Page 8 of Cross To Bear

Why were they making such a big deal of this? It wasn’t as if Bjorn and his sleuth weren’t painfully aware of the mess Jesse made. The three remaining members of Bjorn’s sleuth ran a very reputable custom car and motorcycle business, and as Bjorn was a part owner, Jesse had been sent to work with them. He’d tried to do his mechanic apprenticeship, but had failed enough units of TAFE that he stopped trying and became a glorified gopher. The problem was he created more issues than fixed.

Brought the wrong paint to Crash while he was working on a custom artwork on someone’s bike. Used turps rather than thinners to reduce the viscosity of a paint. Spilled silver flake on the ground. That part of the garage floor still looked like a disco ball had thrown up on it. Forgot to write down bookings when answering the phone… I stopped my train of thought abruptly, my chest starting to feel tight as I thought about all the incidents he’d told me about, let alone the ones the others had mentioned. But when my hand went to my chest, the four men watched closely.

“Maybe you just need to meet different guys,” Bjorn said finally, and what the fuck was that?

He settled back in his chair and stared out over the gardens, giving me his profile and for a moment I just stared. I wanted to ask, no, demand to know what the hell that meant, because this was an ongoing thing. Bjorn and the boys seemed to rush in to do everything Jesse spaced on, getting me a chair, a drink, food, and I’d asked Jesse about it.

“What’s the deal with your brother?”

This was early in the relationship and I’d caught Bjorn staring at me across the table more than once. Initially, I thought it was because he thought I wasn’t good enough for his brother, though the way he talked to Jesse made clear that assumption was wrong. So why did he watch every single thing I did with eyes like molten honey?

And why did I find myself staring back?

“Pretty sure he fucking hates me,” Jesse had replied on the drive home. “He’s always riding me, telling me to grow the fuck up, get my shit together.” He looked over at me then and gave me that possessive look I just loved, his eyes sliding from my head to my toes. “Seems like I’m the one riding high now. Got a sweet ride.” He tapped the steering wheel of the car he’d been so proud of. He didn’t have it anymore, having crashed it into a power pole when taking a corner too fast on the wet road. “And a beautiful babe.” His grin widened. “Pretty sure brother dear wishes he had what I have now.”

The idea that someone that looked like Jesse wanted me was weird enough, but his brother? I’d dismissed the idea outright at the time, putting it down to sibling rivalry, though now… I looked down at the can in my hand, the food on my plate, some of my favourite snacks there and wondered…

My body moved on automatic, jerking me up and out of my chair before I set the food and drink down on the seat. I needed to get the hell away from them; I felt that deeply. But I couldn’t stop myself from turning around to thank them—that response hard coded in me by Mum—and that’s when I saw what the ladies in my office did.

They didn’t look like bears at all right now. Much more like cats, big cats, with all that coiled power. It seemed to radiate off every single one of them, with their powerful builds, their hooded eyes and the way they watched my every move with a lazy fascination. And if they were cats, I was a mouse, knowing this was not where I was supposed to be, standing out in front of them.

Would a mouse’s whole body quiver with fear or was it anticipation? Would it harbour some strange desire to see just what all that power could do if it was unleashed? Did it watch the cat’s claws flex, just like I watched their hands, gripping a chair arm tighter, stroking the pad of a thumb up the side of a can, raking through their hair? Did a small voice scream inside its little mousey head, telling it to get the fuck away from here, because while it might wonder what those claws might feel like, raking across its body, you were pretty sure it’d just be painful.

“Thanks for the drink and the food,” I croaked out, my face muscles feeling stiff as I forced myself to smile. They didn’t say anything in response; Razor’s smile just spread slowly. I turned on my heel then and strode over to Jesse.

“More, Jesse!” Kara demanded, her arms thrown wide. She loved her cousin the best, because he always indulged her.

“Nah, we’re done now,” he said, then turned his back on her.

I watched Kara as she approached, saw that her colour was up, her cheeks glowing bright red from all the excitement. Her eyes were shining, but that started to fade when she stared at his back. He was chatting with some of the other men, slotting easily into the conversation, one that excluded her.

“Jesse…”

She put a hand on his shirt and gave it a tug. He just looked over his shoulder for a second then shook his head.

“Go and play, Kara. We’ll do more bear back rides later.”

Would he? Jesse did that a lot, placated people with promises and then forgot to follow through. And why was I thinking about that? Damn Bjorn for putting ideas in my head, and damn Jesse for wrecking the damn kitchen…

Speaking of which.

“Yeah, there were fucking potatoes everywhere!” Jesse and all the men stood there laughing. “All over the floor and splattered on the counters. Then, as I’m trying to sort that out, the fucking eggs boiled dry and there’s smoke and shit going everywhere. The alarm went off, and I just booked it.” He slapped his hand against his palm then drove it forward to illustrate it. “It was either that or take to the kitchen with a fucking sledgehammer and destroy the whole place.”

“Nice to know you still got those sexy fingers, Jesse,” his uncle said with a shake of his head. “So is that why you lot arrived late? Too busy cleaning up the mess?”

“I didn’t.” There was something so fucking smug about his voice. “I couldn’t, right?” I’m not sure if his audience was convinced because as they noticed me approach, their smiles started to fade. “Like I was so fucking mad. And the alarm was blaring so loud, making my head hurt. I’ve still got a hangover from last night.”

“What did you do, then?”

For someone who was such a people person, there were times when Jesse utterly failed to read the room, and one of them was now. All of the men, his uncles, his adult cousins, and family friends, stared at me, not him, utterly serious.

“I went out on the balcony and smoked up, didn’t I?” Jesse grinned boyishly, something that never failed to get him what he wanted away from the bear community. “With the alarm going off, I knew Maddie’d get up and sort it out. She’s so good at that kind of thing.” He shrugged. “Guess she’ll never ask me to make the potato salad again.”

“No.”

My voice was perfectly flat, all emotion stripped out, because if I opened the floodgates, it’d all come rushing out. Not just my fury, my frustration, my fucking exhaustion at all of this shit. Jesse was beautiful, funny, sexy, sweet, but as Mal, my work wife, always said, he was a hot fucking mess and sometimes… Sometimes I didn’t want to deal with the devastation Cyclone Jesse caused.

I stared at him then, as if seeing him for the first time, watching the boyish smirk fade and real fear rise. He knew he’d fucked up, and I watched his lips move, an apology readying itself to be blurted out, as if that would make everything better. Someone could say sorry all they fucking liked, but if all they were ever going to be was a golden retriever puppy, expecting them to be anything else was an exercise in futility.

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