Page 11 of Bear and Book

I clenched my jaw and shoved the necklace back under my sweater. Leo wasn’t Jason. I knew that, but he was still dangerous.

He was too much. Too young. Too kind. And I was nothing like I used to be. I was older. Bitter and Set in my ways. I lived alone, and I liked it that way.

No obligations. No heartaches. No one to disappoint or be disappointed by.

Bringing someone like him into this mess of a life would only end in one way, with him realizing he’d made a mistake.

Because how could someone like Leo ever be content with someone like me?

He’d get tired of the silences. The moods. The way I snapped when overwhelmed and closed off when things got hard.

He’d want laughter and warmth and someone who could meet him with the same easy joy he carried in his chest. I wasn’t that man. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.

He’d go find someone better. Someone his age. Someone whose soul hadn’t already been chipped away by years of waiting for a love that never came.

I moved through the store slowly, adjusting crooked stacks, straightening chairs, pretending there wasn’t a tightness in my throat that wouldn’t go away.

Leo had such a gorgeous smile. Called the store cozy. Compared it to a Hobbit hole, of all things. He’d meant it as a compliment. I think.

I gripped the edge of the bookshelf beside me, head bowed.

“I don’t want this,” I said under my breath.

The potential bond. The hope and the risk.

It was easier not to feel anything. Safer and cleaner.

Let him think I was just another grumpy old fox with a stubborn streak and a messy store. Let him walk away, and forget whatever his bear thought it sensed.

I could survive alone. I’d done it before. I’d do it again. Still, it had felt good, even for just for a moment to be seen.

To have someone brush the back of their hand along a patched window and smile like it meant something. To have someone stay. Just because they wanted to.

I sat down on the armchair by the front window, the same one Jason had picked out in a furniture store what felt like a lifetime ago.

It creaked under my weight but didn’t give out. That was something, at least. Outside, the storm had officially passed. The wind had settled. The town was quiet again.

And still, I could feel Leo’s energy lingering in the walls, like sunshine that hadn’t quite faded. Like a warmth I hadn’t asked for but missed already.

I didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know what to do with him. All I knew was I couldn’t afford to want him. Not when I was still piecing myself together.

Not when the last person I trusted nearly broke me.

I looked around the shop. At the books, the rugs, the mismatched lamps, the place I’d built from the ground up, and tried to imagine what it would look like with someone else in it.

Someone like Leo. I could picture it too clearly.

That was the problem, and it terrified me.

Chapter 4

Leo

The smell of fresh croissants hit me the second I walked through the back door of Bear and Bun, and I swear, my stomach growled loud enough to startle the mixer.

Cassian glanced up from the counter, where he was kneading dough. He was the opposite of me in pretty much every way. He was cool, measured, and impossible to ruffle.

Which was exactly why I needed him right now.