Waking the Bear (Shifter Wars) (9 page)

Die
.

Chapter Nine

Almost two days without spotting another human soul. Wonderful. Exactly what she needed. Amy scanned the room, hands on her hips.
Much better
. The cabin was clean—probably cleaner than it had been in years—and all her things were in place for her two-month stay.

Feels like home.

She’d piled her tubes of paint and drawing supplies on the kitchen table to sort through. Her easel stood assembled by the living room window, a blank canvas awaiting her touch. She’d already done some sketching and was almost ready to tackle a painting.

Almost.

Though she’d been relaxing, the creativity hadn’t flowed as freely as she’d hoped it would. She was working hard to push thoughts of ADvert and Darren out of her mind at the worst moments.

Then there was Griff. He was sneaking into not only her dreams but her fantasies, too. She couldn’t get the thought of him, arms wrapped around her and mouth over hers, out of her mind.

Then there was the shower dream. At first, she’d dismissed it as a stress dream from the water not turning off. It had become clear quickly that the dream was more about turning things on. Griff, shirtless and wet with his wicked smile and commanding hazel stare...

Amy coughed.

She was doing it again. Fantasizing about the landlord. At this rate, she’d never get a painting done while she was in the mountains. She adjusted the blank canvas on the easel shelf.

Good thing Griff had left a box of simple tools for tenants, or she would’ve had to go back into town to find the correct sized wrench to assemble the easel. Of course, the toolbox didn’t have the big tool she needed to fix the shower, but he’d brought that with him.

Her smaller, portable easel was still collapsed in its case. A bucket full of brushes sat on the counter and a stack of sketchbooks sat on the table beside the tubes of paint. She’d packed plenty of supplies.

She tugged her T-shirt down over her jeans. Time to get out of the house for a while. Fresh air was waiting outside the door and now that the cabin was in order, she was ready to explore.

“All work and no play makes Amy unhappy. We can’t have that.” She grabbed her sketchbook and a couple of pencils. The sunshine glinted through the newly cleaned windows, warming the cabin and casting a golden glow across the wooden floors. Tiny remains of dust swirled and sparkled as they floated in the sunlit air and the cabin smelled fresh and clean, with a slight hint of coffee.

Perfect.

She’d head out to explore the area nearest the cabin, down toward the creek. The woods were close and she figured she wouldn’t get lost on a short walk. Maybe she’d see some baby animals along the way, and the new growth of the season. The trees had bright green leaves and buds and even a few butterflies had appeared.

Spring
.

Her favorite season to get outdoors and capture nature in the raw, whether by pencil or paint, spring screamed to be captured in art. A photo was a reasonable reference point, but it never quite captured the essence of the season of birth and regrowth.

A great time of year to settle in and figure out how to approach the rest of her life, too. Darren and ADvert were behind her. Atlanta might be, too. What lay ahead? Being in the mountains felt like home. That was weird since she’d never been here in her life.

She couldn’t stay in Oakwood.

The lease was only two months. The cabin was a vacation cabin and the rent would surely go up as late summer hikers and fall leaf peepers escaped to the mountains. The place might have already been rented out.

Then there was Griff.

She stopped in her tracks. He was a wrench in all her plans. The dark mark on her schedule. The unknown. Right now she didn’t have to let him ruin a perfectly awesome day of sketching and exploring, did she?

None of the decisions had to be made today.

Well, only one.

She smiled.

She’d need to pick where she was going to spend the spring day. Among the daffodils to the west of the cabin? Up the hill to the piney ridgeline and open meadow? Or to the rocky creek that ran near the cabin?

Certainly was an easy choice.

Away from the cabin, away from daydreams and fantasies about Griff.

A girl and nature.

The light breezes of fresh air always uplifted her mood, even in the city. The mountain air should be even more amazing and invigorating.

Sketchbook in hand, she slipped through the front door and out onto the porch, locking the door behind her and pocketing the key. Lining the rocky walkway were a hundred daffodils, their yellow blooms swinging heavy on deep green stems as they swayed in the light breeze, their fruity aroma scenting the air. She could swear she smelled green.

I love spring!

She stepped off the porch onto the gravel walk where tufts of errant grass popped through like sprigs of bright green in a sea of gray. A few violet blooms peeked from the cracks between the rock border. She hadn’t explored the land around the cabin yet, and Griff’s warning echoed faintly like a heavy overcoat. A wet, heavy overcoat she didn’t want or need.

She wasn’t going to let his overprotectiveness get to her—she was going to enjoy the wonderland outside the cabin without worry. Sure, she’d be careful. She knew he gave her great advice.

She wasn’t going to be distracted by his butt, either. Not even a little bit. This was a day to sketch nature, nothing else.

A puff of wind blew by and she stuffed her sketchbook under her arm and tucked the pencils into her pocket. The breeze gusted, whipping her hair around her face, and she pushed the locks behind her ears.
Brrr
.

Maybe she should go and grab her jacket and a cap.
No.
She needed to get going if she was going to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. A bit of wind wasn’t going to stop her. It wasn’t cold when the breeze was still and once she got busy sketching, she wouldn’t even notice.

She pivoted to take in the area around the cabin. She remembered the creek in the real estate listings. Close to the cabin.

That way.

She headed the direction of the water, eager to see the clear stream splashing through a natural creek bed. The photo in the listing had shown a little stream with an accessible bank surrounded by large rocks. If that was true, there’d be plenty of spaces for her to sit. Down the hill from the cabin, and not very far into the forest, it looked like a path led straight to the creek.

Should be easy to find.

She headed toward the hill at the side of the cabin. She wasn’t going to spend the day thinking about Griff and their date on Friday.

Not a date. Never was, never will be.

He could make me happy
.

She pushed the thought away. Yeah, he could absolutely make her happy. Anything more than that was too painful to even consider. Though he’d been nice to her, he hadn’t made any moves on her besides a bit of flirting. No reason to think he was even considering her as a potential girlfriend.

A summer fling? Possibility. Wishful thinking, most likely, but a wish she’d certainly ask a genie to grant if she had the chance.

In less than two months from now, she was gone. She needed to keep that in mind in all her wishful thinking and daydreaming.

Reality bit hard.

She stepped through the tall grass at the edge of the yard.

Being free of Darren felt awesome. He wanted to know where she was going, and who with, and for how long, and not like Griff did. Griff seemed genuinely concerned with her safety, whereas Darren wanted to control her.

She could see the difference when she analyzed it from afar. Eventually, Darren got to the point of controlling—or trying to—everything she did. She’d been in over her head before she realized his protectiveness had turned to crazy. He’d controlled most of her work, too, telling her that her advertising campaigns were horrible, then pitching the same ones himself.

The night he’d thrown a cup at her, missing and shattering the dish all over the floor, had been the last straw. Something had clicked at that point and she no longer wanted anything to do with him, or even with ADvert. They controlled her in other, more subversive ways, and Darren and work were too intertwined to separate, like some kind of conjoined emotional twins that fed off her unhappiness. Being laid off was the best thing that could’ve happened after getting rid of Darren.

Thankfully he hadn’t bothered her since he’d found another person to control. Plenty of women were willing to take shit just to have a place to live. Too bad her friend Kelly had thought Darren was so awesome that she’d chosen him over Amy.

Amy rubbed her nose. She’d tried to warn Kelly that Darren was a creep, but she wouldn’t listen. Hopefully she’d figure it out sooner rather than later.

If she had any regrets over the situation, Amy wished she could’ve convinced Kelly to stay away from Darren. Kelly thought Amy was acting out of jealousy.

Amy closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sun, pretending she was a flower bud. When she opened, everyone would be amazed at how strong and different she was.

After a few moments of feeling the sun’s warmth on her face, she opened her eyes and headed toward the stream. Getting away to focus on her art and her heart for a change was the right thing to do, and the little cabin already felt more like home than her apartment. She never should’ve settled for an advertising job. She should’ve pursued her art, taking a waitress job or whatever was necessary to pay the bills without stripping her creativity.

Darren and Atlanta seemed so far away, like foggy memories or smudged postcards from the past. That was a great thing.

She felt like she could take on the world—or at least her little corner of it. How was that possible after only a few days?

She made her way down the narrow, dank path leading into the woods, carefully sidestepping the mud puddles and downed branches. The smell of moist earth and rotting wood filled her nostrils, and somewhere above, a bird shrieked. Amy searched the tree for it but couldn’t pick it out amongst the budding limbs. Tiny white blooms filled one tree and bees swarmed it, buzzing from flower to flower in search of a micro-drop of nectar.

Amy paused. The bees worked swiftly and moved to another flower, their knees covered in dusty pollen. Farther away, another bird chirped and she turned to try to spot it, but the leafy canopy camouflaged any movement. The spring mating calls had started, and soon the woods would be filled with baby birds and animals, if they weren’t already.

Maybe she’d get lucky and see a fawn, or some baby rabbits. Hopefully next time she’d have her camera with her and could grab a few shots. Painting animals had never been her forte, but she was willing to give it a go, especially if it was from a living scene she could recreate.

She stepped over a fallen tree branch at the stream’s bank. The water was only about six feet across and it bubbled and gurgled as it passed. It ran a couple feet deep in the very middle and was freezing cold with the occasional chunk of ice floating downstream. Filled with runoff from the melting snow higher in the mountains, it would be too frigid to walk through this time of year, and she didn’t see a bridge anywhere nearby.

She picked up a stick and poked at the leaves floating through the water, twirling as they passed. The stream was nothing like the rivulets of water that ran into the storm drains that carried refuse out of the city after a big rain.

She dropped the stick and grasped her sketchbook more tightly and then climbed up onto a large, rounded boulder beside the stream, its surface smoothed by flowing water millennia ago. Warmth radiated from the rock, and Amy sat and listened to the water rush by.

No people. No deadlines. No Darren.

She yawned. She could get used to the near-silence and peace of the place. Only the running of water as the little stream passed by. She stretched out her legs and lay back on the warm rock to look at the sky doming vibrant blue above her, not a cloud in sight.

The forest lay at the periphery of her vision, circling the blue sky like an outline, but the view above the water was unobstructed and bright blue with a haze of yellow sunshine.

The warmth radiated into her back and hips and she set the sketchbook beside her and closed her eyes. She hadn’t been alone in nature, truly alone, in a very long time. Crickets chirped, or maybe it was frogs. She didn’t know the difference from the sound. The water splashed against the rocks as it flowed by. The buzz of a dragonfly flitting by filled the air for a moment and she opened her eyes to watch it zip around then away.

Tension seeped from her body like the rock held magical powers to drain all the stress and negativity away from her very soul. A tightness she hadn’t realized she even had began to release, slow and steady, almost painful in its blissfulness.

She closed her eyes again. What would she do after this vacation? She didn’t want to go back into the big business of advertising. Too much stress for too little gain. Maybe work at a smaller company? She liked designing ads and doing print work, but the hours and competition at ADvert had been too much.

Did she even want to stay in Atlanta?

Maybe the beach, with its rounded waves and bright sunshine and golden sand. Or maybe the mountains? Or near a lake that spanned as far as she could see. The options were endless and, if she was honest with herself, pretty overwhelming.

A branch snapped and Amy sat up quickly.
That sounded like something stepped on a stick.
She looked around.

Nothing.

Maybe a limb fell, or a squirrel scampered by. She held her head at the sudden dizziness that filled her vision.

She watched the water run by in the creek, and followed a large leaf as it made its way down and over the tiny waterfall created by a large rock in the middle of the water.

Must’ve been nothing. Guess I should get busy.

After opening her sketchbook and making a few gesture lines of the ridge of pines, the hair stood along the back of her neck. She felt like she was being watched. She glanced up from her drawing.
Creepy.