10

JUAN

J uan was not sure what the protocol was for attending a dinner with his mate and her husband and child. It wasn't quite an event for his interview suit, and he didn't have time to drive to Milwaukee for it anyway, but he dressed in office casual with a button-up shirt and khakis. He considered and dismissed flowers, but finally settled on a cheap bottle of wine. It probably wasn't strong enough, but he didn't want to arrive completely empty-handed.

He still had to sit in the car for a moment and steel himself.

What was he doing? He ought to turn around and drive away, but he'd agreed to come, and Dean wasn't wrong: pretending it hadn't happened wasn't going to fix anything. Juan knew that if Deirdre felt anything like he did, the damage was already done to their marriage, and he wanted to own his part in that pain and fix it if he could.

He walked stiffly to the door and rang the bell, setting off the dog inside .

"Back, Bingo!" Dean's voice was familiar. "Get back, you mutt!"

Bingo had no desire to get back, but his cone didn't fit around Dean's knees when the door was cracked. He craned his head and barked. Dean wrestled him back as Juan came in and shut the door behind him before he could escape, the whole operation hindered by a gleeful toddler who wanted to be right in the middle of the action.

He knelt and gave Bingo scratches and pats, sending the dog into a full-body wiggle of joy before he flopped himself over on his side. Aaron threw himself down on top of him. "MY DOGGY!"

Juan stood back up and thrust the bottle at Dean. "I wasn't sure what the customs were for this kind of conversation."

"I think we're all making it up as we go," Dean said wryly, but he took the bottle. "We might need this."

Then Juan turned as if he'd been drawn by a string, and Deirdre was standing in the door to the kitchen, wringing her hands in an apron.

She was so perfect. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, though Juan was sure that she was. She was dear . She was beloved . She was his .

Juan still wasn't sure he ought to be there, but he also wasn't sure how he could possibly be anywhere else. There was a connection between them that was impossible to deny.

"We're having spaghetti," Dean said gruffly. He could not have missed the sizzle between them.

"SPETTI!" Aaron seemed blissfully ignorant that anything was wrong, and he scampered for the dining room.

"I like spaghetti," Juan said faintly. "Spaghetti seems very safe . "

"You must never have seen a two-year-old eat spaghetti," Dean said wryly.

"I cleaned out the pantry instead of getting supper ready," Deirdre said apologetically. "But fortunately, spaghetti doesn't take long to throw together."

A timer in the kitchen went off.

"SPETTI!"

Dean edged past Deirdre into the kitchen carefully and Deirdre even more carefully led Juan into a dining room where three seats had been set.

"I CAN!" Aaron insisted, climbing into the highchair at the end of the table.

Juan had not considered the complications of seating. The table was too long to put them evenly around on four sides, would he sit across from Deirdre and try not stare at her, or next to her, staring at Dean? Deirdre neatly solved that by sitting at the end of the table and moving Aaron's highchair—with him in it shrieking in delight—to face Juan. Dean sat on the other side of Aaron after he'd served plates piled with noodles and sauce.

Aaron was the perfect tablemate, making conversation that Juan could make absolutely no sense out of, enthusiastically and messily eating more noodles (no sauce) than Juan would have guessed possible.

"So, Juan, what do you do?" Dean sounded like he was trying not to growl.

Juan had braced himself for other questions but answered this one easily. "Despite thrilling opportunities in corn detasseling, I'm actually a technical analyst. I've got a foot-in-the-door internship starting with Crest Computers in Milwaukee in a few weeks. What about you?" He remembered as he asked that both Dean and Deirdre clearly worked at the hardware store, and it was a foolish question .

"Auto mechanic," Dean said briefly.

Deirdre added, "We own the hardware store, too. And Dean volunteers for the fire department." She seemed to realize that they were both looking at her. "I work for the school district," she blurted. "Administration at the high school. Plus, the hardware store. And mom. That's a job. And Dean's a dad!" she added hastily. "That's a job, too." She was painfully uncomfortable and Juan had to keep his hand from reaching for her. That would only make it worse.

"Parenting is definitely a full-time thing," Juan said, as mildly as he could. "What about you, Aaron? What do you do?"

Aaron stared at him and tried to eat the noodles off his hand with variable success. Everyone chuckled.

Conversation was stilted, and limited to Aaron and eating and appreciation of the decor and discussion of the weather, until Deirdre finally sighed. "We really should discuss this. "

This. The simmering this between Deirdre and Juan.

Juan finished his last mouthful and wiped his mouth on a checkered napkin. "I told Dean, I should just leave town. I shouldn't be here. I can't…you have a family! I can absolutely not violate your vows."

"I couldn't either," Deirdre said, just as firmly.

Dean said flatly, "Family can be a lot of odd shapes."

For a moment, Juan wondered if he was suggesting polyamory. His jaguar rose up with a surge of possessiveness. No sharing. That was definitely not going to work, and he wasn't sure what to do if both Deirdre and Dean were into it. He shot a helpless look at Deirdre.

To Juan's relief, Dean was swift to explain. "I'm not suggesting anything kinky! I just meant that we could split custody and Aaron can still grow up well-adjusted. People get divorced all the time."

Divorce.

The word hung in the air between them.

Divorce would leave them free to pursue… this.

"Dean…" Deirdre's voice was soft and full of pain.

"An uncontested, no-fault divorce takes one hundred and twenty days of separation from filing to ratify." Dean said crisply.

"You looked it up?"

Juan knew that he was witnessing a tough moment between the two, so he made faces at Aaron, who chortled and waved noodles around. Bingo lay on the floor behind the highchair, creeping forward to try to slurp up dropped noodles. His success was severely limited by his cone.

"The details are all online," Dean said grimly. "I figured we should understand what we might be talking about. We'd have to go to the county court, file some paperwork together with declarations of material possessions and custody, then come back for a final hearing at the end of the waiting period."

"A hundred and twenty days. Four months ." Juan didn't realize that he'd spoken out loud until Deirdre glanced at him, her eyes big and blue.

"Four months," she echoed.

"You wouldn't have to wait," Dean said wearily. "I wouldn't use it to contest the settlement or anything."

"I would wait," Deirdre said fiercely. "But Dean, are you sure?"

"Are you sure?" he said back just as fiercely. "Is this what you want?"

Even Aaron could pick up on the tension between them, and he put a fist in one mouth and looked back and forth nervously .

Deirdre's gaze slowly swung to Juan, and he was lost in her beauty and strength. He would wait a lifetime for this woman, if that's what it took. He could see the conflict in her face, and he hated the role he played in that pain.

"You're both shifters, and I am too," he said honestly, looking between Deirdre and Dean. "We already live on the edge of magic and mundane, and my grandmother always told me that I would know my mate when we met and that nothing could keep us apart. I don't think she ever considered this particular set of circumstances. I'm not happy to break up a family. I would rather leave and live alone forever than cause any of you pain."

Deirdre laid her fork carefully on the edge of her plate. "I'm sorry, Juan. I know you came here thinking that being a mate might trump my marriage, but Dean is not just my husband, he's also my best friend. I can't leave him and Aaron just because my deer says you're the one. I wish…I wish I didn't have to choose. But if I have to, I choose Dean."

" Save me ," Dean said, jolting Juan from the spell of Deirdre's words. "Look, Juan, I don't know you from Adam, but Deirdre, you cannot fool me for a minute with your martyr speech. The two of you are absolutely mad for each other! I don't want to be the thing that kept you apart. We should all be straight up honest about this and do what's best, not what's easiest. It might take a little demolition to get this house to the right structure, and I want to do it correctly, not build up a bunch of extra stories on a broken foundation. I was your best friend before I was your husband, Deirdre, and I'm not going to shackle you to a relationship you'd only end up resenting."

Aaron, not getting any attention with his noodle antics, decided they were better worn on his head and laughed enough for all of them .

Juan had been on drama and debate teams in high school, and this was his penultimate battle, trying to convince Deirdre and Dean and his own jaguar that he was sincere in his resolution to leave their marriage untouched. He even suggested waiting until Aaron was grown up. But Dean was just as firm that the damage was already done, and the best path forward was for him to step back. At one point, Juan feared they really were going to come to blows, but Deirdre put a hand on Dean's arm and he settled.

"It's the bear in me," Dean said, rubbing his head sheepishly.

"I'm a jaguar," Juan said. "Stubborn to a fault."

"Deirdre has a type, apparently," Dean said. He stood. "It's getting late. I'll get Aaron cleaned up and down to bed, you two can have a moment."

Aaron was swaying in his chair and rubbing his eyes, but he still protested when Dean went to lift him from the highchair. "NO."

Sleepy kitten , Juan's jaguar said fondly.

Deirdre stood as well, and began clearing the dishes.

"Let me help," Juan said, and he gathered plates and followed her into the kitchen, where they were suddenly alone together for the first time since they met.

"Juan—" Deirdre said, just as Juan said, "Deirdre?—"

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to comfort her and hold her in his arms and tell her that whatever happened, it would be okay and he would never love her less for choosing another man. "Whatever you decide?—"

"I won't break my vows just because I met my mate," she said firmly. Juan's heart sank, only to rise again when she added, "but I didn't actually consider the possibility of ending them. "

"I wouldn't ask that of either of you," Juan assured her. "I didn't come here angling for you to divorce ."

Deirdre gave a tiny smile at the side of her mouth. "I know. I mean, I barely know you, we've hardly even met, but…I know ."

" Yes ." It was like he could see straight into Deirdre's soul. She didn't want to hurt her husband, but it felt impossible to deny the connection that they had. Was divorce the only solution? He couldn't see another. "It's four months. If you file and change your mind, I would never hold it against you. I would never blame you for choosing Dean after all."

"Four months."

"Think of it as having some time to decide," Juan said. Four months of staying away, of figuring out what a life with her would even look like. He'd need a house, a place with room for Aaron, a carseat for his car…maybe another job. The internship was a great opportunity for a single man, but it wouldn't pay the bills for a family, and it didn't come with health benefits. Suddenly, four months didn't look like enough time. "Four months."

"Four months," Dean said from the doorway, like it was decided.

And maybe it was.