Page 31 of More Than I Can Bear

“She might, love. They’ll find their way towards each other, if it’s meant to be, but if it isn’t—”

“Nick, no.”

“Then there are options.” He forced her to turn around and face him. “Options just as magical, just as amazing, as finding your fated mate. The process is slower, more measured, but the end is just the same: finding that one person you love most in the world.”

As I watched him hold her tight I felt a weird mix of fear and relief, because that’s what my parents’ relationship was. To the bear community it was a reminder that failure was possible and people instinctively shied away from that, but to me it was all I’d known and it was built on love.

When my dads clustered closer to my mum, seeing her get all in a flap and trying to soothe her, that’s what I wanted. To be there for Freya, to be her rock when or if she needed it. But maybe she wouldn’t choose me. Maybe there was someone or someones else that she needed, and that would be OK too. The bear roared, snarled and paced back and forth inside me, threatening to take control, but I had to remind him of this. If we really cared for Freya, we needed her to be happy wherever she was: because that was what’d happened with my father’s fated mate.

She lived out in the hills somewhere apparently, with a guy who owned a fruit farm. They worked it together now, had raised two kids and were happy. She’d known him since they were young, always having eyes for each other, but he’d never said anything until my dads started hanging around. Seeing her get all this male attention put a foot up his arse and he declared his feelings and she said she felt the same, so she was forced to reject my dads. And that was that. Then, one day, when my dads were drowning their sorrows at the pub they’d gotten talking to the girl behind the bar: Mum. The connection wasn’t instantaneous. She was getting over her own heartbreak. Then what started as trauma bonding slowly became something more, until we ended up here.

“You’ll find her, son,” Kev said finally. “You’re a good lad, if a bit of a dreamer.”

“And scruffy,” Nick said with a wink. “Don’t forget scruffy. You could go and see that barber of ours.”

“I’m not sure a short back and sides gets the girls going like it did back in the pre-war times,” I said with a wry smile.

“You cheeky little shit…”

And just like that, the tension eased, including what I’d been carrying around inside me. Mum took her seat and we all tucked into dinner. Mum’s lamb stew was always too good to waste.

My parent’s house was largely a peaceful place and it was always a nice thing, coming back here. Me and the dads sorted the dishes out after dinner, Jacko setting up Mum with an Irish coffee in front of the TV as we cleaned the kitchen. But it was her strangled cry that had us flicking soap suds off our hands and rushing into the lounge room.

“I hurt you,” Adam declared, staring at the camera. “I hurt you and I’m sorry.”

“What happened?” Mum asked, eyes wide.

“I don’t know,” I replied, answering honestly, grabbing my car keys.

Chapter17

Freya

“So what’re we watching?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch and trying really hard not to make sex noises in response. It was massive, plush and so, so soft I felt like I was sinking into it.

“Whatever you want to watch,” he said, plonking a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and then handing me the remote control.

“Oh my god, you must like me to give me control of the remote!” I said, then stopped. He hadn’t said anything about that. My dating history might have been light on, but even I knew you didn’t pre-empt that kind of conversation.

“I do,” he replied, sitting down beside me and putting his arm along the back of the couch. Right behind my head. I blinked because everything I’d read and heard said that guys like this didn’t just say shit like that. Gloria and Katie were always bitching about fuck boys that didn’t want to commit. “So what’re we watching?”

I turned the TV on but the minute I did, I saw the same newsreader delivering the same story, the one about me. It must’ve been a recording, but this time I noticed the small details. The slight smirk on the woman’s face, her shift in tone as she turned to a panel of old men in suits.

“So what do you think has prompted this outpouring of remorse from the Tigers player?” she asked.

“Well, not a proper apology for missing the medal count, that’s for sure,” one man grumped. “In my day we didn’t nick off to mess around with a bit of skirt.”

“Nah, that happened once the winner was announced, didn’t it, Sammy?” another man said, nudging the original guy in the ribs. “But seriously, we’re not being given a whole lot of details here. Kids today seem to do everything via video. Maybe he mistook the cameraman for FaceTime?”

“But serious questions have to be asked,” the last man said with a very dour expression. “If there’s been some kind of misconduct here, something that brings the game into disrepute, we might need to reconsider who won the medal.”

“That’s not because you thought Nathan Lyons was a shoo-in for winner this year, is it, Eddie?” the first man, Sammy, said.

“Not at all. This isn’t the big leagues and our game is one that people feel comfortable bringing their families to watch. If young Farrelly has done something so heinous he felt the need to apologise to a news camera—”

“What did he do?” Kaine removed the remote from my limp fingers and then changed the channel over to Netflix. “He didn’t hurt you, did he, Freya?”

“No.” That came out way too fast. “I mean, not…” I threw up my hands. “Everything was consensual and this is a really weird thing to be talking to his brother about.”

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