Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) (19 page)

“He’s not, like, plotting his revenge, is he? Because I swear that was just a reflex.”

“Well, your reflex is the funniest damn thing I’ve seen in months. Watching Custer get what’s coming to him is always satisfying. I’ll say this, though: he’s got a history of going starry-eyed over girls who cause him significant amounts of pain as a first impression.”

Zosha added that to a mental character profile that was, in her opinion, not to attractive. “God, why?”

“Look, the man’s defining characteristic is ‘masturbates with his robot hand.’ I don’t know why Custer does shit and, frankly, I’m happier that way.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Zosha allowed. “Alright, what did you need to talk to me about.”

“Right. Ah,” he coughed. “You may want to be comfortable for this. Do you want to change out of that suit?”

Something went cold along Zosha’s spine and she stiffened. “Why, Mr. Chapel, that’s quite forward of you,” she said, voice sweet and artificial smile in place. “And here I thought you might be the gentlemanly type of smuggler.”

Rick raised both hands in a placating gesture. “Not like that. I like my women willing and enthusiastic. But this is going to be a weird conversation to kick off a long couple of days, so you might want to change into something less… that.”

Zosha cast a longing look at her bag. “Will you at least turn around?”

Rick made an assenting noise in the back of his throat and turned. Zosha practically ripped her suit open in her haste to get it off. It did its job adequately but not comfortably, and the sooner she was in something that didn’t feel like it was squeezing her to death quite so much the better.

“Alright, done,” she said once she had changed into her more casual clothes. Rick turned around, his eyes lingering on her newly revealed collarbone. She had opted to just zip a jacket up over her bra instead of putting on a shirt and she could practically see his eyes darken when he realized it. It was half a test to see if he was as good as his word and half a ploy. Men tending to be looser with both money and information when they thought they were about to get something they wanted in return, and all Zosha had to do was be the thing they wanted. There was a third reason floating around the back of her mind, but she was waiting until she felt she could trust Rick more before allowing it to influence her.

Rick cleared his throat and dragged his eyes up to hers. “Alright then,” he said, a bit huskier than before, “you may want to sit down for this.”

Zosha raised an eyebrow and sat on the edge of the bed. Rick tossed the shirt that was hanging off his chair into a corner by the closet and took a seat.
 

“So, I’m assuming you’ve heard of bear shifters,” he said.
 

Zosha nodded and tried not to speculate on where this was going. “Of course. I’ve never met one, though.”

“Funny story, that,” Rick said, scratching the back of his neck. “Actually, you’ve met five.”

Objectively, Zosha meeting people from a species she had been previously aware existed shouldn’t really compare with the shock of finding out she had accidentally stowed away on the ship of the ragtag crew that had killed the galaxy’s most feared dictator, and yet, somehow, it did. She sat for a minute, processing, until everything whited out into a haze of acceptance that the universe was a vast place with many, many things she could never hope to understand or control.

“That’s wonderful,” Zosha said in a voice that sounded generally like her trying to impersonate herself. “That’s just… wow.”

“Surprise,” Rick said, wiggling his fingers. “Are you okay?”

“I think I might be in shock,” Zosha said cheerfully. “It’s not a thing I go through a lot, but I’ve just received an awful lot of surprising information and it’s been a really stressful few weeks. I expect I’m going to have a truly spectacular meltdown when it wears off.”

“Let me know if there’s something I can get you,” Rick said. “Do you have any questions?”

“Not at the moment. Would it be okay if I just sat here for a moment? Quietly?” she asked.

“Of course. I’ll be doing some paperwork. Let me know if you need anything.”

Zosha took the opportunity to calmly assess the clusterfuck that was, currently, her life. If it had been inadvisable to let the crew of the
Breakwater
know that she was able to reliably contact Spinner before she had found out about their involvement with Strathmore’s death, now it was inexcusable. Spinner hated politics and never took sides. If he did anything that could be construed as helping her now, it could easily be interpreted as him aiding the others, which would automatically devastate the resources he pulled from Strathmore’s supporters. She was utterly, completely alone, apart from the six people who could kill her as easy as breathing and probably would if they thought it was convenient. In addition to that, she was trapped in a metal can with five men who could track her if she tried to run or hide and who seemed more forthcoming with their information than people who were planning to let the other party live generally were. She tried to organize her thoughts the way Spinner had taught her:
what do I need? What do I want? What do I have?

The answers were simply bleak. She needed, as she always had, to get away from Lan Doro. She had nothing that she would be able to use successfully against the smugglers she had inadvertently thrown her lot in with should they choose to attack her. She wanted to be at home, safe, and not worrying about anything other than paying rent. She wanted Lan Doro to die. She wanted to have met this strange, kind man in another place and another time. She wanted an awful lot and felt a dawning fear that she might not get any of it began to trickle through her.

The last time Zosha had thought about something not being fair was the last time she had seen her mother, her back disappearing into the midday crowd. After that, she had walked through life with the knowledge that nothing was fair and that nothing would ever be fair. People lived their lives at different levels and on different scales, with self-preservation as the only common thread linking the whole of the species. It did no one any good to sit around thinking
this isn’t fair
.

Zosha thought it then. She felt the odd desire to be five years old again and throw herself on the ground, screaming and crying and kicking. She wanted to wail that none of this, not grabbing the notebook, or Lan Doro seeing her rounding a corner, or getting on this ship, was fair, because it
wasn’t
. Justifications were easy in lives like Zosha’s. She was in this mess because she was on the run, which was because she stole a notebook, which was because she thought she could sell it, which was because she was hungry, which was because that was how her life worked. It wasn’t her fault; she hadn’t asked to be born on that God forsaken asteroid, or to be a street rat. She realized her eyes were beginning to sting.

“Excuse me,” she said in a detached voice. “I think I’m going to have that meltdown now. May I use your bathroom?”

“Of course,” Rick said, frowning in concern. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No thank you,” she said, rising and walking towards the small bathroom. Once inside she locked the door, knelt by the toilet, and waited.

Soon enough, she felt the familiar tugging sensation in her stomach. She bent over the bowl just before the retching started. The one good thing that could be said about nutri-paste was that it came back up easily.

She felt the swirl of caustic, jagged emotions swirl through her veins and rested her head against her hands. She was so tired of all of the running and she would give anything to just stop
feeling
for five minutes. She had been on high alert constantly since she grabbed the damn book and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take before she went insane. It seemed like every time she turned around there was a new source of anxiety or fear waiting for her.

Her mind started to go fuzzy, like static, and she could feel herself shaking as her breath rattled in and out of her. She curled in on herself more.

“Europa, Ganymede,” she mumbled to herself, listing off the moons of Jupiter. As a child she’d been fascinated ever since she’d stumbled across a book about them. She still had all sixty-three memorized, and reciting them helped her calm down. “Io, Callisto, Amalthea, Ananke…”

Eventually, her breathing evened back out and she felt a little less like making all Hyde’s dreams come true and taking a swan dive out the airlock. She stood on legs that, thankfully, only trembled slightly, and walked to the mirror to check her reflection. She was, as feared, even paler than usual, except for the red, splotchy skin around her eyes. Deciding that it was as good as it was likely to get for a while, she walked back out into the main room.

Rick looked up cautiously as she emerged.

“I’ve got a weird question for you,” Zosha said, looking at a point somewhere over his left shoulder. “How good is your hearing?”

Rick opened his mouth, then closed it again. A hollow formed in his cheek from where he was biting the inside of it. “No one could judge you for…being upset right now,” he said carefully, mouth forming the words like they were glass. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Well, that certainly hadn’t been the answer Zosha had wanted to hear.

“Alright, well, I’ve been dealing with about all the emotions I can handle for the time being, so how do you feel about ignoring that little outburst and pretending everything is fine? Because that’s my plan.”

“That doesn’t sound very healthy,” Rick replied, although he sounded more amused than worried.

“Yeah, well, I’m a prisoner on a smuggler ship full of bear shifters because I’m running from a homicidal psychopath. Why break the streak now?”

“Fair enough,” Rick said, the last bits of concern fading from his handsome face.

“Repression, repression, repression, that’s my motto,” Zosha said with considerably more cheer than she actually felt. “So, what do you do for fun on this thing?”

From the look in Rick’s eyes, he had caught onto the underlying message of
what is there I can use to distract myself
, but he didn’t call her out on it.

“Watch vids, read, try to lock each other in storage spaces, the usual,” Rick shrugged. “You got a preference?”

“Which one of those will distract you from work the least?”

Rick laughed, warm and low. “Sweetheart, this is all the shit Leo makes me do so he doesn’t have to do it himself. I would love a distraction.”

“In that case, tell me a story,” Zosha said. “You’re bear shifter smugglers, cavorting across the galaxy in search of the next haul. Surely you’ve got a few interesting tales to tell.”

“Hmm… I can think of a few. So, do you know why our girl is called the
Breakwater
? No? It’s because she can go underwater. Not terribly useful in space, of course, but invaluable if we need to shake someone or hide the ship while picking up a haul on any planet with a large enough body of water. Of course, this is all dependent on everything being sealed up proper. So anyways, there we were on Kitar II, picking up a shipment of what was supposed to be this super rare quail offshoot that rich folks in that system love because it’s the equivalent of just eating a brick of platinum but better tasting, right? But then…” He then proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes telling her a story of proportions that, even in light of recent revelations, she was disinclined to believe. It involved pirates, an incredibly angry prostitute, and what were, as far as anyone could guess, flying crocodiles that spat poison.
 

After he finished, she asked for another one. He told her about how he got a scar on his arm, and she responded by telling him about the time she’d broken her leg in two places sneaking out of a house she’d just robbed and ridden home on a street cleaner. They went back and forth and before either of them realized it, they’d spent the better part of four hours talking.

“…and that’s why I’m banned from the lower levels of Catastrophe,” Zosha finished. Rick, finally recovering from laughing so hard that she’d thought he might be suffocating, opened his mouth to say something in response when a crackling noise filled the room.

“Big Bear to Eagle Two, everything alright down there? Over,” a voice that Zosha recognized as the captain’s said from a metallic box on the wall by the bed’s headrest. Zosha, who had sprawled across the mattress about forty minutes in, jerked upright. Rick sighed and walked over to it.

“Captain, the day I call you Big Bear is the day Custer finally rips away my last tenuous hold on sanity, and it will be all the warning you get before I go on a killing spree,” Rick said with the voice of someone who had made that threat before. “What do you need?”

“Aww, Annie doesn’t mind calling me that,” the captain’s static-filled voice responded. Zosha choked and Rick rested his forehead on the wall, sighing explosively. “And I’m just checking to make sure you know you need to be up here in five.”

From Rick’s hushed cursing, he hadn’t. “Be right up, Captain.” He took his finger off the intercom button and turned to Zosha. “Alright, that’s my cue to haul ass up to the cockpit. You need anything else before I go?”

“I’ll admit, I was hoping for another story,” Zosha said, smiling.

Rick shook his head smiling. “What are you, five?”

Zosha tilted her head, then grinned at him. Over the past few hours, she had come to two conclusions. The first was that this strange, tall man with his mechanical legs and golden eyes, would not harm her. The second was that she liked him quite a bit more than she had expected to, given both her situation and the short time she’d known him. Trying for anything with him would be, at best, dangerous. She could practically hear Spinner’s voice in her head, telling her that she was only going to get herself hurt.