Page 20 of Bear's Rejected Love

Roan had things he wanted to say. He’d memorized some. He was sure that he’d be able to get them out. He couldn’t get them out. He stood there, as silent as that big old tree, as all the trees surrounding them.

How could he possibly start? There were no memories for them to fall back on. He had no notion of what Corbin was like as a baby. He’d had Honor for the past few months, and as much as he couldn’t say the words, he loved that child. It overwhelmed him right there on the spot. He would have felt that way for Corbin. He would have been fiercely protective of him. He would have looked forward to the future with wonder. It would have been him who taught his son to shift. Taught him how to walk. He would have been there with pride for his first word. He would have held him when he cried, got him up in the middle of the night, held home close when he was sick or hurting. He would have done all the things that parents do. He would have worried, and he would have loved so deep and wide and true.

He had no none of that. Not one single nostalgic moment. The only thing he had right now was shared DNA that made Corbin pretty much a carbon copy of his younger self.

That and a whole lot of sneering animosity where there might have been trust and smiles.

The distance he had to cover was overwhelming.

“Well?” Corbin asked. He looked over at Tabitha and she looked at Roan helplessly. She wasn’t disappointed, but she was a touch frantic. “Oh. I see.” Corbin laughed tonelessly.

Tabitha raised a hand and waved him over. They were only twelve feet apart, in the same clearing as they’d walked into the day before. “Just give it a minute, Corbs. Not everyone finds it easy to say what they feel. He’s just having a moment.”

“More like a lifetime. He’s a grown ass adult, shit happens, and you get over it—”

“Corbin!” Tabitha shouted.

Roan was made of stone. Maybe he’d existed out here in the woods, carved by some ancient civilization, for thousands of years. He didn’t feel like he was in his body at all, he vaguely heard Tabitha berating Corbin, telling him he shouldn’t use those words, as his mind felt like it was drifting over the tree canopy.

“Mom?”

He tore his eyes from his son back to Tabitha when he felt that first note of alarm. Something wild and animalistic burst in his chest. Rage. Fear. Adrenaline. The woods were utterly quiet. The day was lovely, sunny, breezeless. Utterly quiet. Zero threats were coming their way, yet he could feel it.

“Yes.” Tabitha brushed at her cheeks. She held her hands out and started when she found them wet.

“Mom. Don’t cry.” Corbin draped a gangly arm around her shoulders. The look he threw Roan was so caustic that it could have sizzled his skin. He looked at his own father like he was the enemy.

Roan knew there was a terrible truth lurking inside of him. Something he hadn’t been able to escape, carve out, outrun, or have removed from him in that lab. Something he hadn’t been able to beat out of himself or shift out or anything out. The fact that he felt strong feelings towards the woman who was supposed to just be a friend.

That’s what they’d decided together. That night when everything changed, he already felt more than desire for her. He loved her. It didn’t even make a whole lot of sense to him why he hadn’t just told her that. So what if she rejected the idea? He could have told her then that he should leave, to spare them confusion and heartbreak. He could have gone somewhere else and left her his damn number so she could have checked in.

He deserved everything his son threw at him. He was damaged from losing his parents, from being that homeless kid that had to be taken in and cared for—not that Denver and Tabitha’s parents ever made him feel like that, but there were people in the clan who looked at him like he was cursed. Maine wasn’t Greenacre, and there were a lot of people who were so much more superstitious. They looked at his misfortune like it might be catching.

When they were mated, he always privately thought it was because their alpha wanted to wash his hands of finding him a mate who would have him. He was never an official outcast or pariah, but he’d never properly healed.

He grew into an adult with a black hole inside of him, a sucking vortex of pain. He hadn’t fixed himself in college. He hadn’t fixed himself when he’d returned to his clan. A degree didn’t make him less damaged. He wasn’t allergic to catching feelings, he was just so hollowed out that he could barely function. He wished he had something more to offer. Anyone he knew who loved each other thought it was the best thing in the world, but love didn’t make a person bulletproof. It might make them feel like they were floating, but all too soon it would become apparent that they were sinking.

Love made a person forget to use caution. It dulled the senses. It made unforgivable mistakes. Love didn’t fix anything. Not vortexes or holes or memories or grief. It basically just was another block in a child’s tower, ready to come tumbling down on itself because emotions blinded a person to how poorly their life was constructed, to how it was barely being held together.

“Corbin.” At last, a full word. It rang out in the clearing.

Corbin rolled his eyes and Tabitha swiped at her cheeks again. “Oh, look, the gargoyle speaks.”

“You can hate me if you want. If you need to. I have no excuses for what I did. Zero good reasons. I’ve decided to stay here as a member of Greenacre, but I’ll always feel like I belong to no fixed place. I’m not something or something that can be fixed. I do know that. I don’t expect forgiveness.”

That earned him another dramatic teenage eyeroll. “Good god, dude. Could you be sappier? You’re a grown man. You have two girls and a baby. That’s a family. Even if it’s not us, that doesn’t matter. You should be there for them. They’re good people. You need to get over yourself. You’re not a living tragedy.”

Tabitha’s eyes were so big and green. They could encompass the entire woods. They were the entire woods. The whole world. Roan wished he could go and dive into them, rest in them, find peace in them.

“But if we’re playing for prizes, you probably do win on the merit of being experimented on. My mom was just abandoned by her mate, lost her parents, and then we both lost our clan. I think you still win.”

Roan raked a hand through his hair. Everyone was wrong about this redemption shit. It just wasn’t possible for some people, he’d had the chance to do good and he’d blown it. “I don’t want to talk about being a victim. I never wanted to be one. I don’t want to live a life of self-pity. What I want is to somehow make amends for leaving you, Tabitha. I want to get to know you both now, because I can’t undo anything. If you’ll let me, I—”

“I don’t want to know you and I don’t want to hang out or do father son stuff.” Corbin interrupted. “No. Just… no.” He swatted off the advice that was going to come from his mom when she tried to say something. “We have nothing in common anyway.” He looked back at Roan. “There’s nothing you can teach me. I know that my mom wants me to play nice. She thinks it’s important that we have a relationship, so fine. Whatever. If you’re nice to her, then maybe I’ll take one for the team.”

Despite Corbin’s spitting reluctance, there was a boyishness about him that begged to be seen and loved. He had his pride that he thought he had to hold onto, but he wasn’t going to let it take over everything, like Roan had. He wasn’t going to cling to that pride so foolishly until it was all that he had left. Tabitha had raised him well, god he wished he’d known about him years earlier. Maybe if he had, then his life would have been different.

Tabitha set her basket on the ground and grasped Corbin’s shoulders. “Sweetheart. Roan is… we’re fine. He’s perfectly nice to me as it is.”

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