Page 76 of Cross To Bear

Chapter 45

Crash

When I was a little kid, my dads used to take me fishing a lot. The quiet, getting out into the bush so they could take fur, they figured it was good for me. I fucking hated it at first. No TV, no devices to play with. Just endless freaking nature with all the trees, bugs, flies that buzzed around your head and mosquitos. Oh, and a fishing reel. It was kind of fun to cast off, but once the line sank into the water, there was only waiting to be done.

My dads used to cuff my ear, tell me I needed to be patient and I’d learned my lesson, whether I wanted to or not. A good thing too, because with the same instincts I’d learned to use to feel when a fish was tugging on the line, or a feral deer was in the forest, ready for me to take down in bear form, I knew one thing. Our girl was gonna bolt.

“I’m going to head home after breakfast,” Maddie said, setting her utensils down neatly across her plate. She looked around the table but didn’t really see. The way Razor gripped his knife and fork so fucking tight, I was pretty sure the handles would be bent. How Bjorn’s spine went perfectly straight, every muscle locking down, ready to protest, even though he knew he couldn’t. And my brother? Hawk’s eyes went dark, all the gold inside them fading until they were just light brown now.

“This is your home,” Razor said, too firmly, too intensely. He was never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, but all that went to shit once Operation Maddie came into play. “And if you don’t like this place, then we’ll buy another one. One that you like.”

I knew what he was doing. It was the same thing we all wanted. Offer her fucking everything. Our still beating hearts, if that’s what it took. Just get her to accept the bond, and if that happened, make her stay.

But you can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to.

A bear doesn’t stampede through the forest going, ‘Hey, deer! Come here and be eaten.’ Our girl was feeling gun shy, I could smell that in her scent, and if I could, so could they. Razor was trying to reach out and snatch her back before she had a chance to bolt.

When you’re hunting, being too eager, blundering in before the perfect moment appears just spooks off your prey and leaves you feeling empty.

“Maddie hasn’t agreed to move in yet, brother,” I said mildly, earning me a filthy look from Razor. “You’re feeling the bond riding you hard, but…”

I turned to the woman herself, seeing the way my robe cradled her form, making her look so soft and warm. I wanted to touch her too, so fucking much, in seriousness, rather than the play of the cinema. To drop all the bullshit and just make clear how much I fucking wanted her…

Loved her.

But it was too soon. I thanked my dads for all of their bullshit fishing and hunting trips, meaning to tell them that in person next time I saw them.

“You need a bit of space.”

“Yes.” She seemed to deflate at that, her breath coming rushing out. “It’s not that I—”

“You don’t have to explain.” I smiled then, remembering the feel of her cunning fingers in my hair and clinging to that sensation. When things were soft, easy, and everyone was relaxed. “Not unless you want to. You don’t owe us that.” She stared at me now, a million questions in her eyes, but her focus on me had my lips moving. “You don’t owe us anything, not even being here. If you need to be in your own space, then that’s what needs to happen.”

“Thanks.”

She flushed then, her eyes dropping to where she fiddled with her plate, and I understood some of Razor’s pain right then. Having her attention and then losing it almost hurt physically, but I held time to the sure knowledge inside me that this was the way it had to be. Finding your mate was a little like an overly complicated dance, with lots of lots of steps to get through before you got to the end. When she was with Jesse we weren’t even on the dance floor, but we were now. I stared at Razor then, willing him to understand we’d taken massive steps forward and maybe Maddie just needed time to catch her breath.

“I’ll drive you,” Razor said, making clear he didn’t.

“I’m going to go and hire a car today,” she replied lightly, but when her eyes met his, I saw the challenge there. Tread lightly, I urged my brother inside my head. Tread fucking lightly.

“A hire car?” Razor sounded personally offended.

“You want me to come to you because I want to be with you, because I want you.” Her eyes burned into his. “Not because I’m thinking about the meeting I’ve got to attend first thing in the morning and whether or not I need to take something to be dry cleaned. You want me to be present, with you.” She smiled slowly. “Like I was last night. Driving me around like I’m Miss Daisy isn’t that. It’s me depending on you for a basic need.”

I caught the tension in his jaw, knew he wanted just that. Razor was always the most intense out of all of us. He maintained a mask of disinterest for just this reason, because once someone got under his skin… He had no way of processing that, other than diving in head first.

“We use a place out on Main North Road,” I told her, grabbing my phone case and pulling a card out of it. “Say we sent you. It’ll get paid for by the company.”

“I don’t need—”

“Please.”

If she did that, she could have her hire car and her freedom, and Razor would shut the fuck up for at least. I silently tried to communicate that to her, then watched her take the card from my hands.

“Thank you.” She held it up. “This is very sweet.”

“So we’ll see you Monday night then,” Razor said, and I just sighed.

---