Can't Bear To Run (Kendal Creek Bears, #1) (2 page)

The weirdest thing of all is that in my darkest moments, most of them in the middle of lonely nights, I kept thinking back about that gruff stranger from the night Dan and I got together. I remembered every single feature of his face. I never knew his name, and I never saw him again after that night, but there it was, hanging in my memory like a dream that never fades.

One night – it was a Tuesday, in the middle of December – Dan called from whatever job he was working and told me he’d be late. About ten minutes before he phoned, Karen had called and wanted me to make a triumphant return to Finnegan’s karaoke night. At first, I’d turned her down because, well, Dan “needed” me.

It didn’t take me a half-second after hanging up with Dan to call her back.

“Dan’s gonna be late tonight,” I said. “Pick me up at six?”

“Hell yes!” Karen almost shouted. I had to take the phone away from my ear to protect my hearing. “Oh man, this is gonna be awesome. It’s just us – Matt ended up having to take a trip to New York for some reason. He told me, but let’s be honest – who
really
listens when their spouse tells them what kind of business trip they’re taking?”

She laughed in a bellowing, almost breathless way.

It hit me at right that second that I hadn’t heard anyone laugh like that in... well, in about the two years since I’d really gone out of the house. I faked that I was busy, or that I was just tired, but the truth was, Dan wouldn’t let me out of the place. If he came home and I was gone, he raged out and I couldn’t ever tell what he was going to do.

He’d never hit me, not really, but the way he shouted and carried on, I never knew when it was going to hit that next peak. So like so many people do, I just... swallowed it. I took what he had to give, and never asked questions or complained. But, what the hell, he wasn’t going to be home until way after ten, apparently, so what would it hurt?

After all, I convinced myself, he wasn’t a bad guy – funny thinking about that
now
– he was just protective. Let me tell you though, it’d be a good six months before I learned what “protective” really was, and it don’t have a thing in the world to do with jealously controlling someone you pretend to love.

But I’ll get there.

Anyway, dressing that night was similar to what a prisoner getting a weekend reprieve must feel like. I slipped into one of my favorite dresses – high waist, big, poofy skirt, black and white swirls – and smoothed the top down against my stomach.
It’s been a long time, girl
, I thought as I adjusted things in the mirror.
Way, way too long
.

A car pulled up and a door slammed shut outside, near the curb. Even if I tend to make gloriously bad decisions from time to time, I
do
have the gift of really good senses. I’m the sorta girl who can tell you how much cilantro is in a taco, or exactly how good the vodka in a martini actually is.

She got a new car
, I thought. The slamming sound was heavier than Karen’s old – and I mean
old
– Pontiac. I finished brushing my teeth, flashed a winning smile in the mirror to make sure there wasn’t any spinach stuck there, and shut off the light.

As I went to open the bathroom door and make my way outside, a clinching feeling, deep inside, stopped me in my tracks. I flicked the light back on and looked at the mirror again, really studying my face.

There were lines in the corners of my eyes, and a few gray hairs speckled here and there throughout the mass of dark brown. All things considered, I looked pretty good for thirty-two. Or at least, for what I’d always thought thirty-two looked like. My eyes had a little puffiness underneath them, but that was easy to explain away by my habit of not going to sleep until well after I should, and always waking up before I wanted to wake.

“You’re pretty,” I told myself, in a way that didn’t sound like an affirmation, it was just an observation. A cold, detached note of fact. “You deserve better than to be a prisoner.” That part was affirmation. It’s one of those things – you tell yourself stuff like that all the time – but just the act of having to think it means that you’re still trapped. As I stared, that old familiar face that wasn’t familiar at all, floated in front of my eyes. Just another one of life’s funny circles, I guess.

After another long stare at myself, I guess I’d come to the conclusion that regardless of my current situation, my friend was banging on the door and I was going to see her for the first time in two years.

It was honestly like nothing changed. We took a cab to Finnegan’s, we got drunk, we sang bad songs with more emotion and heart than anyone on earth has ever sung them, and we talked and talked and talked. I spent a lot more time than I’m willing to admit scanning the audience on the off chance that my stranger was around. It was so stupid that every time I caught myself doing it, I mentally chided myself. Finally, when I noticed that someone at the front of the bar was complaining that they wouldn’t make him a burger, I realized it was half-past eleven.

“Oh shit,” I said, “I gotta get home.”

“Why?” Karen asked, red-faced and obviously having a good time. “We should close this damn place down. It’s not like I have anything to do tomorrow and I haven’t seen my best friend in two years. Why the hell do you need to go home?”

I clenched one of the napkins that had accumulated in front of me, in my fist. “I, uh... well Dan, he likes to see me at night.”

She scrunched her face up, looking a little like a confused pug. “So? He’s a grown-up isn’t he? Can’t he deal with not having you around for a single night?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was biting my lip.

She looked at me with concern on her face, but was too nice to say anything and put it all out in the open. “All right,” she finally said. “Well, we can do this again later, yeah? Friday maybe? We can all get back together again since Matt’ll be home.”

“Er, yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. “Yeah that sounds good.”

Even as I was speaking, I knew it would never, ever happen.

The entire ride home, vibrations were shooting through me. My heart felt numbed, my mind like a Jackson Pollock painting, just colors everywhere with no sense of what’s up or down. Dan was sitting on the porch when the cab pulled up.

“Where the hell have you—oh, hey Karen!” Dan said, his voice switching from harsh to almost saccharine in its friendliness. I could sense the tension in the back of his throat that said I was going to get a hell of a lecture when she left.

“Hi, Dan,” she said, her voice tight. “We had a good time – Matt and I miss you guys. You want to go back to Finnegan’s on Friday? He’ll be back from his trip to New York and we can all belt old shitty old songs like we used to.”

“Oh, wow,” Dan said. “Yeah, yeah that sounds great!” He took my hand when I went to his side, and squeezed hard enough that I had to concentrate on not squealing. “For sure!”

I looked at Karen with desperate pleas in my eyes, though I didn’t know what the point was. It wasn’t like she could shoot him and take me away, and hell, it’s not like I wanted that anyway. The shock to my system would make me shut right down.

“Okay,” she finally said, smiling a little. “I’ll give you a call with details, take care of yourself, Raine.”

She gave me one final look that told me she knew what I was saying with mine. I nodded. “Yeah, of course, I always do.”

She trotted back to the cab, gave us a final wave, and shut the door.

“Where the fuck did you go?” he asked.

“She told you,” I pulled my arm away. “Finnegan’s. We drank some beer and sang some songs.”

He was staring at me hard. Those pale blue eyes drilled holes in my brain. “Don’t you know how
dangerous
that is? Don’t you understand what could happen? You know how much crime there is in the city, what would I do if something happened to you?”

I shrugged. “Nothing happened. Nothing even almost happened. There wasn’t the slightest hint of anything happening except us getting a buzz and singing.”

Dan grabbed my hand again, and again I jerked it back. “Stop,” I said. “That hurts.”

“Not as bad as you hurt me,” he sneered. “You betrayed me, abandoned me, you—”

“Oh my God, Dan,” I said. “I went out with my friend for drinks. Are you really that much of a baby?”

His eyes went dark.
Uh oh. Make a note – calling him a baby is one step too far. Or about three, really
.

“What did you just say?” He grabbed my arm harder, twisting it behind my back and pushing me toward the door. “Ask me again.”

“Nothing,” I said, biting my lip to kill the pain in my wrist. Once again, I thought about the dark-eyed stranger. I didn’t think he’d act like this if I went out with my buddy. I shook my head to banish that stupid fantasy. “I didn’t say anything, Dan, I’m sorry, I’m a little drunk. You said you were coming home late—ah!” He twisted harder.

“Open the door,” he said, his mouth near my ear. “Open it.”

I did as he said. “What are you doing? Why are you hurting me?” I asked, almost pleading. “Please! Stop!”

“You didn’t ask if you could go. How do you know I didn’t want to?”

“You said you weren’t coming home until late. You told me to go to bed and not wait up. Stop!”

He eased up a little – not enough to stop the pain entirely, but enough that it wasn’t shooting through me. “You scared me, Raine. You made me worried that you were hurt.”

There was no logic in the world that was going to stop him. Instead, I did what I always did when I made Dan angry. “I’m sorry, Daniel,” I said. “Please, please stop, I won’t do it again, I promise.”

Dan grunted and then spun me around to face him. He had a terrible, grim look on his face. “I know you won’t,” he said. “We love each other. And people who love each other don’t want to make their spouses worry.”

I nodded, tears running down my face that replaced the streams of karaoke sweat with a much more bitter taste. “Yeah,” I said. “I won’t, I promise. I just really wanted to see Karen and—”

“Shut up,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “We’re the only people we can count on. You know that. You know you can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone but me.”

“But why?” I demanded, wrenching my arm free from him. “Why can’t we go out with them? Why can’t we have fun with our friends?”

His jet-black hair fell in a short cascade around his forehead, almost to his eyebrows. He was sweating too, but with the effort he used to restrain me. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard. “They aren’t your friends. They just want to take you away from me. You know that.”

I shook my head, stepping back from him. “No I don’t. That’s what
you
say, but... wait, I thought you were angry that I went out because I could have gotten hurt.”

“You betrayed me,” he said for the fourth time. “How can I trust someone who lies to me like that?”

“Lie? When did I lie? She called me, then you called to say you were late. At what point did I lie to you?”

He reached out a groping hand, trying to grab my arm, but I twisted away. I backed up again until I felt the soft pricks of wall texture scrape the bare skin at the top of my back. I couldn’t dodge anymore. The next time his hand shot out, he grabbed my wrist. “Come to bed,” he said. “I want to sleep and I need to know you’re there too.”

“Can’t I get something to eat? Watch TV? Why do I have to—”

He tightened his vice-like grip on my forearm. “You’re asking questions
now
? After what you did?”

I lowered my head, staring at the tips of his dirty boots. “You tracked mud in the house,” I said. “I spent two hours this morning cleaning the rug and you got it all dirty again.”

Dan laughed bitterly. “You gonna have something better to do tomorrow?”

I bit my lip.

“Didn’t think so. But now that we understand each other, and you’re going to apologize for doing what you did, I’ll let you come to bed with me.”

I did, because... well, what the hell else was I going to do? He had his hooks in deep. As he turned, I yanked my arm back away from him, but instead of grabbing the heavy, bronze lamp that I bought from an antique store three years before, and cracking his skull open, I just followed him.

Limply, numbly, I followed him back to the room.

“Go brush your teeth,” he said. “And then come to bed.”

By the time I’d rinsed and spat about eight mouthfuls of toothpaste, I went back to the room and heard Dan snoring.

Well
, I thought.
At least I escaped THAT
.

Sometimes the world goes right. Sometimes it goes all wrong, and sometimes... well, sometimes you just have to be thankful for whatever small blessings come your way.

I lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling and crying. By the time morning came around, I’d made up my mind. I was getting out of this nightmare, and somehow, some way, I was going to find that guy that caught my imagination and never let go.

I’m Raine Matthews, damn it
,
Raine Dodson is just a bad memory,
I thought as he rolled out of bed and went to get dressed.
No one’s ever going to push me around like that again
.

––––––––

“I
’m done with this,” Daxon Mark, alpha bear of the Kendal Clan, announced as he stood from behind his desk, knocked his chair over backwards, and took a long pull on his coffee. There were a few grounds in the last swallow, but that wasn’t the bitterest thing he’d tasted that day.

“I’m out. To hell with everything.”

Fletcher White, his assistant and the sheriff’s department’s chief dispatcher, let out a long sigh. “We have to get a new sheriff, Dax,” she said. “You can’t just get pissed off every time things aren’t going your way and throw your hands in the air. Where would you go, anyway?”

He shrugged. The huge muscles on either side of his neck rose to his ears. He sighed, too. “I don’t know. There’s a big concert in Denver. Some kind of festival thing. I could go hang out and drink for three days and come back with a horrible sunburn.”