Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (12 page)

“You coming?”
Dean’s text made my phone buzz in my hand.

It took a second for me to remember what the hell he was talking about. When I did, it hit me like a truck in the stomach. The past couple days had gone by fast, like my days usually did in pre-Orion times. I woke up early, ran some, went to work, came home. They were only notable because of how un-notable they were. It seemed like maybe I was getting over my Orion addiction, except every time I thought about
that
, I started thinking about
him
again, ruining the whole process.

I pulled on some old shorts, a t-shirt and plodded into the kitchen. I briefly considered re-using a Keurig cup, but then remembered how horrible that was the last time I tried to be cheap and decided just to come to terms with my fifty-cent a cup addiction.

“Helloooo? Earth to Lynx-lady Clea, are you coming to the lake or not? Malia and I can come get you on the way if you want.”

On the one hand, I really wanted to go. A dip in the cool lake, a few beers and a couple hours on a boat tooling around the James Eggerton Memorial Lake was pretty much exactly what I wanted. On the other, if I went then I’d be with
people
which meant that I couldn’t just sit around and spend an entire Saturday pining for my lost love.

“Yeah,”
I texted back.
“Can you come get me in like a half hour? Or is that too long?”

I took a long sip that turned into a gulp. Immediately, the caffeine hit my blood stream and I was awake, kind of. More awake than I’d been before I drank it, anyway.

“Knock-knock,”
he texted, and then came the noise.

“So, I guess that half hour was too long?” I asked. “Also, that outfit is a conscious choice you made?”

“Hell
yes
it was!” My best friend in the world was standing in front of me with a hula-girl pattern Hawaiian shirt that was unbuttoned almost to his navel. He had these massive cargo shorts, the kind with the pockets big enough to hold and entire book in. And of course, to round out his look? Dude was wearing water socks. “I’m
pumped
! Come on, Malia’s waiting downstairs. You sure you’re okay?”

I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, uh, I’m not really sure why, but I’m all groggy and fuzzy-eyed.

“Love can do that, you know,” Dean said. “When I first met Malia, I did the same thing for like a month.”

“A month?” I asked. “Well, good. At least I’m a quarter through it.”

*

“I
love this place,” Malia said, as we pulled up to the least public of the public docks, got their little four-person boat in the water and dragged out a bunch of lawn chairs and umbrellas. “And I think we’re actually early enough that the college kids won’t be hurling empty Coors Light cans at each other just yet.”

“We used to act like that, and we were
way
past college,” I reminded her, smiling a little. “Although neither of us ever drank much of the cheap stuff. You always made Dean buy good beer.”

“Yeah,” he piped up. “For you two. For me, I’d always go with whatever was on sale since I couldn’t afford to buy decent beer for
three
people.”

He pulled a cooler out of the trunk of his old-ish CRV and handed it over. The thing was so heavy that when I took it from him, the weight tugged the plastic loop handle into an upside down ‘V’ shape.

Staring at it reminded me of the way Orion looked.

Ugh, of course it did. Everything did. I couldn’t make myself stop thinking about him for a second. Not even the stunning beauty, not even the company or the laughs, none of it took him very far from my thoughts
.

The sun, warm and radiant and wonderful, beat down already, even though it was barely nine o’clock. I turned my face toward it, and closed my eyes, letting the rays wash away my panicky, confused upset.

Unconsciously, I reached for my little earring and felt bare ear before I remembered.

“It’ll turn up,” Dean said, squeezing my shoulder. “The things we care about the most? They always show up.”

“This one I doubt. I lost it when that tree fell. There’s pretty much no way that’s making its way back. Probably drifted partway down the river and settled into some rocks and that’s where it’s going to stay until that river dries up.”

He shook his head. “This is going to sound weird coming from me, because I’m not going to tell a shitty joke, or deflect my own personal discomfort with emotional honesty by pranking you.”

“Shit,” I said with a little laugh. “I must be super obvious in being a huge sad sack if
you
are going to be serious with me.” Suddenly, I was the one trying to deflect.

“You can’t let maybes run your life. You’re an awesome woman, you’re someone I look up to pretty much constantly, and for the last week, you’ve let this thing with this guy eat you up inside. I can tell how badly you want him. Hell, I could tell when he was still hanging out for those few minutes at the camp.”

He paused, grabbing both my shoulders in his hands and making me set the cooler on the ground. The Styrofoam squeaked a bit when the weight of beer cans pushed it down onto the parking lot’s gravel. “You have to believe in him. He said he’d come back, right? Said he’d come for you?”

I nodded. “It makes me feel stupid to have this affect me so much,” I said.

“No,” he made me look back up in his eyes. “No, no, no. Love is
never
stupid, Clea. And you, more than anyone I know, deserve it. You just have to give it time. Do you have any reason to
not
believe him?”

I shook my head, not even able to speak for fear of turning into a blubbering moron.

“Then
believe
him. Malia took a chance on me, remember? When I was a giant mess and screwing everything up?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the ground. “I remember.”

“Good. Then give
him
a chance.”

Sniffing, I looked up at him and blinked in the sun. He was right. I knew he was right, but it still stung to try and make myself believe. Faith isn’t something I’m real good at. Okay, I’m about the worst there is at taking things on faith.

But yeah, this time? I knew Dean was right.

What I felt in that river, with Orion’s hands on me, and then later with his eyes warming my soul?

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess it was worth it.

It
had
to be.

*

L
azy days on the lake alternate between making me feel superbly peaceful and making me wish there was any damn thing to do except watch people fish and stare at the water. Without any reception, my phone was pretty much just a big weight in my pocket, digging into my side.

Without any electricity outlets I wasn’t going to be charging anything anyway but... serenity, right? That’s the whole point of this exercise. Serenity.

Yeah
.

“Lookit here!” Dean shouted. He had caught some hapless animal through the lip, although the animal in question wasn’t giving up easily. Right, then left, then back hard right the fish went, Dean following it with the end of his pole. “This thing’s a fighter!”

“Shouldn’t you just pull it up to the surface and catch it in the net?” I asked. “Seems like that’s what you’ve been doing all morning.” I stuck my toe in the live well in the boat and jabbed at a somnolent perch.

Dean shook his head, intent on the water. “No way, this is a duel between man and nature. Or coyote and nature, whatever. This is a
duel
, Clea, not just a mechanical action. This is a
war
.”

Malia gave me a sidelong glance and pursed her lips, rolling her eyes a little. “Watch the general in action,” she said, laughing slightly. “God willing, he’ll pull up something too small to catch.”

Snap!

His line went taught and then broke.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean swore. “Give me that other one, this thing’s still around, and it’s no damn joke.”

He wiggled his fingers in Malia’s direction, and she handed him hers. Into the water went the hook with the worm on it, and not a half second after it broke the surface, the line went taught again.

“
Damn
! This thing is huge!”

“Where have I heard that before?” Malia said, with mischief twinkling in her eyes. “Seems like... oh right.”

She reached over and, to my amazement, grabbed his package.

Dean squealed like a terrified armadillo cub and yanked up on the pole so hard that
that
line snapped too, just like the other.

“Thanks, babe,” he said. “Anyways, there’s something seriously big down there. Do we have anything stronger?” He was already rooting around in the tackle box, but found nothing he wanted. Dean moved on to hunting through the boat care trunk – things like hammers and ropes used for tying the boat to the dock.

“Yes!” he shouted triumphantly, hoisting a rope that was probably three inches around high up in the air. “This will do it.”

“I’m... well, I would say speechless but I think that’s probably wrong. Dumbfounded?” Malia said. “Yeah, dumbfounded works. How the hell are you going to catch a fish with a mooring rope?”

While the two of them argued about the necessity of, and perhaps the intelligence of, trying to catch a fish with a giant rope, I glanced around the forest that backed up to the lake. There was a little bit of rocky, sandy beach, but not very much – maybe ten feet in any direction. Past that, just trees. This
is
Jamesburg after all.

Something out there was moving. Something was making the trees move, the leaves shake. A momentary shiver ran through me as I remembered the tree, remembered how close Millie had come to being crushed with me on top of her.

But then I remembered Orion.

Somehow, someway, I spent almost an entire hour without a single thought of those pale brown eyes and that shaggy hair. I dwelled for a moment, thinking about those intricate, beautiful tattoos and the eyes with the pain behind them and the easy smile that made them sparkle.

I shook my head, trying to force myself to stop remembering him. He was gone, and that was that. One time deal, nothing more.

“Help!” Dean was shouting. Malia grabbed my shoulder.

“Huh?” I grunted, turning to see the two of them wrestling with a rope. Dean had his arms wrapped in the cord, and Malia had herself wrapped around his waist.

“I told you not to put that stupid-ass rope around your arm, Dean Cranning. “Whatever’s down there is going to pull your damn arm off!”

“Not... if I... pull it... up,” Dean said through tightly clenched jaws.

I stood up, steadied myself in the swaying boat, and hugged Malia’s waist as I dug in my heels. “This seems like a really bad idea,” I said as the first yank on the rope pulled us forward and almost made us spill into the still-cold water. “Just let it go!”

“No!” Dean said. “Not after all this fighting, no way!”

“What he means to say is that he can’t,” Malia grunted, straining to hold her mate inside the boat and away from whatever was jerking him toward the water. “At least not without losing an arm.”

The boat rocked, violently, back and forth. It felt like we had lassoed a train and were riding it into the sunset.

And then the rocking turned to pitching. Back and forth, harder and harder, until it seemed like we were all about to end up in the drink.

“Oh no!” A voice from the shore called. I looked up, past Malia and Dean. On the shore, a very rickety looking old man with a very jangly beard was hopping from one foot to the other, shouting. “Lisey! No, Lisey! Bad girl!
Bad girl
!”

“What’s Jenga doing here?” Malia asked.

Jenga Cranston is the town’s most competent quack doctor. He’s also an honest to god witchdoctor, and barely goes anywhere without... Yep, ambling slowly out of the forest with a tiny little doll in his hand, was Atlas. I’m just going to put it out there – Atlas is one of the town’s ex-alphas that was turned into a zombie, but some parts of him were a little worse for the wear, so he had to be Frankensteined together.

Yep.

“Lisey! Oh no! You mustn’t pull on that rope anymore, young man, she thinks you’re playing! You’ve got to let go!”

The boat kept yawing and heaving, more and more. It dipped so low that water rushed into the bottom of the boat.

“I can’t!” Dean shouted back. “My arm is wrapped... I... augh!”

It was like playing tug of war with an island. Dean went tottering, almost losing his balance. He crouched back, straining his lean, hard legs against the side of the boat. “I’m guessing I’m not going to win?” he called to Jenga.

“Lisey is... she thinks you’re playing!” Jenga shouted back. “The more you pull the more
she
pulls! It’s like you’re playing with a dog, except the dog is a three hundred ton dinosaur! Kind of. She’s not actually a dinosaur, but I think her closest relative is the plesiosaur. You know, sort of like the monster in Loch Ness?”

Dean interrupted the witch doctor’s science lecture by screeching again and being pulled almost out of the boat. One of his feet was braced against the side of the vessel, the other was in the air. Malia and I were the only things keeping him from going head long into the water, but it wasn’t going to last.

“She won’t hurt you!” Jenga shouted. “Just go in the water, let the rope go slack!”

“Are you
crazy
?” Malia shouted. “That thing is... Oh... My...
God
.”

Then I saw it. An eye the size of the boat, looking up at me from under the water. It was like every nightmare I ever had after watching way too much Shark Week when I was twelve coming to life at once.

The thing’s mouth was open, with Dean’s rope tangled on one of its huge teeth.

The next thing I remember thinking was “damn this water is cold” as the boat flipped, and the three of us, a case of Sam Adams, and a whole bunch of fish that thought they were about to shuffle off the mortal coil, went straight into the icy drink.