A Change To Bear (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters) (9 page)

“Lovely lass like you? You don’t seem the type.”

“Look, guys, I’m really going to head out. You’ve got a nice bar, thanks for the good night.” She walked toward the entrance off to the side, but he shifted into her path, hands out in front of him. Terry was beginning to feel that she was heading for trouble, and she was telling herself not to panic, despite the fact that her heart was hammering in her chest. She wondered how she should play this. Should she scream? The door was open and someone on the street outside might hear. Should she make a run for it? Should she play nice with the men and chat with them for a while until they got too drunk to stand up. That might work.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had trouble with drunk men before, but all alone in a foreign country, it was the first time she felt she wouldn’t be able to handle it. It alarmed her that she actually didn’t know the emergency number for the police, and even then, she wasn’t sure if the operator would be someone she could communicate with.

Her mind went to Liam again, and not for the first time that day, she wished he was with her. She hoped he would just show up, that like in a movie he’d be in the right place at the right time. And he did. And she couldn’t believe it.

“Liam!” she called, her voice shaky and bordering on a scream. He was walking on the other side of the narrow street. “Liam!” This time, the tremor of fear in her voice was audible. He looked up at her, surprised, and then his eyes went to the man standing in between her and the door. Something in his demeanor, his stature, ignited.

“Your boyfriend?” the man asked, turning around to look at the approaching Liam.

Relief flooded through her. “Yes.” She looked past Gold-Tooth to Liam again. He was scowling. “Sorry, boys, but like I said, I’ve really got to go.” She pushed past the bar owner, and found the hot and still air outside strangely refreshing. Already, her nerves were calming, and her heart was slowing.

Liam walked quickly to her, and he took her arm and guided her away from the entrance to the bar. “These guys giving you a hard time?”

“No,” she lied. “No, everything’s fine.” They stopped just meters away. The bars were shouting loud overlapping music at each other across the street, and Terry was quickly growing sick of the din.

“I see.” Liam looked at the three men still in the nameless bar with a banana logo, and then back at her. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Terry chirped. She looked at them, too. Paul, the bar owner, was grinning.

“You sure you don’t want to come in and have another drink with the boys, love? Your friend can come, too.”

Liam left Terry’s side before she could stop him. “Christ,” she said to herself, pinching her brow and watching him approach the bar owner. If there was one thing she didn’t want to have to go through, it was watching men act like boys.

“Liam, wait,” she said, but he waved her down. He walked toward Paul, dwarfing him. But the bar owner had his buddies, who were both squaring up. Terry started at them with every intention of pulling Liam away. She was happy that he had chanced upon her, had pretty much rescued her, however inadvertently, but that was enough. They didn’t need to do this.

“I wouldn’t,” she heard Liam say. Before she could reach him, he leaned closer to the bar owner, glaring, and said something. She couldn’t hear what he said, but the man called his two friends down, and Liam turned and started walking toward her.

“Oh good,” she breathed. “I thought something was going to happen.”

“He wanted it to.” Liam gestured behind him.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Come on.” He put out his hand, and it was such a natural. She knew he’d done it without thinking. But moments later he realized, and he pulled it back. “Come on,” he repeated. The two walked until the incomprehensible noise of music was just a murmur in the background.

“Did you know that guy?” Terry asked, replaying it all in her head. What had he said? Why had that Paul guy folded so quickly?

“No, but I know his type.”

“What’s his type?”

“Use your head, Terry.” Liam stopped and looked at her, annoyed. His eyes accused her angrily, and his jawline, pronounced in the low light, hardened.

“What the hell is your problem?” Terry’s emotion flared, and she knew part of it was that she had been drinking, but she wasn’t in the mood for dealing with any more shit, either. Especially from another man!

“I don’t have a problem. But you should have known better than to stay in an empty bar when every other one was full.” He didn’t say it with anger, but it was clear to her that he was rebuking her.

Terry’s nostrils flared. “It wasn’t empty the whole time.”

“What, two or three people trickle in and out? It’s a front, Terry! They’ve probably got girls in the rooms above.”

Terry blinked. “Girls?”

“Prostitutes, Terry! Look, those guys, they’re old school. I know people like them. I’ve saw people like them the last time I was here. You were in a gang’s bar.”

“So? I paid for my drinks!” Terry knew that it was a bad response, but she wasn’t about to let Liam walk all over her with words.

“So?” Liam laughed. “Look, Vietnam’s a poor country. A lot of people stayed after the war.”

“Americans?”

“Many, yes. And a lot of people came after the war as well. It’s the same all over poor countries in Asia. They attract the worst kind of people. There’s money to be made, girls to be exploited, and a shit ton of drugs to be exported. These are not good guys, and they are not nice guys. His
type
I ran into in Saigon were a group of white guys pimping out fourteen year olds to sex tourists. They deal drugs, and drugs earns you the death penalty here if you’re caught by the police. But the police won’t go into that bar! They’re all in on it, too. This is all entrenched, and even though they’re foreign, they are left alone. The local gangs can’t be fucked to deal with a bunch of crazies like them. I don’t really blame them. They live like they’ve got nothing to lose. You were in the wrong bar tonight. It wasn’t your fault, and I’m not trying to blame you, but an attractive girl like you, and alone? That was stupid.” He looked away briefly, and breathed slowly.

“What’s gotten you so worked up?” Terry asked, looking to turn this on him. She wasn’t about to just sit there and be scolded.

“You should have put two and two together,” he said. Still there was no nastiness or anger in his voice. Despite feeling indignant, and of course the sting of shame that she had missed something which he was making out to be so obvious, she started to see that he was so worked up because he was worried. Even if he didn’t show it any other way, even if his eyes would not betray that emotion, it was the only explanation.

He continued. “You know the signs back home, you may know the bad areas, but you’re missing all of them out here. This shit is not in the guidebook!”

“Okay, okay,” Terry said, putting up her hands. “Yeah, alright, I didn’t think about it. You don’t have to be such a dick about it.”

His eyed widened for an instant, and then they returned quickly to their normal neutrality. His face looked as though all emotion had been drained out of it. What the hell had just happened? One minute was having a go at her, worried about her, and the next his barriers were all back up. He went from fire-red to stone-cold granite-gray, and just like that, as if at the click of a button. He left her then, and she watched him for a moment. She couldn’t believe him. An overpowering urge to hit him bubbled beneath her skin.

“Coming?” he asked, turning to look at her. She almost didn’t want to go with him. She hadn’t needed a lesson from him, and she was pissed off without really knowing why it got to her so much. Maybe it was embarrassment. Maybe it was because she really
had
been in a tight spot, and that she had felt scared. It had robbed her of some confidence.

“I’ve come all the way out here,” she said, walking toward Liam. “On a whim, and now I feel a little like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “You won’t make that mistake again.”

“You’re right.” She calmed herself. “I won’t.”

“You’ll be fine nine times out of ten, but tonight could have been that one time out of ten, right?” She sensed a little warmth creep back into his voice.

“I’m glad you were there.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

“It’s like, past one in the morning. What were you doing there?”

“Shortcut back to Lucky Phuc,” he said. Even though he didn’t emote it, she knew he was grinning on the inside. After a pause, he clarified. “But I also was after a drink.”

“Yeah? Get up to much today?”

“Sort of. You?”

“Yeah,” Terry said. “It was actually a pretty great day. I went down to the lake, had breakfast at this gorgeous restaurant that overlooked it. Got the French bread, too.”

“Was it still hot?”

“The bread? Yeah.”

“That’s the only way to have it.”

Their chatter waned, but Terry didn’t feel award just walking with Liam without talking. They arrived at their guest house, took the steps slowly, and then it was goodbye time, and, perfectly aware of the hour, Terry still felt it was too early to call it a night.

“Did you get that drink?” Terry asked.

Liam looked at her for a moment. She didn’t know if it was the alcohol, the time, or the circumstances, but she wanted him. It was an urge, but also more. She knew she wanted him in the physical sense. That was unsurprising; he was exactly the kind of guy she found hot. But she also wanted more of his presence. It felt nice to be with him, even if he seemed a mile away in thought, or locked up tightly in a suit of armor. She’d be content to simply sit in silence on her balcony with him and while the night away.

“No.”

“Want to come in?” she asked, leaning against her door. “We could sit on the balcony. I bought this banana whiskey thing today.”

“I do,” Liam said. It caught her off-guard. She had been expecting a rejection. He turned to go into his room.

“But you’re not going to.”

“No.” Terry felt her heart sink. She wondered if he had a girlfriend. She just realized that she didn’t know. She hadn’t even found a way to ask him. Poor form, she thought.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “Did you leave the city today?”

“No.”

“I’ll take you to do Tam Coq tomorrow. It’s a river that you paddle a small boat down.” He put his hands out flat. “All along the water this bright green grass grows. It’s greener than any picture in your guidebook. We’ll rent our own boat, too. No tour guide. I know it, anyway.”

Terry looked at him for a moment. She wasn’t entirely sure if he was serious. “Yeah, that sounds nice,” she said.

“Okay.” The enthusiasm in his voice burned out like a tea light candle reaching the end of its molten reservoir. There was definitely something bothering him, and she was guessing that he might have commitments elsewhere. She figured it was now or never. She had to know. “Do you have a girlfriend or wife that would mind you doing that with me?”

Liam blinked. “No.”

“Good. So, what time?”

“Ten. We’ll have a late breakfast, do the river for a few hours, and then drive back up to Hanoi before sunset.”

“Drive back up?”

“Yeah. We’ll rent a moped.”

“You’ve got a license?”

“No,” Liam said with a short laugh. “You don’t need one. But I’m good at driving.”

“You better be!” She couldn’t help herself from beaming. “See you tomorrow.” She opened her door and went inside her room, her eyes busy adjusting to the bright celling light.

Closing the door behind her, she leaned against the door, a little too happy for her liking.

L
iam looked across at Terry, whose cheeks were reddened with sunburn. Night had come, and at their dimly lit table, her eyes were like fireflies. Their day had been long, but not tiring, and not uninteresting. Though they hadn’t chatted much, Liam had enjoyed her company as they toured Tam Coq by boat, paddling down a river flanked by cliffs with the kind of rounded, green, and soft shapes unique only to this part of Asia.

On the surface of the lake grass grew, roots hanging free in the water, and it was as bright green as a photo that had been touched up and plonked in a magazine. It was as breathtaking as the first time he had seen it. But back then, he had swam down the river, head above the water, with not a soul in sight. Things had certainly changed since then. Now, hawkers lined the sides, and were at every stop ready and eager to take money from travelers in exchange for trinkets, food, and water.

Terry enjoyed the trip. That much was obvious. She had snapped photo after photo on her phone, touched the grass, watched as it bobbed up and down on the surface of the water. And though they hadn’t spoken much, she never stopped trying, and Liam was beginning to feel his hard out shell peeling away, even though he knew he couldn’t possibly let it.

But there was something quite special about her. She was full of life, a boundless energy, and it made him reflect on himself. He had no energy anymore. He knew why, it wasn’t some mystery. What he didn’t know was whether or not he would ever regain in.