AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
Summer
“Mommy, I’m a bear! Rawr!” Theo yelled as he stood among the bear statues. He put on his best attempt at a scary face and put his hands up like claws. Between his adorable wrinkled nose and wild curls, he had never been more adorable.
“Oh, this is a fierce one,” the tour guide called out. Her voice was full of laughter as the other kids joined in until we had a whole sleuth of bears.
My stomach was in knots, so it was hard to play along, but I kept my face in a soft smile as I watched.
This was all for Theo, I had to face my past now.
Even if all I wanted to do was run as far and fast as possible from Holiday Hollow.
My grandmother’s face flashed in my mind and I immediately felt guilty. She didn’t deserve the absence I’d given her since the day I left.
At least she didn’t bat an eye when I called and asked to come home. My grandma wasn’t the ‘ask a ton of questions right off the bat’ type, but I knew I’d have some things to answer for when I got there.
Like how I could have kept Theo from her for so long. She knew everything but had been sworn to secrecy, only getting to see him over video calls and when she visited.
When I found out I was three months pregnant, I’d broken down and called my old alpha but his phone was disconnected. I knew that I could have easily had my grandmother leave my number with him but I was too scared. And the longer the time went, the greater the distance between us felt.
“Come on bear cub, we have to hit the road,” I called out to Theo. He didn’t bother to pout or argue, he walked over and wrapped his little hand in mine.
“Almost there?” He demanded.
The poor kid had been in the car for hours which was why I couldn’t help taking the exit when I saw one of the old destinations my family frequented as a kid.
“Yup, just long enough to finish some snacks.” His eyes lit up when I spoke the magic words. This kid loved food more than anyone I knew. I got lucky there, he was willing to try just about anything.
“Good,” he said as he hurried along beside me. “We go find him.”
I took my time buckling him into his car seat before getting in and starting the car up. It took three tries before my old beater finally flared to life.
“Thank god,” I breathed out quietly, not wanting my sweet boy to see my stress. He was smart and knew something was up but I couldn’t let him see how hard this was for me.
Theo was happily munching away on his pretzels as I pulled back on the highway. It was a Tuesday afternoon so the traffic was nonexistent. The lack of cars was almost unnerving after living in the city for school for the last four years.
“What’s so stinky?” Theo complained from the backseat.
I breathed in before choking on the strange scent, noticing it coming in from the vents before smoke started to billow from under my hood.
“Shit!” I cursed as I pulled over to the side of the road.
“Bad word, Mommy!” Theo called out but I was already rushing out of the front and around the car to pull him out safely. Now that the car was off the smoke had stopped but I wasn’t about to put us back in the car now.
“Okay, we are going to have a little picnic,” I sang out. Theo looked at me like I was crazy but I pulled our blanket from the trunk and laid it out in the field next to the highway.
Thank god for all the fields around here so I didn’t have to try and wrangle an almost three year old on the side of a busy road.
Theo settled on the blanket, happy to watch the cars drive by as he played with his own toy cars.
“Alright, mechanics,” I said as I pulled up a list for ones local to Holiday Hollow. We’d managed to make it outside the town, by about twenty minutes, so hopefully one of them would be willing.
The first shop had awful reviews and was in the opposite direction, after the third review calling them thieves, I went to the next.
Miller and Sons Auto Repair had a website that looked like it was made when websites first started, but the reviews all were positive. In today’s world that’s damn near impossible to achieve.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered as I dialed the number and sent a prayer out to whatever gods were listening that they were as good as they sounded.
