Page 33 of Monsters, Vows, and Growls
I tried to laugh. It came out halfway between a sob and a wheeze. “And I thoughtIhad emotional baggage.”
He smiled faintly, just enough to break my heart a little more. “You always did have a way of deflecting at high speed.”
“I’m trying,” I muttered. “But it’s hard to crack jokes when there’s literalbear furstill stuck to the tree behind me.”
Patrick chuckled softly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He remained crouched in front of me, bare knees pressed into the mossy forest floor, arms resting loosely on his thighs. His body—hishumanbody—was familiar, and yet not. Broader. Older. Marked with new scars. He looked like a man who’d fought to earn every breath he took.
Suddenly, all I could feel was the weight of everything we hadn’t said.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered.
His brows drew together. “Didn’t know what?”
“That it waslike that. Thatyouwere like that. That this”—I gestured vaguely at him, at the claw marks still fresh in the earth—“was real.”
He tilted his head. “I tried to talk to you about it. Back then.”
“I know.” I winced. “I just… never knew what to say.”
Patrick nodded slowly. “I noticed.” He flinched. "It hurt. And it made it too easy."
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
He looked down, drawing a small line in the dirt with his finger before answering. “It made me think you didn’t like that part of me. That you didn’t accept it. You never asked about it. Never even said the word,shifter.I figured you loved mein spite of it,not with it.”
“That’s not—” I started, then stopped. Because… I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. I’d always prided myself on being a tolerant person. But what good is tolerance when you close your eyes and willfully refuse to see the truth? That was on me. Acceptance doesn’t matter much when it’s offered by a person who denies your very existence. The truth… hurt.
He nodded again. “Yeah. I know. You were seventeen. So was I. And you weren’t exactly raised to think of people like me as a safe bet.”
I swallowed. “My mom?—”
“I know.” He gave me a small, sad smile. “Lisa isn't… subtle. She looked at me like I was a bomb waiting to go off.”
“She’s not exactly a shining example of sanity.”
“No. But you still absorbed it.”
Oof. That hit. Not because he was trying to hurt me, but because he wasn’t wrong. I looked away, guilt slamming into my gut. “So you broke up with me because of that?”
“No,” he said. “I broke up with you because I thought I was broken. Because Iwasbroken. Literally. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t shift. I didn’t want you to spend your life taking care of someone who might never be whole again. And yeah, part of the reason was because the girl I loved didn’t love all of me. Not the part that was already… different. I thought if you hadn't accepted me as a shifter, you wouldn't as a cripple either."
My chest clenched as his words hit home.
I looked up at him. His eyes were so open and raw. Pain and anguish were written in them, and once again, I saw my teenage self in them, but this time, she beckoned me forward. It was then that I realized how wrong I’d been.
“I didn’t know how to love that part of you,” I whispered. “But I wanted to. Iwantedto understand. I just… I was afraid.”
He nodded once. “I get that now.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I added quickly, meeting his gaze. “I mean, yeah, okay, the bear thing startled me.But I’m not scared ofyou.Not anymore.”
Patrick exhaled, something easing in his shoulders.
“Good,” he said. “Because the man and the bear? They’re the same. And both of them are still in love with you.”
My breath caught.
There was no dramatic music. No movie lighting. Just the quiet of the woods around us, the hush after the storm, and the bare-chested man in front of me, covered in dirt, breathing like he was still halfway between human and beast.
