Page 115 of Bears Behaving Badly
“Jesus.”
“Feel better?”
“Kind of,” he admitted, ducking his head to try to hide the smile.
She reached out, took his hand. He squeezed gently, careful not to nudge the IV line. “Why are you asking, David? Are you worried you’re losing your mind?”
“Annette…”
“Daaaaaaaavid…”
“God, you’re like a therapist.”
“Thanks! Tell me more about your mother.” When he snorted, she added, “And you didn’t answer my question. Are you worried you’re losing your mind?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Mostly I wonder why she’s the only one I hear.”
“Because she’s the one you have unfinished business with,” Annette replied promptly. “You and I haven’t been close for long—”
He snorted. “Understatement.”
“—but even so, I know about your mother’s hopes and fears and stressors, because they were important enough to you to share with me when we were in bed. But never a word about your dad. Not one thing. I don’t even know what he looked like, or what you miss about him, or what you regret about his passing. Because he’s not the one on your mind, the one haunting you.” She paused and considered. “For lack of a more psychologically accurate term.”
He just looked at her, processing.
“You don’t hear his voice because you don’t feel guilty about him. It’sher.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. And it’s not even her, you know. Despite what I said two seconds ago. It’s a way for your subconscious to poke at you until you make a breakthrough.” Pause. “Or you’re quietly going clinically insane. Or a third option that I’m too tired to think about. Hell, I’m not a therapist, even if you think I sound like one. I majored in English, for God’s sake.”
“None of that should’ve made me feel better,” he confessed, “but all of it did.”
“Excellent. And before my seventeenth nap, I wanted to remind you that I didn’t brush my teeth just to clean them,” she said, taking her hand back to flirtatiously shove a matted clump of hair out of her eyes. “Well, I did, but there’s an upside to my newly cleaned teeth.” She reached out a pale hand
(they pumped six pints of blood into her; he wouldn’t let them touch him until she stabilized)
and tugged on his shirt until he leaned forward and kissed her. He’d meant to go for a chaste “looking forward to dating and intimate relations sometime in the future at a time and place of your choosing” peck, but she wasn’t having any of that (thank God). Her mouth bloomed beneath his and she tugged him closer and her fingers were touching him everywhere she could reach and it was outstanding, so much so that he was amazed how such a simple act should be devastating in the best—
“Ouch!”
“Sorry! I’m so sorry. Here, just… There you go.”
And it was fine and better than fine, and he drew her closer to him and oh, it was intoxicating, she was the predator he was and perhaps even the greater danger, which…
“Shoulder!”
“Sorry.”
Was equal parts arousing and frightening and she smelled like everything good in the world, like plums and cotton and betadine and plastic tubing…
“IV! IV!”
“Wait… There, I got the kink out.”
And he slipped a hand under her hospital gown, gently feeling his way up, fingertips skating past bandages and stitches and
“Ow!”
