He growled again, and she made circular motions over his chest without actually making contact with him. “Shh, I’m okay.”
“You have to be more careful, little witch,” he said heatedly as his eyes returned to blue and the hair faded away on his jaw.
“I will be. I promise,” she said.
“Stay right beside me,” he demanded, reaching for her hand.
He growled when she stepped back, and she said, “I will, but you can’t touch me.”
He blinked, his gaze clearing a little before he looked around them. “Fuck. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
“I overreacted again, but my bear, he…”
He trailed off, and she gave him an encouraging look, but he just shook his head. “C’mon, let’s finish up.”
She pushed the cart through the store, acutely aware of Briggs’s big body behind her. It was busy in the store, but she had a clear path to everything she wanted to look at. People just naturally got out of Briggs’s way. She could get used to this, she thought with a small smile.
“Mommy, why’s that man so tall?”
“Shh, honey.” A woman with long pink locs and a kid of about seven clinging to one hand gave Briggs a nervous look before herding her kid down another aisle. Cece studied the others around them. They might have been giving them a wide berth, but most were also openly gawking at Briggs, and more than one was snapping photos of him with their phones.
She frowned at a white woman who, her mouth wide open, was actually taking a video, her phone tracking Briggs’s every move.
“Do you mind?” Cece snapped at her.
Embarrassed, the woman tucked her phone away before ducking into the nearest aisle. Cece turned to Briggs. His face was stoic, and he didn’t appear to be bothered by the people staring at them, but their conversation from last night replayed on a loop in her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
“Are you?”
“For the most part,” he said. “Wellington is nearly all polar bear shifters living there, so it’s a bit of an adjustment being here with so many humans and different shifters not used to seeing a polar bear shifter.”
She wanted to ask him why he’d moved here, but he grabbed the end of the cart and pulled it toward the meat section, his face already closed off again. She stood next to him and didn’t say anything when he tossed two whole fish into the cart, but when he reached for a package of steaks that cost more than her entire grocery budget, she said, “Hey, wait.”
“What?” he asked. “You don’t like steak?”
“I do,” she said, “but I don’t need steak.”
“You have barely any food in the house and no meat at all,” he said.
“I’m aware,” she said. “I, uh, usually only eat meat once a week or so.”
He snorted in disbelief and, with defensiveness in her voice, she said, “I make some really delicious meals with beans and -”
“I’m a bear shifter. I eat meat,” Briggs said.
She flushed. “Okay, I get that, but can we look at some different options? Ground beef or -”
“I like steak,” he said.
She sighed, embarrassed, but left with no choice but to tell him the truth. “Steak isn’t in my budget.”
He gave her a confused look. “You think you have to pay for my groceries?”
