He pulled out a chair and sat down.
ten
Greta hadn’t slept well.
She hadn’t slept well in four days, if she was being honest, not since Glenhaven, not since her shop had been gutted and she’d fought with Bear on his porch over a situation she had no business sticking her nose in.
What did it matter if Bear was willing to drop everything, risk everything to help Lila?
It didn’t.
Shouldn’t.
But it did.
She lay on her back in the dark, Atlas’s weight across her shins, and stared at the ceiling and let herself be honest for one goddamn second. It mattered. It mattered because Bear had looked at Lila Garrison and seen someone who needed him, and he’d gone. Just gone. Dropped Greta in the lobby of the sheriff’s office like a package he’d meant to deliver but forgot, and walked out the back door with Lila like that was the only thing that counted.
Okay, yes, so she had told him to go.
But, still.
She rolled onto her side. The pillow was too hot. She flipped it.
She’d seen the way Lila looked at him like he was her savior.
And she’d hated it.
Not Lila. Lila was fine. Lila was a good woman who’d been dealt a shit hand and was playing it as well as anyone could. Greta didn’t hate Lila. But she hated the fact that Bear had a whole life on his side of the street that didn’t involve her.
Which was stupid. Of course, he had a life beyond her. Especially since he’d done his damndest to avoid her since that fight on his porch.
By morning, she was exhausted.
She swung her legs off the bed, dislodging Atlas, who groaned in protest and resettled with his head on her abandoned pillow. The floor was cold under her bare feet. She didn’t turn the light on. She didn’t need to. She knew the path to the bathroom by muscle memory — three steps, turn right, two more steps, hand on the doorframe to avoid the corner of the dresser she’d been meaning to move for six months.
The face in the mirror was not pretty. Dark circles under both eyes, hair flat on one side where she’d slept on it wrong, a crease from the pillowcase running diagonally across her left cheek. She turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face, not caring that it soaked the neck of her t-shirt. The cold helped. Not enough, but some.
She needed coffee. She needed a plan. But mostly, she needed Bear to stop avoiding her.
The kitchen was the same mess it had been when she’d gone up to bed, but she ignored it all and went to the coffee pot that still had yesterday’s brew sitting in it. She poured it into a mug and took a sniff. Smelled okay, and she didn’t want to wait for a new pot to brew. She dumped some sugar in it and stuck it in the microwave to reheat.
The knock came at her front door, followed immediately by the sound of the key in the lock. There was only one person in life who had a key and walked in without waiting for an answer.
Naomi.
Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders. Perfect timing. Her best friend would know exactly what to do about Bear. After all, Naomi had fallen for Owen “Ghost” Booker—the one man at Valor Ridge who genuinely terrified people—and somehow made him as devoted as a puppy. Surely she’d have advice on how to tame a bear.
Greta pulled the mug from the microwave and turned, ready to launch into it, and the words died on her tongue.
Naomi stood in the kitchen doorway with a manila folder tucked under one arm and two coffees from Nessie’s in a cardboard carrier. She was dressed in her usual—dark vest over a long-sleeved shirt, her braids pulled back, the MMIW pin on her collar the only splash of color on her outfit. But her face was wrong. Not upset, exactly. Set. The way it got when she had something to say that she’d rather not.
Greta set the mug down. “You look like you came to tell me somebody died.”
“Not died.” She crossed to the kitchen table and set the coffees down, then the folder. She pulled out the chair opposite Greta’s usual spot and sat. “Sit down.”
Greta didn’t like being told to sit. She sat anyway, because Naomi’s voice had the weight it carried when she was doing the job and not the friendship, and Greta had learned a long time ago to hear the difference.
Naomi slid one of the coffees across the table. “Drink that. It’s fresh.”
