Page 74 of Befriending the Bear
I sighed. “Slipped and twisted my knee.”
He clicked his tongue. “Go sit. I’ll g-g-get some ice.”
“What would I do without you?”
He helped me to the couch, propping a pillow under my knees before fetching an ice pack. The way he moved around this temporary space—efficient but gentle—made the place feel more permanent than it had any right to.
Calloway handed me a mug of tea to counter the cold of the ice, then sat beside me, curling his legs beneath him. His sweater sleeves were pushed to his elbows, and he looked content in that quiet, deep-seated way I’d only seen in him recently.
“How was the r-reunion?”
“Good. It was wonderful to see the guys again.”
He didn’t ask more, and I didn’t offer, my thoughts not crystallized enough for that just yet.
“I had a call this afternoon,” he said after a sip of tea. “From Janet.”
My eyebrows lifted.
“She found a publisher who wants the rights to the memoir,” he added, his voice so even I almost didn’t register what he’d said. “Their editor read it and called it raw and beautiful and real.”
“Sweetheart, that’s amazing.”
He didn’t smile right away. He looked into his mug instead. “I didn’t think I’d finish it. Not really. Not until…you.”
I reached over and curled a hand around his neck, gently guiding his gaze to mine. “You finished it because you found your voice again. Not because of me.”
“No, not because of you.” He paused. “But with you. You gave me the space to try.”
There it was, that honesty that always caught me off guard. The particular way he delivered compliments. Not layered in flattery or performance, just truth, simple and sacred.
“I’m so damn proud of you,” I said.
He smiled, leaning in for a kiss that felt less like punctuation and more like a promise. When he pulled back, his eyes were searching.
“Do you th-think you’d want to d-do this again?”
“Montana?”
“Yes, but more sp-specifically, the t-teaching. I see the way you l-light up when you come home with st-stories about which rookies f-failed their first oxygen mask test and which ones s-slipped on ice during PT.” He smiled. “You’re h-happy out there.”
I thought about it. Teaching had surprised me. I hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as I did. It wasn’t the same kind of adrenaline as firefighting, but in some way, it was equally fulfilling.
“I do want to keep doing it,” I said slowly. “Not full-time. God knows I don’t want to be living out of a government-issued apartment again or spending half my life in a conference room arguing about updated PPE standards.” I shifted the ice pack on my knee. “But coming out for a few weeks here and there? Sharing what I know before it all fades out of memory? Yeah. That feels right.”
Calloway nodded, eyes steady on mine, like he was reading the spaces between my words. “But not m-more than a few w-weeks.”
I loved that he’d understood what I was saying. “No. A few weeks is plenty. My home isn’t here anymore.”
He tilted his head slightly, a quiet question in the furrow of his brow.
“My home is with you,” I said, and it came out easy, true in that way good instincts always were. “Wherever you are, that’s where I want to come back to. Forestville. A rented house in Montana. A cabin on Bear Creek Mountain if we decide to lose our minds and go full hermit. Doesn’t matter.”
His expression softened, the tension I hadn’t realized he was holding draining out of his shoulders. He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the scar across my knuckles.
“I don’t w-want to hold you back,” he whispered.
“You’re not,” I said, threading our fingers together. “You’re the reason I can do this at all. You reminded me I’m more than what I used to do.”
