Page 24 of Bear's Rejected Love

Roan and Honor were still the only people in the place. She didn’t want to drop the tray, so she clutched it extra tightly even though that made the trembling in her hands that much more obvious. The coffee cups rattled. Even the plate with Honor’s cookie vibrated.

She’d found Roan to be an almost formidable force ever since she’d knocked on his door. A grown man with scars she couldn’t comprehend. He might have been stormy, but he was also still so cold and beautiful. It had been obvious to her that if she peeled back his layers, she wouldn’t find flesh and blood on the inside, but ice and stone.

That was what seemed so different about him today.

She had a few seconds to take him in before he saw her coming. He was bowed in the booth, curled around Honor, his head bent and doing some kind of counting trick with his fingers while the baby grabbed onto them with both his fists and burbled in pure baby joy. He was still so tall in the booth that the tops of his knees were pressed up against the table. He didn’t look hard or cold. He looked more like the Roan she’d known. Hurt and sometimes hard, but just a regular man on the inside with a beating heart that could be so easily loved.

He might have been wearing black, and god, that Henley was more than tested by his biceps and his insanely broad, muscled chest, but his mood didn’t match.

He lifted his head as she approached, and he gave her a twitch of his lips that was almost a smile.

Honor still clutched Roan’s fingers and he was all smiles, especially when he noticed the sippy cup and the cookie.

“Thank you.” Roan intentionally made eye contact. His eyes weren’t frost and they weren’t fire. They were toned down and nearly friendly.

His regular impenetrable, stormy aura felt less like lightning about to strike and more like a day with harmless gray clouds, no rain, hail, or extreme weather in the forecast.

She set his cup of coffee and the plate with the cookie in front of him, gave Honor the sippy cup, and then arranged herself in the booth across. She had her own cup of coffee, which she grasped onto.

The diner didn’t have a formal uniform, but she liked to wear her black pants and a clean blouse every day. She also still tucked her hair into a tight bun on top her head so that the stray hairs were carefully controlled.

Roan pushed the hot coffee carefully away from Honor, even though he was busy with the sippy cup, sucking and slurping at the spout. “I wasn’t going to apologize.”

“What?”

“When I walked in. You said I didn’t have to apologize. I know that. I wasn’t- I just came to ask you if you had any ideas about uh- if you’d like to maybe take everyone to the woods one day, the girls and Honor and Corbin. I can’t exactly invite all of us over to Silver’s and I’m not sure I’d be any good at crashing a video games party, welcome or not.”

“Yes!” She winced at herself for practically shouting her eager answer into his face. “I think that’s a great idea.”

“For foraging?”

“For anything.”

He ran a hand over his sharp jawline. She studied the table, the happy sucking sounds of milk being guzzled back continuing unabated. Tracing a scar on the old top, she imagined it was Roan’s skin. She practically burned in her chair. She could still taste the rich darkness of him in the woods. When they were mated before, he was all man, but now? He’d grown into it. He was even more potent and raw and male.

“I feel like I should apologize to you,” she whispered. She should leave the past alone, but there was something she felt she had to say. “For before.” She forced herself to look up, her skin sizzling under his direct, blue stare. He was good at stare downs. Unnervingly good, even when he didn’t mean to be, and she knew he wasn’t applying any intimidation tactics at the moment. “I thought, when I made that offer of friendship, us being platonic, that I could save you. I knew one person couldn’t be another’s lifeboat, but I was so eager to do it. You were always more than just a part of my family, or Denver’s friend. I never hoped you’d come around and I wasn’t trying to manipulate anything. I just thought that maybe I could make you happy and heal some of you.”

He folded around Honor, leaning in like his midsection hurt. The pain was pretty raw on his face, and she wished that her words didn’t cut at him. Sometimes the truth was the worst thing one person could give another.

“I didn’t love you or anything. It was just a pretty silly crush. I never expected it to be reciprocated.” She was going to turn into a pile of ash under that very direct eye contact. “But I’m sorry. I should have been honest. I should have known that you would eventually be unhappy. I shouldn’t have tried to take it all on myself. If I had just refused, maybe you never would have left and if you hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have ended up in that lab.”

Roan very methodically took the sippy cup that Honor suddenly waved in his face and passed him half the cookie. He didn’t try and shove it all in his mouth, though she watched to make sure he was okay. He sucked at it, even with all his new teeth, going slow, grinning as he tasted that first bit of sugar.

She wished he could say something.

Anything.

She leaned back hard against the booth and resisted the urge to rub at her eyes or pinch the bridge of her nose.

“My leaving was on me and everything that came after. I was always unsettled after my parents died. I wanted more than the borders of the clan. I wanted the world. I thought maybe it would be big enough to fill the holes inside of me.”

“Did it?” It was the dumbest question, and yet…

He slow blinked and shifted Honor on his knee. He was just about done with the cookie and banged his fist on the table for the other piece. Roan’s laugh, dark and delicious enough to devour, was a pleasant surprise. The urge to reach across the table and touch any part of him wasn’t a surprise to her and it wasn’t pleasant. You’d think that she would have learned that distance was key after the first disastrous go around.

“I’ve been reconsidering that, after our discussion in the woods.”

“Corbin can be so blunt. I’ve always taught him that honesty is the best thing, but that was brutal. He shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”

---