Page 34 of Bear’s True Mate

The door closed. I walked over and locked it. The duplex felt different now. The same walls, the same ocean view, the same desk by the window—but the air had changed. It was like someone had taken the safe little world I’d been building here and cracked it down the middle.

Evan was in Driftwood Cove.

He was walking the same streets I walked. Eating at the same places I ate.

My stomach turned.

I paced the living room for a while, checking the windows, pulling the blinds shut. My phone sat face down on the kitchen counter where I’d left it. I didn’t want to touch it. Scared there might be another text from him.

Through the wall, I could hear Nolan moving around his unit. He was close. He was right there.

That helped calm me more than it should have.

Eventually, I made myself sit at the desk again and focus on my story. Not because I thought I could write, but because staring at the walls and pacing was making my fear louder, and I needed something to do with my hands.

The manuscript was where I’d left it—the end of Chapter Sixteen, the scene where my heroine finally tells the hero she’s in love with him. The words blurred on the screen as I read the last thing I’d typed. I typed a sentence. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too.

A car door slammed outside, and I flinched. I held my breath and listened, thinking maybe Nolan had gone to his truck for something he’d forgotten.

A knock sounded at my front door.

Fear pumped through me. It had to be Nolan, though. Right? Maybe he had something else to say? Evan didn’t even know which side of the duplex was mine. Did he?

I crossed the room and peeked out the window to see who it was.

Evan stood on my steps.

Tall, thin, and clean-cut. That jaw, sharp cheekbones, and those flat gray eyes that looked warm from a distance but were empty when you got close enough to see. He wore a button-down shirt and khakis, like he’d come from a business lunch, like this was casual, like showing up at someone’s door after tracking them across the state was a reasonable thing to do.

He smiled. The same smile that had fooled me too many times before.

“Found you,” he said.

I tried to close the door. My hand shoved against it, and I put my whole weight behind the push, but he was already moving. His palm caught the edge, and he stepped inside, smooth and practiced, like he’d done this before.

He had.

Too many times to count.

“Rose.” His voice was calm. Measured. The tone he used when he wanted me to know he was being patient with me. “Come on. You can’t just leave town like that.”

“Get out.”

“We need to talk.”

“There’s nothing to say. You shouldn’t be here. Get out of my house.”

“It’s not your house. It’s a rental.” He said it with a half-smile, like he was correcting a child. “You ran away to a rental in a town nobody’s ever heard of. Do you know how that looks?”

He was moving as he talked—slow, casual, putting himself between me and the door the way he always did without me noticing. He cut off the exit without looking like he was doing it.

“I’m not doing this with you, Evan.”

“Doing what? Talking? We’re just talking.”

His hand closed around my wrist when I tried to take another step away from him.

The grip was familiar. Not to the point of pain—not yet—but tight enough to remind me who was in control.