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“It’s okay,” Gwen murmurs.
I shake my head. I need to spit it out. Quit hedging. Even if my voice cracks. Which it does when I say, “I didn’t realize she would still…want me.”
“And love you,” she whispers.
I wipe my eyes, then stroke her hair. “I was surprised,” I repeat quietly.
“Just as long as you aren’t in the future.” She kisses my arm, and I try to bring the emotion level down while Brian asks more questions about the weeks after I woke up.
Gwenna finds a way to keep things light and teasing, joking with Brian that she had to wipe my ass. When my face heats up and I swat at her, she cackles.
I grab the recorder. “That’s a damn lie. Nobody loses that much muscle in a month. I was walking around in a couple of days. Not far, and Piglet held my hand.” I give her a tender smile.
“We’re hand-holders.”
“And your hand worked? The left one?”
I nod. “Not perfect, but yeah. More than it did.” I flex it for Brian. “I broke a rib back there: the second one from the top, here on the left side. The nerves to this hand were never damaged beyond repair, they just had pressure on them. That’s how they explained it to me. Something about that rib breaking gave the nerve more room to breathe.”
I put my hand down, and Gwen laces her fingers through mine.
She ends up helping me describe our coming home, on tax day, as it were. “We both filed for extensions.” She smiles.
“So tell me what you’re doing now.”
I tell Brian about the studio, the renovations we’ve got going. “Gwen’s still singing, so we go to Nashville once a week, like she told you.”
“How’s that going?”
She beams. “I’m in talks with a small label about a record deal.”
I can’t help grinning, too.
We talk about the bears—all doing well—and I go through Kellan and Lyon’s story, and Kell and Cleo’s. When I think I’ve given all the facts and have started thinking about peeling Piglet’s little jean shorts off, Brian says, “Just a few more things. I need more details for the character sketches.”
Gwen takes a swig from her water bottle, passes it to me. I take a long swallow.
“I’d— Can you tell me more about when you first came here?” he asks. “You were watching her. What was that like?”
I look down at my boots. It’s something Gwen and I have talked about, of course. But I don’t want to share it.
“You liked her right away?” Brian prompts. “Were drawn to her in some way?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Obsession.”
Brian blinks and glances down at his recorder, then looks up at me intensely. “That’s what you would call it?”
“I just did.”
“Obsessed with the outcome?”
“With her fate, and mine. Obsessed with her. I wanted her from the first time I saw her. When she kicked me, though…” I shake my head. “When we talked in the woods… I— Left. I tried to get away from her because,” I rasp, “it scared me. How I felt for her. It felt…out of hand. I couldn’t stop.”
I wrap an arm around Gwennie and pull her close to me. “I can’t stop loving her. I tried,” I tell him quietly.
