Page 3 of Cross To Bear

“Chill, love.” His arm snaked around my shoulders as he tugged me closer. The girls by the cantaloupes looked crushed at that. “Mum always tells us to just bring ourselves because we’re the only gift she needs.”

No, they weren’t.

Mums say that shit because they’re used to putting themselves second all the time. I’d seen my own mother and grandmother do the same all the time. My teeth locked tight as I let out a long breath, one that felt like steam coming out my nose. I glanced around the shopping centre.

“Your mum likes wine, right?” I said. “White wine?”

“Ah, yeah—”

“And flowers.” I rushed forward to the buckets of flower arrangements, not especially impressed by the collection, but I grabbed a big bunch anyway, plonking that and several tubs of potato salad into the shopping cart. I could almost hear my mother’s voice inside my head, about how inadequate it was to turn up to a family event with pre-packaged salad and some gifts snatched last-minute from the supermarket shelves, which was when I remembered why I hadn’t taken this job on in the first place.

Nelly, Jesse’s mum, was lovely. She was a real mumma bear, welcoming everyone into the fold, but ready to defend them fiercely if anything threatened her family. She deserved a special day with thoughtfully selected gifts. Everyone did. However, she wasn’t my mother, but Jesse’s. The guy who was now holding a couple of honeydew melons in front of his chest, sniggering as he gave himself a pair of fruit breasts. Near enough, in this case, was going to have to be good enough, because her own child hadn’t bothered to take the time to get his own mother a gift. We whisked down the aisles of the adjoining bottle shop, and I scanned the bottles of wine, looking for a real nice, and pricey, Australian made chardonnay.

“How about…?”

I held up a bottle in each hand to ask Jesse what he thought, only to find he was walking down the aisles towards the beer fridge. I blinked as I watched him walk into the cool room and grab a couple of slabs of beer cans. He plonked both of them into the shopping cart, and would have crushed the flowers, if I hadn’t yanked them out of the way in time. That’s when I stared at him.

When we first got together, I couldn’t stop myself. He was just so damn pretty. Even now, I saw those long lashes, those little freckles across his nose and sighed. He smiled, seeming to sense my attention, then swept his hair out of his eyes before finally looking at the bottles.

“Which one?” I asked weakly.

“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “Mum hasn’t met a bottle of wine she doesn’t like.”

“Right.”

I glanced down at the two of them, deciding on the more expensive one because right now I felt sorry for Nelly. She was a good mum, devoted to her sons and their fathers. She apparently had not even flinched when she found out she was the fated mate of four bear shifters. Her husbands loved the hell out of her and would’ve bent over backwards to make sure her day was special, but…

“C’mon, we better go, otherwise we’ll be late,” he said. My hand tightened around the neck of the wine bottle. “And I know how you get when we’re running behind.” He reached over and tapped my nose. “You get that cute little wrinkle just there…” He nodded to the counter where a pretty girl stood serving other people. “And anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s beer o’clock.”

I pushed the cart over and we took our place in line.

“Got a big afternoon planned?” the shop assistant asked, looking through her lashes at Jesse. I hadn’t even warranted a hello, let alone a look.

“Sure do.” He dropped the slabs of beer on the counter for her to scan, despite the fact they usually got you to leave them in your cart due to the weight. She eyed his muscles appreciatively but then collected herself, scanning the beer. “It’s my mum’s birthday.”

“So you and your sister are going around to celebrate?”

The shop assistant twirled her finger through a strand of hair as she stared into my boyfriend’s eyes. I wasn’t sure why the shop assistant was so chatty. There were several people behind me, waiting to be served.

“My sister…?”

Jesse’s smile spread slowly as he turned back to me, and I knew what would happen. He’d done it before, so he’d do it again, making clear I was his girl. And then she’d turn to look at me, her focus sharpening unbearably, taking all of me in and then comparing me against Jesse.

And I wouldn’t fare well under that inspection.

“Yes.” My reply was so abrupt that her eyes widened. “Yes, that’s what we’re going to do. Can you ring the flowers and salad here, as well as the wine?”

“Ahh…” I knew I wouldn’t like what Jesse was about to say by the look on his face. “I thought we’d pay for the wine and the other stuff separately.”

Because he didn’t have enough money to pay for both. Jesse went through money like water, always coming begging for a loan before payday. I’d tried to put him on a budget, use some other means to control his spending, but if he saw something he wanted, he bought it without question, and he never saw a slab of beer or bag of weed he didn’t want to buy. I sucked in a breath, the shop assistant’s eyebrow rising as she mentally prepared some popcorn to munch on while this drama unfolded.

“Sure.” My tone was even, calm, everything I wasn’t feeling, as I pulled out my debit card. “Anything for Mum, right?”

He winced at that, though it didn’t stop him from paying for his beer and leaving me to buy everything else. Our purchases were returned to the cart and we wheeled them out of the supermarket in perfect silence.

“I’ll pay you back,” he said.

No, you won’t.

---