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CHAPTER 21

Mara

Mara watched Gabe step away from her. For one strange second, nothing happened. He stood in the clearing with the old apple trees behind him and the mountains rising beyond them, his expression carrying a seriousness she had never seen in him before.

The morning was bright enough that she could see every familiar detail of him: the jacket he had worn on the drive out, the fall of his hair across his forehead, the slight tension around his mouth.

Then the air changed.

A faint crackle ran over Mara’s skin, lifting the fine hairs along her arms, and the air around Gabe seemed to shimmer. Not with light exactly, but with a distortion that made him blur at the edges as though heat had suddenly risen between them.

Mara blinked, and Gabe disappeared.

There was no other word for it. One moment he was standing in front of her, and the next a bear occupied the same patch of grass.

Mara forgot how to breathe.

The animal was enormous. Mara had seen bears in photographs and nature documentaries, but never this close, and never this big. Thick cinnamon-brown fur covered a broad body, powerful shoulders, and paws that could probably crush the fallen apples scattered beneath the trees without effort. His head came up slowly, and dark eyes fixed on hers.

Gabe’s eyes.

No. That was ridiculous.

Mara took one step backward before she could stop herself, but the bear did not move. Her heart hammered as she stared at the place where Gabe had been and then at the animal before her, as though some ordinary explanation might appear if she gave it another chance. There were no clothes on the ground. No sign of Gabe at all.

“Oh my goodness.” Her voice came out barely above a whisper.

The bear’s ears twitched.

“Gabe?”

He lowered his head once. Not randomly, not the vague movement of an animal shifting its weight, but a clear, deliberate nod.

Her mouth fell open. “You understand me.”

Another small dip of his head brought a breathless laugh from her. “Of course you do.”

Her mind was trying to catch up, reaching for explanations and rejecting them almost as quickly. A trick was impossible. A hidden bear was impossible. Gabe running behind a tree while she failed to see him was impossible.

But she had watched him vanish, and she had watched this bear appear.

The animal remained exactly where he was, giving her time, and that felt like Gabe. He had spent the last week doing the same thing in a hundred smaller ways, moving closer when she invited him and holding back when she needed space.

Slowly, Mara took a step toward the bear. He stayed still, so she took another, closing the distance until she could see the individual strands of fur around his face and the dark shine of his nose. He was even bigger up close.

“Can I touch you?”

His head lowered immediately, and the answer was clear enough.

Mara lifted her hand, although instinct warned her for one brief moment that putting her fingers on the face of a bear was an exceptionally bad idea. Then she remembered Gabe laughing at the pumpkin patch, Gabe making her coffee, Gabe standing outside cabin seven with breakfast while Scott waited beside her.

She placed her palm against his cheek.

The fur was thick and warm beneath her fingers, softer around his face than across his neck. The bear went completely still at the first touch and then leaned into her hand.

“Oh.” Mara stroked her fingers along the side of his face and scratched lightly behind one rounded ear. His eyes half closed, and a low rumble vibrated through him. “You like that.”

The bear leaned harder into her hand, making her laugh.