Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (16 page)

“I’ve heard those words before,” Henry said. She clicked her tongue. That meant I was probably in trouble.

“When did—?”

“I’ll give you a hint. It starts with ‘R’ and ends with heartbreak,” she said.

That stung. But of course, she was right. Reid and I started the same way. I was convinced we were just going out for a date, maybe a one-night stand kind of thing, but let’s get real – I don’t think I’ve ever done that and actually managed to keep the stand at one night.

“Yeah,” I said. My voice was hollow. “I guess you’re right. But he’s leaving tomorrow, on a jet plane. Or I guess probably that rickety tour bus. Right? I mean, he
can’t
hang around, right? But can I tell you a secret? I wish he could. I wish he never had to leave. If that’s me falling for him too hard, then I don’t know what to say.”

In the background, I heard someone make a puffing noise. “Shit,” Henry swore, under her breath. “Professor’s here early and he
hates
phones. I shouldn’t ever have decided to come back for my Master’s,” suddenly her voice got muffled. “Sorry, Professor Duggan, I’ll... yeah it was a family emergency, but it’s fine. Yep, ready to learn about Sophocles. Y – yes sir, right away.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I checked my clock – half-past nine. This was the time Dr. Duggan taught Greek History. I knew that because it was the time he
always
taught Greek History.

“I gotta go,” Henry said, “like now. Lunch?”

“Sure, I might have to cover for Millie, but we can just eat in the library if nothing else.”

“See ya,” she said.

I heard her apologize to Professor Hedgehog again, and then heard him make another puffing noise. I imagined he was dangerously close to – as we always said when I was in school, “Hedging Out” – and had to collect himself.

“Jamesburg,” I said to myself as I drove past the town hall and watched our giant of an alpha get off his giant of a motorcycle. “Gotta love it.”

*

“G
lad you made it, I was worried.”

Millicent Upridge, the head librarian and my quasi life coach, turned her head about a hundred degrees and looked at me out the corner of her eye. Oh, I guess I should mention she’s also an owl.

“Worried?” I asked her. “Why? Nothing exciting going on in my life. Not that there ever is.”

“That’s not what I hear,” Millie said.

Well she didn’t waste any time. My cheeks went right to burning and I went right to pretending I had other things to do. Too bad she’s my boss, so she knew better.

“Come and tell me about him! Or no, I’ll come to you.” She was practically vibrating with excitement.

To be fair, this was the most interesting thing that had happened to me in months. My life? Yeah, in general? Not super-super exciting.

“He’s, uh, a big guy, I guess.”

For some reason, I didn’t want to lead off with an explanation of me hitting on some guy that I first came across in a cage fight. I didn’t know why this was coming up
now
of all the times, either.

“Big, huh? Henrietta said he’s a giant bear. Oh,” she said, pulling a chair up beside me. She crouched in it instead of sitting. “Also she said Leon hit him in the head with a lead pipe.”

A laugh caught in my throat. I fluttered my hands and swallowed the drink of coffee I’d just taken. Luckily, it was just a little sip I took instead of one of my normal gulps.

“That’s,” I paused again, in-laughing a little. “Not exactly the way it happened. He’s one of the fighters in that group that came through. It was just a casual thing. They’re back in Clinton, so...”

I swallowed when I said casual. For as much as reason dictated it
had to be
casual, deep down, it wasn’t. That thing Henry said about me getting hurt? Me seriously falling hard for a guy who couldn’t stay? Just my style.

“I don’t see why it has to be casual,” Millie said. She shifted her eyes left and right. She reached for her giant mug. “Just because a guy is on the road doesn’t mean he can’t settle down.”

“Oh God,” I said. “Settle down? That’s totally not where I’m at right now.”

That’s totally where I’m at right now
.

She let out a “hum” which told me she knew more than she was letting on. Hence, the life coach thing. Every time I got myself in some ridiculously stupid place, I talked to Millie. Sure, she was my boss, but I’d known her most of my life.

And then she just waited. Millie sipped her drink, staring at me.

“Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated?” I asked.

“Because you are,” she said.

I chewed on my bottom lip, digging my slightly pointy teeth in until it hurt. I don’t know why, but her asking me these questions made me want to do nothing more but curl up in a furry ball and hide in bed.

“Get it out,” Millie insisted. “I can always tell when something’s eating you up and right now, honey, something’s making a buffet out of my fox.”

I took a deep breath and bit my lip again. Good
God
I did not want to go through this whole thing. She wasn’t going to let up though, and that was probably for the best. I unleashed the whole story, starting with my so-bad-it-could-have-been-a-punch line date with Eustace or whatever his name really was.

The version I told went all the way through the very end of our first encounter – I stopped with waving to Henry out my front door. I left out the parts about me grinding on Ash though. I might be a little shameless sometimes, but I’m not sure even
I
could handle my librarian boss – and one of my mom’s best friends – hearing about me dry-humping a guy in my ex-boyfriend’s apartment. That was about eight steps too far.

“I wish I was still your age,” Millie said with a hint of longing in her voice, when I finally finished. “Then again I’m sure you wish you were ten years younger, too. I guess it’s one of those things everyone does.”

I crooked my head a little, thinking back ten years. I was going from “too curvy” to just “nice and curvy” about the time I was a high school sophomore.

“I dunno,” I said. “Fourteen going on fifteen wasn’t really my best year. Grandpa died, then I ended up with a pretty ridiculous set of classes.”

At the time of course, I thought I was the only person in the world stupid enough to fail five classes and just about have a nervous breakdown. I went to my Aunt Nadine’s house for a summer sabbatical. It was good, and I thought maybe my head was getting back together, but the first thing I did when I got back to Jamesburg, was fall straight the hell to pieces.

I got it all back together though. It took a couple years, and I’m not going to act like it wasn’t hard, but I managed to get everything turned around enough to get through two years at a big state school, then I finished my degree at home.

I guess that’s the thing for me – home is all at once the right place, and the worst place. But... when I thought of Ash? I felt safe.

“Maybe twenty-two, for me,” I offered. “That one was pretty good.” I had to say something to lighten the tension. I hadn’t meant to get everything all heavy.

Millie smiled. “I know what you mean. I guess really, when you consider what happened with
Mister
Upridge,” she said his name with a little wince. “My early thirties weren’t the best either.”

My life falling apart, her husband getting so sick... we both sat and stared at the desk for few moments.

“Oh well,” Millie said, slapping the desk softly twice. “We’re both still here, right? Seem to have come out the better for it. At least we’re not zombies. Did you hear about Jenga Cranston?”

I laughed, very thankful for the break in the tension. “Going back to his house after his stint in the county jail and finding that his zombie friend had turned the living room into a moss garden?”

“Couldn’t believe it,” Millie said. “He must’ve been furious. After all he had that gorgeous television set. To think – a sixty inch plasma television – turned into a planter.”

We both chuckled. I had no clue in the world how a TV got turned into a planter, but I guess zombies have a lot of time on their hands.

Millie’s desk phone buzzed, and she rolled her chair the entire length of the circulation desk to answer.

“Jamesburg Community College library,” she answered, inspecting her fingernails. “Millicent Upridge speaking, how can I—”

“Turn on the news!” I heard. “Those girls! The kidnapped ones – the hyenas found something. Hurry up, it’s on the town news station.”

Millie shot me a look that asked if I’d heard. I nodded and flicked on one of the media cart televisions usually reserved for people in film class to fall asleep in front of during Orson Welles movies.

“What channel?” I whispered. I couldn’t remember the last time I bothered looking at the public access news. As far as I knew all that played on there were town meetings. And who the hell watches town council meetings on television?

Millie shrugged.
Not even the head librarian, apparently
, I thought. I stifled a giggle as I flipped through the stations until I happened upon Whit Whitman, the town’s main news anchor and also, weatherman. He had a name for both.

“Details at this point are sketchy,” Whit said. The wind was obviously blowing pretty hard, since the lapels on his jacket were flopping all over the place, but his perfect silver hair was so gelled it didn’t move at all. “But what we know right now is – oh! Detective!” he shouted at a passing officer who wore a slate gray suit.

“Detective Daniels! Can you give us any information? Did something break with the case?”

The detective scratched the back of his neck rapidly. Hyenas will be hyenas, after all. He shook his head, like he was trying to figure out whether it’d be more of a pain in the ass to answer, or to ignore Whit Whitman until he went away.

He knew, of course, that Whit Whitman
never
went away.

“Detective!”

The poor guy, who was obviously busy, took a deep breath and let his shoulders sag as he exhaled. “I guess there’s no point to ignoring you,” he said.

Whit Whitman smiled in that way only anchormen can smile. Then, he stuck the microphone under Detective Daniels’s face. “What
is
going on here? I’ve never seen this many police in the same place at the same time.”

“You’ve never been in the briefing room, then.” Detective Daniels laughed at his own joke. “Er, I mean, there’s no new information, only a new victim.”

From across the room, I heard Millie gasp. My heart, too, was pounding in my neck.

“Is there any idea who the victim is? And do you mean another kidnapping?” Whit Whitman asked. He jabbed the mike back into the detective’s face.

“Yup,” Daniels answered. “And in the case of ongoing investigations, we’d like to keep Presley’s name out of the...” He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “Anyway, we don’t want to get to specific. I... uh, I have other things to do. Get out of here and let us work.”

The detective pushed past Whit Whitman, who was still smiling at the camera. “There you have it folks,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere. Keep your kids safe, Jamesburg. Keep your doors locked, keep you—”

Millie stood up and shut off the news. “Keep your girls away from Whit Whitman,” she finished. “Did you know her? Presley Jenkins I’m guessing he meant, unless there’s another one.”

I nodded, feeling a strange tingle in the back of my head. Twenty seconds ago, I was about to have another Ash-induced swoon session and now I was worried about one of my old friends from high school being kidnapped. “We used to be friends,” I said. “She’s from the bobcat family who lives on that little patch of land outside town. I think her dad builds furniture or something. I wasn’t ever really sure.”

“Shame,” Millie said. “It’s a real shame. But I’m guessing they’re going to find those girls. I’ve watched enough television to know that much. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m worried but... yeah, I mean he might bumble around in interviews but Detective Daniels is kind of a hardened badass. He’ll find—”

My phone started to buzz in my purse, interrupting my thought.

“Better get that,” Millie said, crouching back down in her own chair and typing something. “Might be your boyfriend.”

I answered the phone without looking at the number. I’ve
got
to stop doing that.

“Hello?”

The voice that came through turned my knees to half-cooled Jello.

“Hey Violet,” Crag said. His voice was so wonderfully deep that it almost made my whole body vibrate. “It’s so good to hear your voice. I’m smiling right now, can you tell?”

I could tell. Oh God could I ever tell.

––––––––

“Y
ou doing okay?” Ash asked. “You sound like something’s bothering you. Or like you’re nervous or something.”

“Bad habit,” Violet answered. “And yeah, I just saw something on the news about some kidnappings going around. One of my friends was grabbed earlier.”

Ash frowned, looking down at his boots. “Do the police know anything yet? Last I heard on the radio they didn’t have any leads. Bad story, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Violet said. “I don’t get it. I mean, who kidnaps people in a town like Jamesburg? Or even in Clinton? The only thing is that I’m not sure they know what they have. This has been going on for almost a month now, it’s crazy.”

Ash made a soft grunt, and something squeaked. “What was that?” Violet asked.

“Sorry,” he said. “Taping up. I do the first pass myself. My hands get so sore I usually keep them taped up some. What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Violet said. She was obviously distracted. She sounded like her mind was totally on something else. “Sorry, I don’t mean to blabber at you. I’m sure you have other things to do. I gotta get busy anyway. All I meant,” she said, “was that one of the kidnapped girls is a leopard and the other is a Scottish panther. I’m more afraid for the kidnapper I think. Anyway, talk to you later?”

Violet paused, waiting for him to say something. If he was the one doing the chasing, he better start, she thought.

“Wait!” Ash almost shouted. The guy at the next locker jolted a little when the giant bellowed. “Wait, what about tonight? Don’t think I’m going to let you get away that easily.”