Page 19 of More Than I Can Bear

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why the hell did Kaine get me doing this and not Adam…? Wait, I remembered why.

“Sorry, I just cut wood and hammer nails for a living,” I said, raking a hand through my hair. “Words are hard.”

She smiled at me in understanding, and my whole heart felt like it lightened.

“Wordsarehard. Do you mean you want Amber to cater for the building site?” she asked.

“Yes, that. That.” I nodded quickly. “We’ll be there for a bit and the food’s real good here.”

“But not too good,” she said with a wink. “You’ll get home at a reasonable hour tonight, right?”

No. No, I wouldn’t. After seeing how she got home, she had earned herself a very big, very strong shadow. I’d ride the train with her, one carriage down maybe, and dog her steps from the shadows, making sure she got home in one piece.

“Right,” I said, faking a smile like a normal person. “Can I chat to Amber?”

“I’ll let her know you’re here. Take a seat. I’ll bring you out a coffee. Black, right?”

“Right.”

I’d take it any way she’d make it, including one of those floofy things with all the cream and syrups, but when she got my order right first go, I turned away with some relief, sitting down at one of the empty tables and pulling out my notepad.

When I was at school I was always being told off for this kind of shit. Whenever I had a pen in my hand it wasn’t to write down notes or do the set work, but to draw. Sometimes it’d be little vignettes I noticed outside the classroom, like the birds nesting in the tree outside the window, or a coming storm. It didn’t matter what it was, I was always drawing.

“Draw after you’ve finished your work, Riv,”one of my dads had said.

“Or at the very least, don’t get caught.”Mum looked flustered.“We’re on our own here and if I get one more call from your maths teacher…”

I’d felt a rush of shame then, swearing I’d stop. It was bad enough the bear shifter community largely ignored us, because my dads hadn’t had the good sense to stay single once their fated mate rejected them. I was the kid that was never supposed to be, and if I was creating trouble at school… But, just like back then, when the pen was in my hand, something else took over.

My eyes found her, watching her pour out my coffee as the women around her talked. Their topic was me, I realised, when they each took a surreptitious look my way, but I didn’t care about that. It was the moment that Freya smiled that caught my eye, my mind freezing the curve of her lips, the dimple popping in her cheek, the sparkle of her eyes as my pen started to move. I barely had to look at the paper, the little sketch taking form almost on its own.

“Here’s your… oh!”

Drawing was less like a hobby and more like a fugue state. I dropped down, down, down into this weird place where time and space didn’t exist, just the pen and paper. Freya stood in front of me, looking a little pale. And surprised. She blinked and blinked, staring down at the notebook and that forced me to do the same thing I always did. Put the pen down and snap the notebook shut and shove it into my pocket.

“Thanks, love,” I said, a fairly bog standard thing for a bloke like me to say to a waitress, but… That last word, love, came out way softer than I meant to. “I was just… I didn’t mean…”

“So, a catering order?” Another woman bustled over, taking the other coffee from Freya and then sitting down across from me. “I’m Amber. Looks like it’s going to be a pleasure to do business with you.”

She offered me her hand and I shook it, but my eyes traced Freya’s hasty retreat. Amber started to talk way too fast and way too loud, making me want to pull away, get the fuck out of there, but I just silently cursed Kaine instead. He was going to take our mate out for a date and he had me doing this shit? I’d meant to tell him about her dad inviting me for Sunday dinner but hadn’t had a chance and now I didn’t want to. I had no doubt in my mind that Kaine hadn’t said anything to Adam about meeting Freya, wanting his brother to stew for a bit, and right now I was on board with that. But if the two of them were going rogue, so was I. I nodded along to Amber, making a show of listening to what she said, as I thought about making ‘one Sunday’ into a definite ‘next Sunday’.

Amber had ideas, a lot of them, about different cuisines and dietary considerations, but I’d stopped her cold.

“Just make good, honest, stick to your ribs food,” I told her. “We’re simple blokes. Anything fancy is wasted on us.”

“Oh, OK.” She seemed to deflate momentarily, but nothing seemed to keep the woman down for long. “But we’ll make it the tastiest comfort food you’ve ever had, I promise.”

“That’d be awesome,” I said, getting to my feet. “Kaine included all the payment details in the paperwork?”

“Yup, invoicing etc, it’s all there.” She got to her feet and held out her hand for me to shake and I did. “I guess we’ll talk soon about delivery.”

“Can someone bring it down to the site?” I asked, looking over at the counter, and Amber grinned, something in her smile making clear she knew what was going on. I shrugged internally, I could wear that. “We get caught up and—”

“I’ll add a delivery cost to my quote,” she replied, then headed back to the kitchen.

I carried my empty mug back to the counter and the women there all went instantly quiet. One gave Freya a shove, forcing her to stumble closer.

“Was the coffee OK?” she asked.

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