Page 79 of Choose the Bears

“Imogen…?” He couldn’t answer the questions I had, but I knew who could. I scooped up my t-shirt from the floor and then strode out of his room and down the hall. “Imogen?”

Let him follow. Let him call out my name. Let Kyle spill out from his bedroom and into the hall, summoned by some unhidden force. I dodged around him, knowing where I needed to go and not willing to let anything get in my way, not until my hand rapped on Asher’s door once, twice, three times, only for him to pull it open.

He was wearing the same jeans. His chest was bare and he had the same smile on his face. There wasn’t an iota of surprise in his eyes, only a strangely knowing air.

“You…”

My good hand stopped midway through stabbing my finger in his direction, but at the last minute, I considered what I was going to ask. It was ridiculous, impossible, a stupid dream. It was?—

“You have questions,” he said. “I have all the answers, but you’ll have to come with me to get them.”

It felt like every day since the moment they stepped between me and Phil had been leading to just this moment, so I stared at his hand for a second, then slapped mine into it.

“This way,” he said, dragging me towards the gym.

Chapter 41

Jesse

(Author note: if you’ve forgotten who he is, he was the douchey boyfriend from Cross to Bear)

I woke the same way I did every morning now, to the sound of my phone going off. I set it on silent, but apparently that didn’t preclude the rhythmic buzz of the ringer. I could’ve set it to do not disturb. That would’ve prevented anyone from waking me up, but as I rolled over, the old bed frame creaking in protest, I stared at the screen.Mum, it said in large, white letters.

Except Nelly wasn’t really my mother.

The only real maternal figure I’d known, I felt all the guilt, all the shame, a son would feel when my thumb hovered over the reject call button. But with those emotions came a whole lot of other shit and that’s what had me hanging up on her. I’d jumped in a car and let Roxy drive me eight hours away to get clear of this shit. No point opening that door.

So why did I play the voicemail when it inevitably came in?

“Hey, baby.” Mum was trying to keep the tears from her voice and failing badly. I could almost see them falling, creating a panda mask of mascara around her eyes. “Just touching base,checking in on you.” Like she did every other morning. “Thought you might like to know, your dads…” Not my actual dads, the men who got me on my birth mother and then took off without a second look, leaving other men to move in and fill the role of father, more or less. “They’ve moved out. The house… It’s so empty, Jess.”

It would be. She loved to fill the place with people. Always one for a party, my adopted mother, because when the halls were filled with noise, it quietened the voice inside her head. The one that told her she wasn’t enough, that she’d never be enough. I knew that because I had a similar one inside mine. That was the nature of our bond, one that seemed to supersede the one she had with her mates, with her own son.

“I… I miss you, sweetheart. Bjorn’s not talking to me and… Jess.”

She stopped herself from spilling her guts, that was the difference between her and my birth mother. The woman that bore me didn’t hold anything back, not even her deadshit boyfriends. When one too many had used me as a punching bag, the bear community stepped in, removing me from her care and giving me to Nelly. They reasoned that she was stable, in a committed relationship with a solid sleuth, and her own experiences with abuse would help her raise me.

Unfortunately, it helped a little too much.

“I know they sent you away, told you that you need to get it together.” There was Nelly, making up her own narrative to suit herself. “I know they’re telling you that the best place for you is away from me, but that’s not true, baby. We can make things better, together.”

Butwecouldn’t. Together we’d managed to fuck everything up, for my brother, for our family, for… my ex. I closed my eyes for just a second, Mum’s ramblings falling away, but when I opened them again, I deleted the message, just like I had theothers. I sucked in one breath, then another, bringing my focus back to here, now. As if in response to that, I heard a knock on the door.

“You up, bear boy?”

Gregor was his real name, but here everyone called him Greg, was my boss, my landlord, my jailor. He pounded on the door when I didn’t answer fast enough.

“I’m up,” I shouted back.

“Shit, shower, and shave, boy, then get your arse out here. There’s a job coming in today.”

I shook my head and did exactly as the grumpy fox shifter said, minus the shave. He snorted at my shaggy appearance when I appeared in the garage, but I was clean and dressed in yet another fading pair of overalls, ready to work, which is all he really cared about.

“What job…?”

Just as I started to ask, a beat up looking ute came clunking into the garage car park, the ever present dust rising in plumes. There was a reason Coober Pedy was the movie set of choice for post-apocalyptic films. It was dry, insanely hot, and shitty and he was just making it worse. Dropping out of the car with the kind of cock of the walk attitude small men always seemed to put on at the pub, I knew he was trouble the moment he walked up.

“Heard you’re the bloke to see about getting my car fixed?” he said to Greg.

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