Before I could even finish the sentence, Guy had blurted, “Yes!” and was digging out his phone and passing it to me. He was a bit like an eager puppy, and there was an intense feeling of relief coming off him in waves. Looked like I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t ready for things to end.
Just as I was texting myself from his phone, the Uber pulled up, and with it, a wave of grief pressed down on my shoulders. I blinked back tears. “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”
Guy took my face between his warm palms and dropped his forehead to mine. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you, Fable. Our story isn’t over yet. So how about, I’ll see you soon.”
I wanted to believe that so very much. So many words tried to force their way out, but it was like they were choking me, my throat a bottleneck.Thank you for making this trip perfect. I’ll miss you. I love you.But instead of saying any of them, I just nodded and said, “Okay. Soon.”
The Uber driver honked, waving through the windshield to hurry me up. I stepped back from Guy, forcing myself to walk away. “Oh! Your toque,” I said, yanking it off to pass it to him, but he shook his head.
“You keep it. Looks better on you anyway.”
I would never need it in California, but I hugged it to my chest anyway. I needed every piece of him I could get.
As soon as the car had rounded the first turn and Guy disappeared from my life, I finally let the tears fall. In fact, Ibawled the entire way to the airport, through baggage check-in, security, and boarding. The woman seated next to me on the plane passed me a tissue, and I forced myself to calm down and take a deep breath.
We’d promised to stay in touch, but that was just what people said to people they met on holidays. I was just a fun distraction for him, a convenient bedwarmer. Guy would probably forget about me in no time, once real life had taken the shine off.
I rubbed at the hollow sensation that was expanding in my chest. I had a feeling I wouldn’t recover so easily.
14
Guy
Myeyeswerelockedsuspiciously on the human currently drilling a hole in my cabin wall. “Is that really necessary?” I asked sharply. The little pile of sawdust accumulating on my living room floor was starting to grate on me. That was a perfectly good wall before he’d come along, and now I would have to seal that up tight or I would have chipmunks moving in by nightfall.
The guy sighed and sat back on his heels, drill in hand. “That depends. Do you want the internetinsidethe house? Or outside?”
I bit down on the growl threatening to sneak out, lips thinning beneath my overgrown beard.
“That’s what I thought,” he grumbled under his breath, bending over far enough that his pants slid down, revealing a good three inches of hairy ass crack. The drill started up again, and I had to stomp away before I physically removed him from my home.
The internet was important for so many reasons—building a website for my company, emailing contracts and negotiations with the small company that was interested in partnering with me on a sample batch of syrup to see how well it sold—but honestly, I could’ve done all that at the shared community building or even the Alpha’s house, both of which were set up with wi-fi. But I wanted internet in my own home so I could be closer to Fable.
I followed him on social media and got regular updates from his blog, so I knew he was trying out new recipes, many of them with maple and fresh-ground nutmeg, but the connection up here at the lodge was so unreliable that the pictures wouldn’t always load on my phone. And videos? Forget about it.
I hadn’t laid eyes on him in weeks, not since he drove away from the lodge and out of sight, and it was slowly killing me. We’d texted a few times, but between the time difference and his day job, there hadn’t been nearly enough contact. We’d tried to do a video call, but the service out here was so awful that I’d barely been able to hear his voice, and the video was stuck on a pixelated view of his ceiling. He said he was doing okay, but I swore I could still feel him on my skin, like the ghost of a touch, and he didn’tfeelokay to me. Or maybe that was just me who was a total wreck.
Mates weren’t meant to live so far apart. There was this massive echoing cave inside my chest, filled with sharp-clawed monsters trying to dig their way out, and it made me snap atinternet servicemen just trying to do their job. I decided it was time to take a walk and let the man do his thing before I shifted and let my beaver throw his weight around.
It was still too early to tap the sugar maples, but I could feel the first hint of spring in the air, the days slowly getting longer, the sun warm on my face. I decided to do a quick lap of the maple grove to check on the trees’ health and plan ahead.
I walked through the trees, snow crunching beneath my boots, running my fingers over the bark in an attempt to ground myself, but I felt so lost. There were still a few random Christmas decorations lingering on branches, but January was so long and dark that we always hesitated on letting go of the holiday. This year had been even darker and colder than usual, with my heart a whole country away.
Do you want to swim?I offered my beaver as we rounded the lake, but he wasn’t in the mood for anything either.
Non. Fable,he grumped, sulking. He hadn’t even formally met our mate in his fur, but any joy he’d ever found in going about our daily business had fizzled and died. Nothing but Fable could fix what was broken.
A splash brought my attention to where someone had hacked into the ice over the small lake that curved through the bottom of our valley. I saw a flicker of a brown-furred head duck under the water, the slap of a wide tail, before Pierre’s human head breached the water’s surface.
“What’s wrong now?” our lodge Alpha asked in thickly accented French, hauling his body out of the freezing water, naked and dripping wet. He wiped a hand down his face then walked over to where he’d left a towel and pile of clothes draped over a beaver-gnawed log.
“Nothing new,” I informed him tersely, trying to shut down the conversation before he could get started with his opinions of me and my mate again. He knew some of what had transpiredin Oregon, but he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t simply revealed myself to him, marked him, then brought him home. If only it were so easy… He didn’t spend much of his time around humans, didn’t follow their customs and etiquette.
“You know, you should just—” he began, but I shook my head sharply, and he cut off with a sigh. “It’s not healthy for you to be away from your mate. Fate put the two of you together for a reason, and to ignore it is… disrespectful. Not to mention hazardous to your health. I mean, just look at you.” He waved his hand gesturing to all of me before he pulled his sweater over his head.
I looked down at myself. “What’s wrong with how I look?”
“Your shirt is untucked… andunwashed,” he added after taking a whiff, “your boots are unlaced, your beard looks like a briar patch. Is there a bird nesting in there?” He leaned closer, using his fingers to peek into the thick pelt I’d grown on my face.
