Page 57 of Grin and Bear It

“And then we’ll tell you everything we should’ve from the start,” Tyson said with a grim look.

Chapter28

I took them up on their offer. Of course, I did. My brain felt like it was on fire and I was losing touch with my body. With every step I took, my head felt like a balloon bobbing on a string. But it was Maddox, turning to me when I started to follow them, that broke me.

“It’ll be alright, Miss.”

I reached out then, unable to stop myself. I’d said the same words to him, his brother, and all my students more times than I could count. I gave his arm a squeeze and he just nodded as we walked up the driveway to his uncles’ house.

“Drink?” Tyson asked me as we filed into the kitchen. I just stared at him, uncomprehendingly. “We have water, juice, Coke, beer…”

“Water,” I croaked out. No ‘thank you’ or anything, because the civil part of my brain wasn’t online right now. He grabbed cold bottles of water out of the fridge, handing them around and then stepping forward to press one into my palm. His massive hand covered mine, and that terrible warm feeling started up again for just a second, before he pulled away.

“Let’s go outside on the deck,” Nash said, giving me a long look. “It's open and if you feel the need to bolt again, you can leave easily via the side gate. Sound good?”

Sure, yeah, whatever.Responses rose in my mind, then fell away unsaid as I followed them out. So on an early Sunday afternoon, as the cool air played over my skin and I smelled the sharp scent from eucalyptus trees, my students and their guardians all sat down to tell me something impossible.

“Who told you?” Nash asked.

“Don’t start there,” Tyson growled, shooting him a dark look. Shit, growling, that wasn’t just a euphemism here, it was— “That doesn’t matter, just that you know.” He turned to me, just sitting there for a few minutes before sighing. “You must’ve noticed we’re not like other guys.”

A hysterical laugh burbled up, but I smothered it.

“Um… yeah. People don’t usually rock up to my place and volunteer to spend thousands of dollars and lots of hours to fix it.” My eyes narrowed before I stared at Nash. “Is that what this was about? It wasn’t about the boys—” Knox shifted then in his seat, frowning hard. “You didn’t come around to fix my plumbing out of the goodness of your heart. You—”

“Would I have gone and fixed a woman’s taps if she rang me in a flap in the middle of the night?” Nash replied with a small frown. “Probably. Always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. But if you’re asking if it was different with you, then yeah, it was. You felt it.” He nodded when my eyes dropped to my hand, so I could almost feeling that pulsing warmth all over again. “It always will be with you. Only you.”

“So…” There were questions, so many questions inside my head. My brain felt like it tripped over itself trying to work out which one needed to come first. “Is this some kind of… fate thing?”

A lot of my bookish girls loved fantasy romance, and when I talked to them about what they were reading they swooned over the idea of a fated mate. I’d always just laughed along, not wanting to pop their bubble and tell them what guys were really like. But then Tyson nodded slowly, his eyes willing me to understand.

Oh, I wanted to understand all right. Every fucking bit of it. Once I was back home, safe behind a locked door, I’d be googling the shit out of whatever this was, because my main way of dealing with anything that freaked me out was to turn it over and over inside my mind, until I’d examined it from every side and then worked out what I thought about it.

“Fated mates,” Tyson said, like this was a teenage romance, not real life. He smiled slightly, his teeth a flash of white, there and gone again. “That’s what we call it. We think…” His focus shifted to the others, then back again. “We believe that fate brings us together. A sleuth of bears and their true mate.”

Fuck, the plastic bottle of water crackled as I gripped it tight.

“Young guys work out who they want to form a sleuth with.” Tyson nodded to Maddox and Knox. “Both the boys are good friends with a lot of the sons of other bear shifters, but when they’re a bit older they’ll start making decisions, either together or apart, choosing the guys they’ll spend their life with.” His focus transferred to me. “Looking for the other half of their heart.”

“They…” I stared at the twins, both of them sporting that closed-off, blank-faced look of traumatised teens. “Should we be talking about this in front of them?”

“Up to you, boys,” Nash said, his tone softening. “This is your life, your future.”

“I don’t care,” Knox said with a shrug, but Maddox turned to me.

“Miss, you want to listen to this, even if you decide…” He let out a sigh and then got to his feet, dragging his brother with him. “Let's go.”

We watched the boys file back inside, water bottles left to pool condensation on the table. I didn’t stare at that, but at them.

“So you think that they’ll turn into…?” I couldn’t say the word. “And then what? They’ll spend their lives looking for one woman?” I snorted. “No dating disasters or terrible exes.” I shook my head then. “Fuck, maybe you guys are onto something.”

“No other woman touches us,” Tyson said. “No other woman draws our eye. We don’t want anyone else, don’t need anyone else, just her.”

“Just… me.” I said it finally, feeling like the other shoe dropped. I’d wondered why Cole was falling all over himself… why Lin was… I sucked in a breath and then let it out in a noisy whistle.

“Just you,” both Nash and Tyson agreed, right as the others stumbled in.

“Fuck, I got word…” Whatever Lin had to say, it was cut off right then as he saw me there. Cole came up at the rear, but the man I’d met this morning for coffee and sausage sandwiches wasn’t in the room. Instead, it was this guy, closed off and stony faced, as he settled in the doorway. “Ellie knows?” Lin asked his… What did they call it? Sleuthmates. He asked his sleuthmates.

---