Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (7 page)

It took literally every shred of self-control in my entire body not to roll my eyes so hard they clacked in the sockets, but I’m proud to say I managed. “Go,” I said with a whole lot of heavy breathing. “Go, Drake. Go and read the news.”

He stood up and slung his blazer on like a matador taunting a bull. “Thank you for understanding,” he said as he slid his arms in and buttoned the middle button in one smooth motion. “I will.”

“Holy
shit
,” I said to myself, picking up his leftover drink and pouring it into mine before taking a sip. “The only date I’m having tonight is with the television.”

Finishing the drink took a half second of swallowing and about three seconds of grimacing as it burned on the way down. Biking home took about fifteen minutes, with a tiny bit of extra time granted for some wobbling.

As soon as I felt my mountain bike tires start to crunch over the gravel in my driveway I immediately felt relief rush over me. The whole day – hell, the whole week – had been the same way. An up and then a down, a turn and then another. And the whole time, the only thing that had been constant? Me thinking about Orion.

I looked up into the stars, unconsciously looking for his constellation. There he was, almost directly overhead. The three points of light that made up his belt, I noticed, painted a line directly from the bear he was hunting, to my heart.

“Oh my
God
,” I said to myself, laughing in the darkness as a cricket chirped nearby and something flapped overhead. “This is a new low in the history of pitiful crushes. Now I’m fantasizing about stars pointing at my heart.”

I took a big, deep breath, inhaling all the scents of the forest that surrounded my dark green, wooden shingle-sided house, and made an incredibly slow trek to the front door.

The knob’s metal felt cool on my palm. A tiny shock of goosebumps ran up my arms.

For some reason, I started imagining him charging out of the woods, coming right up to me and taking me in his arms. Another deep breath lingered in my chest. I thought I smelled the hard, leathery, dusty scent that had come off his shirtless body when he held up the tree that was going to murder me.

Shaking my head and laughing at myself again, I pushed open the door, threw off my Birkenstocks, and collapsed on the couch. I’m a classy damn lynx. So the wine bottle I opened the night before and the glass I used to drink it were already on the table at the end of my couch. I plucked the bottle off the table and went to pour before shrugging and putting the bottle to my lips.

Kicking back and throwing my feet up on my squishy, delightfully busted faux-leather couch, I flicked on the TV. A familiar theme song played, familiar faces appeared on screen.

“I kinda
do
want to go where everybody knows my name,” I said as I took another sip. “Or maybe I want to go where
no one
knows my name. Well. No one except...”

I couldn’t do it – couldn’t bring myself to say his name. It was like saying it made it real.

George Wendt showed up on screen.

“NORM!” I yelled at the television, right in time with everyone else.

I took three more drinks, and closed my eyes.

Before Norm finished his beer, I was dead to the world.

––––––––

“O
ne.” I tensed my legs, looking straight ahead.

“Two.” My knees were ready to launch, the tendons tight.

Sun beat down on the back of my neck, warming my shoulders, prickling my skin with the radiant heat. It was early – just past six, and the sun hadn’t been up a half hour or so, but it was already sweltering hot.

But that’s how I liked it, especially when I was running.

It’s in my blood, in my soul, running is. When I can’t think, or when I can’t
stop
thinking, this is what I do.

The remnants of last night’s wine pounded in my temples. It’d be gone soon. Probably after the first sprint, but certainly after the second.

“Three,” I said.

Bang!

The starting pistol went off in my head. I exploded forward, claws digging into the dirt, spotted fur slick against my skin. I lowered my head, letting the torrents of air slide over me, as I cut through the drafts.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t need vision.

Aromas of grass, of dirt, and of Orion filled my nose. I don’t know how, but I remembered exactly the smell of sweat, of the road, and of his ancient leather jacket. Pulling in a deep breath, every nuance of his scent was right in the front of my mind. Drilling through my skull with every pounding drive of my paws against the earth, Orion pulsed in my mind.

Why did I want him so bad? Why did it feel like I
needed
him?

Was it really fate? I mean, hell, I didn’t believe in that stuff. I never had. My mom always talked about how un-fun I was with the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. I never believed any of it, but the truth is that I
wanted
to believe. More than anything, I wanted to find the same comfort in things like that as anyone else. I wanted to have something to fall back on when my life went to shit.

My lungs started to burn. I opened my eyes, blinded for a half second by the sun, and then stuck my hands out, grabbing the shoulder-high, chain link fence that I’d been using to stop my sprints for as long as I’d lived in this house.

Ten years,
I thought, snorting and shaking my head.

I bent over, resting my half-shifted hands on my knees. One sprint wasn’t going to be enough to stave off either my fretting, or my hangover. Not today.

“One,” I said, breathing through my nose.

Cut grass, dirt, the fir trees, and...
Orion
. Why couldn’t I get my mind off him? Was it all real? All the fate stuff, two souls being one, fated mate business? Could it be?

“Two,” taking another breath, I blew a droplet of sweat off the tip of my nose. I checked my ponytail, making sure it wasn’t going to flop in front of my face. Everything was in the right place. The clouds of my hangover parted slightly.

Everything was in place, except for my heart.

“Three.”

Bang!
Off went the imaginary gun, and off I went, too.

The moisture in the air beaded on my fur, running down my shirt, down my back, wetting the cloth and making it cling. I opened my hands, using my fingers to cut through the air, moving just a shred of a second faster than last time.

I grabbed the fence, laying my forehead on the twisted chains above the crossbar. The metal bit into my skin just slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me that I was alive. Turning around, I pressed my back against the chain link and bounced against it like a boxer on the ring ropes.

After six rhythmic bounces, I sprang back to the balls of my feet and dug in a third time.

Each time I sprinted, my mind relaxed. The knots in my brain loosened, one after another. By the time I finished, the sun was burning hot overhead, judging from where it was in the sky, I’d been dashing back and forth for most of the morning, and felt it, both in clarity of mind, and in sore legs.

The only problem was that in my newly clear mind, there was only one thing at the front of it. One thing I didn’t want to admit to myself that I understood.

Orion
.

I had questioned myself as much as I possibly could. I knew that if I kept badgering, I’d upset myself trying to solve mysteries that were already answered. I had to relax and allow myself to be open, to be vulnerable and honest.

And I had to do all that with myself before I could manage to talk about it with anyone else.

Talk with anyone else... for some reason, I felt like I was forgetting something. I stood still for a moment, staring at the top of Mt. Jamesburg, off in the distance. It had some other name to outsiders, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Everything around here has another name outsiders have given, but to us? That hardly matters.

My mind was a blank slate except for the golden haired, pale-eyed bear I couldn’t shake. There was nothing else I wanted more than to feel his hands on my arms again, to feel his calmness surrounding me.

Slowly, I made my way back to the house, stripped off my soaked shirt and running shorts, and threw them in a heap in my laundry room. I could have started a load of laundry, but...

My phone, which I’d forgotten on my nightstand, started buzzing. Good thing for my lynx ears. I heaved a sigh, getting a little impatient with myself for pining like a teenager over a guy I’d hardly met. At exactly the same instant, two things happened – I picked up the phone and saw Dean’s name pop up, and realized with a shock that I was supposed to meet them for barbecue.

“Shit!”
I texted back without even looking at his message.
“Sorry, I was running, I have no idea how it got to be so late.”

I shot a glance at the clock – already past eleven. I’d been out running for almost five hours. I must really have had some angst to bash out. On the other hand, that meant a giant pile of vinegar-sauced meat would be exactly what I needed.

“No worries,”
he shot back.
“We’re late too, meet us at the joint by the food trucks at half past?”

My stomach growled just thinking about the sticky, tangy sauce, the perfectly smoked ribs and pork and... I shook my head. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. At least hunger was something I was ready to deal with.

Orion? Not so much.

Helmet on, tires aired up, I pedaled past the courthouse, giggled at the bureaucratic erection, and shook my head. I
had
to get him out of my mind.

If I didn’t, I was going to be as whacked out as that screeching beaver from the art museum. And it wasn’t going to take long.

*

“D
amn these are good,” Dean said, cramming his eighth rib into his slightly yellow mouth.

For my part, my stomach had stopped rumbling after the second piece of brisket, but I didn’t stop until the... ninth? I took a quick survey of the wreckage. Three cornbread hunks, a pile of green beans, some macaroni, that sublime brisket and ribs all lay destroyed across my plate like discarded corpses strewn gloriously around a giant’s castle.

“I’m gonna be sick,” I said, smiling as I dropped a bone on my plate. “But it’s the good kind of sick.”

“There’s a good kind?”

“Uh-huh, this kind,” Malia said, wiping a glob of sauce off her chin. “I feel like I’m drunk.”

“Meat drunk buddies,” Dean grabbed his plastic cup of iced tea and lifted it in the air. “I propose a toast.”

I picked mine up, but took a swallow before lifting it in the air. “What for?”

“Two reasons. First of all, I’m pretty happy you’re still alive.”

I snorted a laugh. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m kinda... to be honest I never really felt scared. That whole deal happened too fast for me to think much. And afterward,” I shrugged. “I had other things on my mind.”

Malia just shook her head.

“What’s the other thing?” I asked.

He paused, considering what he was about to say. “Out with it,” I urged. “Come on, don’t leave us hanging like that.”

I had almost gotten Orion out of my mind. Between the meat-drunk swooning and the conversation and the jokes, I’d gotten myself almost back to normal.

“I’ve never seen you happier,” Dean said. “I mean, it’s a confused kind of happy, but I can see your eyes sparkling like I haven’t seen in... hell, a decade? Maybe more?”

And there it all went, right down the hope toilet. Welling right back up, a sewer blockage of angst I thought I’d managed to sweat out. I guess I made it a little more apparent than I meant to, because Dean’s reaction was to frown.

“Oh Jesus,” he said. “I boned that up, didn’t I?”

“No, no,” I said, forcing a smile. “I just don’t really understand what’s going on, to be honest with you. The first time I laid eyes on him, I got that little swell in my guts, but... I just don’t know.”

“What’s not to know?” Malia asked, leaning forward to catch my attention. “I know it’s not my place, but...”

I grinned.

“Yeah all right, fine, I know I think
everything
is my place. So shoot me. Anyway, you and Dean have known each other forever, but—”

“Uh, since we were fifteen, babe,” Dean cut in. “That is most certainly not ‘forever’, thank you very much.”

Malia pursed her lips to suppress a laugh. “Anyways,” she said. “All I know about Liam is what you told me, but the chemistry I saw between you and that bear? That was...” she shuddered. “I kinda wish I still felt like that about Dean.”

“Hey!” he said, laughing.

Their disarming play made me feel a little better, but not as much as it should have. It was true, though – I
was
happy, or at least hopeful. And I’d never felt like this before, but... admitting that to myself? I don’t know, it seemed like a whole step further than I was willing to take. Especially after just one day. That’s it – one short meeting with the guy, and I couldn’t stand thinking about not seeing him again.

I shook my head, stunned, and staring at the table.

“I’ve seen that look before,” Malia said. “After I met this jackass, I saw that exact same face staring back at me in the mirror.”

I swallowed, hard. “I just don’t know,” I said. “After Liam, I...”

“What did he do? How did he break your spirit so much?”

The sounds of
thunking
red plastic cups and laughter at all the other tables, and of Leon the town salamander setting down his fourth beer of lunch, made it feel like the three of us were on an island of angst floating in a sea of good cheer.

“Oh God,” Malia followed up. “Me and my big, idiot mouth. I’m sorry Clea, I didn’t mean—”

I shook my head and touched her hand. “No, it’s not like that,” I whispered. “He didn’t
do
anything, not really. He said some mean shit to me, but then again, I said pretty horrible things to him, too. But the thing that’ll stick with me forever is the way he turned away from me. I’d touch him at night, and he’d recoil. I’d sit by him on the couch while he was watching TV and he’d pull away.”