Can't Bear To Run (Kendal Creek Bears, #1) Page 9

  “I am not fragile,” I muttered. “But the rest of that, I’ll gladly take. Though I don’t really need any protecting. After all, I did take a baseball bat and...” I trailed off, stopping my yap just short of admitting that I’d had a run in with attempted manslaughter. Or would it be attempted murder? Or actual murder. I was still trying to swallow that pill myself, and nowhere near ready to admit to whatever Dax was to me, what I’d done.

  As time went by, I’d regret that decision more bitterly than anything in my life. But at the moment, it just wasn’t right. I wasn’t ready.

  “I can take care of myself,” I finished weakly. The fact that I was pale, sweating buckets, and curled up in the fetal position against his chest didn’t lend much credibility to my claim. If Dax laughed, I didn’t hear him.

  “I know, Raine,” he said. My name slipped out of lips like honey dripping from a strawberry. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but... well, I figured it might be a little hard to swallow.”

  He was hugging me so tight that I could hardly breathe. I didn’t much care though, until it got so bad that I started getting a hot feeling in my lungs. I tapped him on the back. “Hey, uh,” I croaked, “you’re... choking...”

  “Oh God,” he gasped, “sorry, I got kinda carried away.”

  “Well, put her down you big idiot,” Fletch said. “Apologies are nice and all, but they don’t help someone breathe.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Sorry.”

  I sucked a deep breath as a thunderclap crashed outside. “So,” I said, “the bear...?”

  “Yeah, uh, it’s a long story.”

  A flash of lightning brightened the room for just a moment before it faded away, back into darkness. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

  After a moment’s pause, rain so intense kicked up that it was hard to hear myself think.

  “We’ve been around a long time,” he said. “A really, really long time. For longer than there have been people here, there have been, well...” he trailed off, like he was searching for the right word to use.

  “Bears,” Fletch said, helping him out. “You want me to give her the run down, or are you going to buck up and manage to give her the talk? Don’t remind me of when I tried to coach your old dad through giving you the birds and the bees talk.”

  Daxon flushed so brightly that his cheeks looked about the same hue as a clown nose. “I thought you promised you weren’t going to say anything about that.”

  Fletcher was just laughing. I could tell that there was something deep between these two. Something that reminded me of how an older sister takes care of her younger brother, but not without taking any possible opportunity to embarrass the hell out of him. She raised her hands defensively. “Now, now, Daxon,” she said. “I was just asking a question, you know. Just trying to help.”

  “Yeah, well, I think you’ve been plenty of help.” He was still blushing and I was still biting my tongue. He hadn’t laughed at me, so the least I could do was not laugh at him, even if it took such effort that it hurt my sides.

  On cue, the phone started ringing wildly in the other room. If I hadn’t been there, I would have though Dax somehow called his own number to get Fletch out of there. “Go get the phone,” he said with a smug grin. “Let me know if it’s anything bad.”

  “Is it ever anything good?”

  She trotted off down the hall.

  “So, bears?” I asked. “You were saying something about bears?”

  “Well, uh,” he stammered. “Yeah, like I said, we’ve been here longer than anyone can remember. And, uh, yeah so we turn into bears, it’s really no big deal. Everyone’s got their thing, you know? Some people really like birthday cake, and others really like burgers. I personally like both, but I like pie better than cake. Anyway, what I’m saying is that—“

  “Dax?” I asked. “Take a breath.”

  He did. “Whew. Thanks.”

  “Go on,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “You were saying something about magical, shapeshifting bears?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well, it sounds pretty crazy when you say it like that, but... uh... yeah, that’s pretty much the story.”

  “I need to sit down,” I said.

  “You already are.”

  “Oh, right.”

  I felt myself flop over backward. Before that night, I’d never once fainted in my entire life. Not even when I was a kid, and one of my friends and I did that thing where you cross your arms in front of your chest and your friend pulls on them until you black out.

  But I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the second time in less than an hour that I went pale, pasty, clammy, and then hit the deck. At least that time I was in a bed, and didn’t end up with a gnarly skinned knee.

  Luckily, that round of fainting only lasted a few seconds, and didn’t result in more room spinning when I woke up. But I did notice that as I came-to, Fletch had just run into the room and had a very clearly concerned, upset look on her face. Dax wasn’t paying any attention though. He had my head cradled in his arms, and he was showering my forehead with kisses and my cheeks with slow, careful, comforting strokes.

  “What is it, Fletch?” Dax wasn’t paying a lick of attention to her at all. His entire attention was devoted to me, and the gentle touches he was using to soothe my nerves. “Can it wait?”

  I looked in her direction. She was shaking her head, and was almost as pale and shaky as I knew I must have been. “I don’t think so. It seems like maybe someone got word about our visitor here.”

  “Oh,” he said dismissively. “Is that all? What are you so upset about?”

  “It’s not just anyone, Dax,” she said. As she spoke, Fletcher was getting more and more flustered. “If it was just someone calling to say they saw you with your girlfriend, I wouldn’t be acting like a scared little kid.”

  He sighed, heavily. I think he didn’t sense exactly what it was she was getting at. I, however, immediately picked up on the tension in her voice, and grabbed Dax’s hand. “I think you should just listen to her,” I said. “You said this was an old place with weird rules, right? Well...”

  He took the hint. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”

  After a moment, Fletcher cleared her throat, which seemed to signal that she’d made up her mind how to proceed. “I guess there’s no point to being sly about it, since she’s a part of this just as much as you are.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Hold on just a second. What am I a part of? I just got here... uh... how many hours ago? See? I don’t even know how long I’ve been here, how the hell can I possibly be a part of anything?”

  It was Fletch’s turn to sigh. “You field this one,” she said.

  Dax took a deep breath. “Well, it’s like this. Yeah, like I said, this is an old place with old rules. And we’re not the only ones like, you know, us. There are other clans that will pounce at the first sign of weakness. And I don’t know how else to say it, but this makes me look weak.”

  I crinkled up my nose, trying to decipher what he’d just said. All I could manage to croak out though, was “weak?”

  “It’s not like that,” Dax said, but I was already pushing myself to my feet. “Raine! Wait! I’m not sure why you’re leaving but I’m a giant moron and I always screw these things up.”

  “No,” I said. “You didn’t screw anything up. Somehow, I’m a sign of your weakness. What is it? My Womanly Wiles? My feminine charm? Some other macho bullshit like that? I don’t even know where I am, not really. You just dropped a steaming pile on my lap about a bunch of magical bears wandering around a town, and about how they apparently have rivalries and then how I’m in the middle of it?”

  Dax moved to grab me, but Fletch held him back, shooting him a nasty look. She hissed something through her teeth, but I was so clouded with rage and confusion and my absolutely bizarre state of mind, that I couldn’t even think, much less listen.

  He said some other things, but the main th
ing I remembered Dax shouting was “No!” over and over again. “Let me explain, please!” was another frequently repeated phrase. Looking back, I knew even then I was being brash, and more than a little illogical, but at that moment, I couldn’t let myself fall into something like that again. I couldn’t possibly get into a position where I didn’t feel like I was in control.

  “I need to think,” was the last thing I said before I half-ran and half-stumbled down the hall and out the front door into the pouring rain. I opened my Jeep’s door and slammed it shut. There was a rattling noise behind me that I didn’t think about at the time, but as I backed out of the driveway and saw Dax standing there, soaking wet and dripping, I realized what had happened.

  He’d gotten back there and unhitched the trailer, and then moved his damn truck out from behind me so that I could drive out.

  Why I didn’t stop myself right then and there, turn around and run straight back into his arms I’ll never know. Then again, life has this way of always ending up where it’s supposed to end up. Maybe if I’d done that, it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did – the way it had to end.

  The only other thing I remember thinking as I watched him disappear in the rearview after I turned around was that I had no idea where I was going, and the only thing I wanted to do was to be with him, one way or another.

  But that, right then, I just couldn’t.

  -11-

  No Time Like This Time

  “Why did I just let her walk out?” Dax slammed his fist into the wall, jabbing a hole through the rough-textured drywall. When he pulled it back, it was covered in plaster dust and flaked paint. “And why the hell did I just get so mad at my wall that I punched a hole in it? What’s wrong with me, Fletch?”

  His old friend was just laughing. “She’ll be back,” she said. “As for what’s wrong with you, I could list a thousand different things. But the fact is, I’ve never, not in my entire life, seen you look at anyone like you were looking at that woman. And also, I’ve never known you to be right about anything like this.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Dax was so hot and confused and worked up that he couldn’t gather his thoughts, but Fletch was still smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Her wide, toothy grin was almost as infuriating to Dax as his completely inability to stop acting like a pissed off baby. He punched the wall again, but that time instead of punching through a wall, it thudded heavily into a stud. “Son of a bitch!” he swore, recoiling and cradling his hand.

  “Are you finished hitting walls, yet?” Fletch asked. “Because I’m about to lay a steaming pile in your lap bigger than the one you dumped on Raine.”

  “Huh?” he grunted, looking up from his busted knuckles.

  “Daxon Mark,” Fletch said with deep gravity. “I hate to tell you this.”

  “Oh come on, Fletch,” he said impatiently. “Just get it out. We still have to figure out what to do about Jack Creighton thinking he can go behind my back and take over the town because I have a human girlfriend.”

  He hit the wall again, but this time it was more of an impotent love pat.

  “Look at me, Dax,” she said.

  Turning his huge head toward her, Dax did as he was told. “Yeah?”

  “You, my friend, are in love.”

  “What? No,” he said. “No way, that’s crazy. I just found her. I might have been wanting to for six years, but...”

  Fletch pursed her lips.

  “I can’t be in love with her, I can’t possibly be,” he trailed off. “In love? Oh my God, Fletch,” he said. “I’m in love with her.”

  “You have been for a long time. And that, my friend,” she said with a smile, “is exactly what’s wrong with you.”

  -12-

  Night blind

  I hate driving in the rain. First of all, I’m kind of night blind, and I don’t have the best vision anyway, but damn do I hate driving in the rain.

  Also, I hate driving in places I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, that’s a little hard to believe coming from a girl who packed all her stuff and went on a cross country road trip with no end planned, but there it is. And there I was, living a collective hell of everything I absolutely hated about driving – at night, in the rain, in a place I’d never been.

  Oh, and there were apparently magical bears rambling around turning into giant naked muscle men.

  On top of all that, I couldn’t get Dax out of my mind. How he said he wanted to protect me and keep me and hold me and all that, I couldn’t get those smooth, soft, loving words out of my head. And that’s what they had to be – loving. Nothing else can make a person say something like that to another person, but damned if I knew how to take it.

  Lost in thought, I barely noticed the bear in the road before it was too late.

  I wrenched the wheel left, swerving around the massive creature in front of me. It turned its head, watching with curious intent, as my Jeep turned a doughnut. I knew better than to try and right the wheels and just held tight to the wheel, letting the hunk of steel circle until it stopped.

  “Shit,” I breathed. “That just happened.”

  I looked over at the bear, his huge golden head turned in my direction. He cocked his head in a way that seemed to me that he was checking to make sure I was okay. “I’m fine,” I heard myself say. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I immediately chided myself for talking to a bear. “Don’t worry, you didn’t hurt me.”

  As crazy as it sounds, I’m almost sure that bear nodded before he ran off.

  I got my Jeep back on the road, back into the right lane, and took a few seconds to look around and collect my thoughts. I turned on my phone and flipped over to the GPS app. In something of a prophetic foreshadowing, the words LOCATION NOT FOUND; CANNOT GIVE DIRECTIONS flashed on the screen.

  With a curse, I threw the thing into the back seat where it bounced off the half-upholstered bench seat and tumbled to the floor. “Great. Great fucking luck I have. Miles from civilization, no clue where I am, and the damn phone won’t even pick up a signal. How is it that everything seems to happen at once?”

  An old truck, one of those rounded-off Fords from the 40s, had at some point during my extended thought monologue, pulled up behind me. Whoever it was laid on the horn.

  Not thinking about how it was so dark there was no way they could possibly see, I looked into the mirror and mouthed that I was sorry. I took a breath and looked back again. The headlights had gone out of the truck, but I didn’t think anything of it. Instead, I just pushed the gas and started to slowly roll forward.

  “Hey!” I heard from outside. “Hey you there!” came from both sides of my Jeep. “You aw-right?” the question came with a deep, heavily accented voice that gave me flashbacks from the one time I’d watched Deliverance.

  Whoever it was knocked at my window. “Hey! You awright in thar?”

  I turned to look, and found myself staring at possibly the dirtiest, ugliest mug I’d ever laid eyes on – and trust me, that’s saying something. I nodded and said I was fine, but kept the window up and pushed the gas pedal gently again, hoping to convince my friends to go on their way.

  “You hear that, Pa?” one of the voices asked.

  “Is this the one we’re lookin’ for, Loretta?”

  Holy hell, that’s a GIRL? I thought. A quick look confirmed my worst fears. Yep, that’s a girl. I guess.

  “I dunno, pa,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  I pushed on the gas a little more, but there wasn’t even the slightest hint that this odd looking group was going to let me go. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, even though in time I realized how stupid I was being by not just punching the gas and letting her rip.

  The voice became more insistent. “What’s yer name?” it was joined by a banging at the window of my Jeep.

  “She ain’t sayin, pa!” the girl shouted out.

  “God awmighty, Lore, if she ain’t sayin’, she’s the one.”

  “The one of what?”
I asked. “I’m Raine Matthews and I’m trying to find my way back to the interstate. I don’t know where I took a wrong turn, but—“

  “See?” the older voice asked. “All you gotta do is ask the right questions.”

  “But Pa, you didn’t ask her nothing!”

  “Shut up, will ya? Junior, get her. I’m tired out.”

  “Get me?” I cried out. “What the hell are you—?”

  Glass shattered. A cold wind, carrying plenty of rain, howled through the remnants of my passenger-side window, almost mirroring my own screech of panic. “Who the hell are you? What the hell is going on?”

  “Put somethin’ over her mouth,” I heard. “She just won’t shut up, so make her!”

  A bag went over my head, some kind of rough fabric that I couldn’t identify scratched my face. The lock on the passenger door popped open, and all I could think was why didn’t they just open my door instead of breaking the window?

  Funny things go through your head when you’re in the middle of a panic attack.

  Unfortunately for me, the panic was just starting.

  *

  I’d never seen anything in my life to prepare me for what I was about to be right in the middle of. With a bag over my head, I couldn’t see very much, but luckily the thing wasn’t completely obscuring my vision, so I was able to vaguely keep an eye on where we were going.

  We passed around the side of Kendal Creek, or at least that’s what I thought it was. The constant pitching and yawing of the pickup had my guts churning and sweat running down the sides of my face, soaking into where the bag was tied loosely around my throat.

  The ride had been silent except for the near-constant sound of spitting out both. I was in the back, smooshed between the two very large sisters. One of them – the one called Loretta Jr. – was actually startlingly attractive. The other one, Jackie Jr., was vastly less so, but she was so strong she could probably have picked a bulldozer up out of a pothole. If, you know, that was something you needed.