Bear’s Midlife Surprise: A Fated Mate Shifter Romance (Bear Mates Over Forty Book 4), page 6
He wasn’t worried about their stomachs. Those would be taken care of. He was worried about that crease in January’s brow and the way her eyes kept darting around the place. Since she had to lean in so far to say anything, she’d pretty much given up trying to talk to him. It was that loud in the place. For a little hole-in-the-wall joint, the secret was definitely out. Every booth and table were packed, and a huge line extended out the door and past the front windows. Good thing he’d done what the reviewers recommended and come early or late. In their case, late.
He very much wanted to make small talk, even if he was normally not great at it, but the roar in the place made it impossible. He didn’t want January to be uncomfortable. In a spur of the moment decision, he got up from his side of the booth. She looked at him pensively, tensing up. Did she think he was going to bail? No way. He’d come this far. It seemed almost like a dream or a fairy tale that he was here at all. When it came to January, all of him was awake, but he still didn’t even really know how this had come about.
Leg injury. Tire. Mouse. A few agonizing days’ wait. City. This moment.
That was pretty much it, but the events didn’t knit themselves together properly in his head.
He bent down so she would hear him. “Would you mind if we shared the bench? That way we can hear each other.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, which made blood rush to his groin, and nodded. She’d curled her hair, and it was bouncy and soft looking. The chestnut gleam caught the light. She’d also put on just a bare amount of makeup and he liked the coral hue of her blush and lip gloss and the way her eyelashes looked ridiculously long and full. He liked the flowy bright green dress with the white polka dots and the little purple cardigan even more. She’d chosen bright yellow shoes. She wasn’t afraid to wear color or be loud or stand out. She shouldn’t be.
She scooted over, then reached across the table and grabbed his placemat, the knife and fork bundle, and slid his water glass over. Her smile was warm. She might have been hesitant when he’d seen her at the cabin, but it seemed like she’d decided something between then and now. When he picked her up, she had the same ready, stunning smile.
June’s smile was three times as large and her little boys were beyond cute, dancing around at the door and cheering their auntie on.
June’s husband gave him a warning look that said he might just be a brother-in-law, and Tavish might outweigh him by a good hundred or so pounds, but he wasn’t above kicking ass if he had to.
“The smells are divine,” January said, attempting conversation.
He leaned in close to her. Too close. He had to pull back.
“Yes,” he agreed, but the kitchen had nothing on her. He didn’t want to give her creep vibes. “Your sister said you work from home.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She rolled her eyes, but her lips twitched. “I do.”
“What do you do?”
“Floor plans.”
“Floor plans?” Of all the at home jobs he’d thought about, his mind whirring ever since the steak dinner at the cabin, he hadn’t thought of that.
“I design them. I’m an architectural technologist. I sell them online. Some are pre-made and some I do custom. If you knew how much some places charged for those, you’d understand why it’s a thing to buy them for cheap.”
“Makes sense. Building a house is a big commitment. You want the blueprints to be perfect, so it comes out exactly how you imagined. That’s incredible that you do that.”
“Oh.” She looked towards the wall by the booth this time. There was a picture of a chicken drum there, framed and everything. It looked like it was taken in the back kitchen, which was the best part of it. The whole place was like that. He couldn’t figure out if it was supposed to be a joke or not, and that’s what made it so good. “It’s not really all that incredible. Just a few years of school and learning the software.”
“I think it takes more than that.”
“You’re probably right.” Her smile was hesitant, like she was afraid of tooting her own horn too hard. “But I was always good at math, and I learned fast. I’m not all that creative, which is why I picked floor plans and not interior design.”
“What does your house look like?”
She seemed instantly panicked, but then lost the expression fast when he smiled warmly, or at least he hoped it was warm and not weird to follow up with that question. “It’s just an apartment right now. When I got divorced, I didn’t really want anything. We had to sell the house because we couldn’t afford to buy each other out. I didn’t really care much about what I bought when I moved in. I just wanted a comfortable bed and a nice big chair to sit in and read. The rest is just thrifted. It doesn’t match, it’s not designer, and it’s not even nice for the most part. I do have a few quilts that people gave me, handmade, and some artwork that I’d collected over the years from trade shows and friends, so I kept that. If friends gave it to me, it doesn’t have bad memories attached. Actually, nothing had bad memories. I just didn’t want it. I was just done.”
“I can understand that.”
“Are you divorced too?”
She had no idea that his longest relationship was only a few nights. It got complicated when you couldn’t explain to a person that you were also a bear in your free time. Even now that they were allowed to take human mates, it was still unimaginably hard to think about how to tell January.
And he was thinking about telling her. Or, at least, he wanted to. That wanting dumped a burst of adrenaline through his veins. He could barely sit still and twitched slightly on the bench, but January didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m not, no. I can just understand that some things have an ending, and you don’t want to keep moving forward thinking about them. I understand talking about it isn’t what a person wants to be doing either. You don’t have to explain yourself. I’m sorry if I was prying.”
“No, it’s okay.” Her left eye twitched twice and he wasn’t sure if she was going to grimace or smile, but she didn’t do either. She straight-faced it. “You’re not prying. And thank you for understanding that it sucks talking about it. I’m pretty much at the point where I never want to talk about it again.”
“That’s your right. Things sometimes don’t work. It doesn’t need a lot of explaining. You want to move forward and not keep getting held back. I think that’s admirable.”
She grinned at him unexpectedly. “I’m sorry, I’m not used to hanging out with someone who doesn’t use a filter. I’ve spent too many days isolated in a tiny cabin with my sister. You’re refreshing.”
He wanted to be refreshing for her. He wanted to be a whole lot more than that.
There was the briefest span of time where he felt like she’d lean in close and maybe discreetly put her hand on his knee. Maybe lean in closer and taste his lips. He could be refreshing for her in so many ways. She’d no doubt taste like—
Bang! Crash!
Something exploded in the background. It trigged a violent buzzing in his head, a pounding at his temples, and a wild prickling under his skin. He knew what that feeling was. His eyes whipped wildly around, trying to locate the source of the noise. It didn’t sound like someone had dropped something. It sounded like windows being shot out. A car crashing into the building. Something disastrous and awful happening. His heart raced hard. The adrenaline he’d felt a few minutes ago was nothing compared to the painful ratcheting up of his pulse.
He saw nothing, but his vision was dimming. Clouding up. The prickling under his skin was something he couldn’t fight. He was losing a battle against the bear. The bear wanted to come out.
Tavish couldn’t sit there and sweat it out. That wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t just fighting a battle, he was straight up losing. Panic and fear hit him like a black cloud, dimming his vision further.
He shot up from the table, shoving his way out of the booth. He had to get out of here. It was too loud. Too many people. Too many smells. But it was mainly the people. If the bear came out, they would all see it. It would be the worst disaster that could ever happen. Why now? Why fucking now?
He clawed a hand over his eyes and his fingers came away soaked. He was drenched in sweat.
“Tavish?” January was freaked out. She put out a hand to him. He was standing there, panting like a wild man. “What—”
He whirled and took off, pushing through the crowded restaurant as fast as he could go. He nearly took out a stunned waitress, but she dodged to the side, and he raced past her. He burst out the front glass door, which was still perfectly intact. No one had driven a car through the building. No one had shot anything.
All he could do was search the area wildly. Why hadn’t he come prepared for something like this to happen? Why didn’t he have an emergency plan, an escape route, an alley memorized or somewhere dark and quiet? Right. Because things like this didn’t happen to him. His bear didn’t just break out like this.
It was going to break out. He was going to shift and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Frantic, he raced down the sidewalk, using all the energy he had, clinging to the shards of self-control splintering and breaking up inside him. He fractured harder with every step. The plates that held him together were being ripped apart to create an entirely new universe. One that wasn’t human in form.
Whipping his head from side to side, Tavish could only run and search with what little vision he had left. It was turning into a tunnel, the black settling in hard around the edges. The smells assaulted him from every direction, more acute than they should have been. The noises were louder, horns honking, the sound of engines, people talking from blocks away.
God, it was happening. He had a minute, maybe two at most.
He had to find somewhere where no one would see him. Sure, a bear could run through the city. It wasn’t unheard of. At best he’d probably get tranquilized and relocated. Or fucking put down—that was the worst-case scenario. But even worse than that was anyone witnessing the shift when it happened. Recording it. Getting evidence that other people would see and very likely believe, even though a video could easily be edited and doctored to look like anything. If even one person believed it, they could all be in trouble.
The kind of trouble that could be the start of the end of everything.
Chapter 8
January
January had turned her entire life upside down on her own terms when she’d divorced. No one had seen it coming but her, so for her, things weren’t so inside out, and she wasn’t so blindsided like her family. She was getting a small taste of that when Tavish stood up like the grim fucking reaper had just appeared over her shoulder, gone white as death itself, and then turned and ran out the front door.
One minute, she was thinking about how attractive he was and how she was happy she’d agreed to the date, because Tavish was so electrifying, and the next, Tavish wasn’t even there. She was left shocked, staring at an empty space, still aching to close the distance between them, which was currently impossible.
It lasted for only a few seconds. She tore a fifty out of her purse and slapped it on the table for the trouble of everyone involved and careened through the restaurant much the same way Tavish had, barely clearing tables and people and bursting out the door.
There were very few men who looked like Tavish. Not many professional athletes or wrestlers or six foot five or so broad and muscly dudes walking around taking up the whole sidewalk—taking up all the oxygen in the city, drawing her attention and holding it like they were the world.
It might have just been his shadow, but it was enough. She took a hard left, the cold air hitting her skin and cooling down the inferno bubbling inside. Was she angry? Shocked? Astounded? Curious? Confused?
A small dose of wariness closed in on her, puncturing her lungs like metal shards and making it hard to breathe as she ran. Tavish didn’t seem like the kind of person who would just get up and leave. Had something scared him? Something was off.
What if he was involved in something terrible? Something illegal? What if he was running from someone that he’d seen in the restaurant? Was he the kind of man who would put her in danger? She didn’t think so, but what did she know?
She charged towards the alley anyway, a storm of her own.
She wasn’t fearless, bold, or brave. She didn’t think if someone was messing with Tavish she’d be enough to take them on by herself, but at least she could call for help. Her good judgement told her to stay well away from that alley, but she rounded the bend anyway.
It was the narrow, dead-end variety lined by four- or five-story buildings and a few dumpsters here and there.
Tavish wasn’t running to the end. His boots pounded over slushy wet pavement and then stopped. He didn’t turn. He just rocked abruptly on the balls of his feet like he’d slammed face first into an invisible wall.
January heard the noise before she saw anything change.
The snap and crunch that sounded like dry twigs being stepped on in the woods. Pops and crunches and strange sucking sounds that those rotisserie chickens sometimes made when she picked the meat off them and pulled off the wings or drums to get at the rest.
She didn’t know a human body could do that.
She didn’t know a human body could shred clothes, the seams bursting apart down the center with a fraying rip that split into the cool early evening air. She didn’t know that a human body could sprout fur, or that it could go from smooth skin to a glistening sheen of dark brown in only a few seconds. She didn’t know that a human body could turn into an animal body.
That a man could become a bear.
Shit. What was happening?
She was sure that she was witnessing wasn’t real and at the same time that it was, and that it was forbidden. She was sure that she shouldn’t be here. That what she was seeing was a highly classified secret. Or if she’d gone completely crazy. It was like two worlds colliding together.
And then a set of big, brown eyes, not at all human but completely those of the animal they belonged to, brown and deep and bearlike, turned on her.
A chill crept over her skin and wild fear ate at her insides.
Run. Hide.
That was a bear. Tavish had been here a second ago and then his clothes had ripped off and his body changed and there was a bear here now. She’d blame the chicken and some wicked indigestion on what she was seeing, but she hadn’t eaten. Hunger pangs? No, she’d had lunch. Could a grilled cheese cause hallucinations? Was it June’s idea of a joke to shove mushrooms in there and she was tripping?
June didn’t do mushrooms. She hadn’t even ever smoked a cigarette.
The only thing in that sandwich was cheese. The bread wasn’t mouldy. There was nothing that could explain what was happening unless it was happening in her head.
It must be all in her head because despite her flight response going out of control and her slamming heart, her feet stayed rooted in her boots. She felt her eyes close and her body sway. Was she going to pass out? Was this what fainting dead away felt like? And then what? That bear would trample her, gore her, eat her body?
When she tore her eyes open, it was gone.
No way. No fucking way.
No, it wasn’t gone. The bear had just moved over to one of the dumpsters. It hid there in the shadows thrown by the fading sunlight. If they hadn’t had more of an afternoon date, it would have been pitch black out. Would she have even found Tavish? Would he have wanted her to? She’d just seen him change into a bear, because as unthinkable and incredible as that was, she was sure it was real. The bear was right there. It wasn’t charging at her or acting aggressive. It was hiding. Cowering. Like it wasn’t the threat at all, like maybe she was.
She could see the huge animal shaking from where she stood. The dumpster was inadequate coverage in comparison to the animal’s large size.
There was no way she was going to run. She kept her shocked gaze trained on that dumpster and she knew the exact second the bear turned and met her eyes with his own. She stared back, a strange music starting in her head and bleeding into her chest. Something swelled there, so many sensations that she rocked back onto her heels and then forward onto her toes again.
“P-please,” she whispered. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”
Right. She was the one telling a thousand-pound or maybe two-thousand-pound animal that she wasn’t a threat when she was clearly shocked, confused, and unarmed. That made so much sense. But she produced her hands anyway, palms first, and kept them low. She lowered her gaze too, not wanting to stare the bear down in case that was something they did to challenge each other, or when they wanted to fuck each other up in a big bear fight.
She seriously didn’t want to participate in one of those.
Those deep brown eyes closed when she dared to glance back up. The bear gave a huge shuddering sigh and then the snapping of bones echoed from deep in the alley.
January moved towards the dumpster. Her blood felt so hot in her veins. She was boiling from the inside out, a storm of fear in her belly, but she still kept moving forward.
And there, by the dumpster, there was no bear. It was just Tavish again.
She could almost believe that the whole thing truly had been a bad trip of some sort, but he was naked. Just a few feet away, there were shredded scraps of what had been a shirt. Jeans. The rubber and black of his boots now torn to pieces.
He stared up at her from the ground where he was hunched over, not to hide himself, but as if he needed to protect all the places he could be hurt from a well-aimed kick or blow. Was he hiding from her, fearing her, or the whole world?
“I won’t hurt you,” she whispered again. “I would never hurt you. Let me go find you some clothes.”
Walking down the street in a blanket would earn them some looks, and she knew Tavish wouldn’t want the attention. Why was she thinking of a blanket anyway? The whole street was full of shops. Clothes would be easier to find than anything, wouldn’t they? Maybe not in Tavish’s size, but he couldn’t be very worried about a perfect fit.
