Bearly Hanging On (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 6) (9 page)

A line of perfectly cut quarters of pork were . arranged in neat rows, ready for either further processing or packaging for wholesale. He shook his head.
At some point, the other foot's gonna drop and all this good luck is going to turn out to be either a dream or the prelude to a meteor falling on my house. But for now? Shit, I'll take it.

It took no time at all for the big bear to pull down the meat, wrap it up and deposit it in his then-sagging van. When he was finished, he had managed to play meat Tetris enough to get four pigs, and three cows shoved in the back of the van, along with the harvest from Fresh Land. His stomach started growling at a fairly alarming volume, as he looked over what he'd managed to snag. This wasn't going to be enough - not by a long shot - and it didn't take into account everyone who couldn't eat this stuff, but what the hell, it was a start.

The van was sluggish, even more than it had been before, as it was packed with food. It had taken about a half hour to get to the road with the grocery stores on paws, but driving took all of an hour.

His pulse raced at every stop light, every time he passed a car, and each time he drove by some night creature or another out for a stroll. But, of course, none of them reacted. None even showed him any attention past a polite nod, or in the case of one very strange man who seemed to be dressed up like Peter Pan crossed with The Joker, a wild pirouette and a fling of the arm.

When Ryan pulled into the clearing in back of his house, near the cellar, he knew he'd have a long night ahead of him, and that's if his uncle didn't notice all the commotion.

With the truck mostly empty, Ryan took a breather, sitting on the stump he normally used for cutting wood, and let his thoughts wander. They went to familiar places - Jamie, the folks out here in the woods - but also danced dangerously close to his own past, which he preferred to avoid. Too much pain, too much hurt. Too many deep shadows without any light in them.

They were doors he'd closed once before, ones he didn't intend on opening again. At least not until the time was right. His old life chewed at his guts, ate him from the inside out, but... it was the past. There was no sense dwelling on it, at least not now, not while there was no new thought to have or new guilt to feel.

"I thought I told you not to do anything stupid." His uncle's voice, light with laughter, interrupted Ryan's respite. "You say to a boy, don't do anything stupid, and he doesn't. You say to a man, don't do anything stupid, and he steals the goddamn van from a grocery store."

Boston sat down on the stump, sharing it with Ryan, who quirked a half-smile and shrugged. "I didn't expect to find the van," he said. "Then again, I don't know what I was expecting. I just went. Followed my heart, isn't that what you want me to do?"

"Hell of a time to start doing that," Boston's old shoulders shook with laughter. "And that isn't exactly what I meant. You're a stubborn bastard, you know that?"

"Don't fall far from the tree, I guess."

Even though his aunt and uncle only lived with him for a few years out here, Boston was almost always present when he was growing up. His father wasn't the most supportive, and his mother was frequently too busy with other things in life to deal much with Ryan, his sister, or his little brother. But for whatever reason, Boston always seemed to have time for them.

His uncle fished one of the cigars that he wasn't supposed to smoke out of his shirt pocket, and then offered one to Ryan, who declined. "I like how they smell, but that nicotine hit is a little much after all that exertion."

"Mm-hmm," his uncle intoned. "That's why I try not to exert."

He bit off the end neatly, and lit the other. The sweet smelling cloud of smoke drifted lazily past Ryan's head. "You remember the first time you and I did this?" the younger bear asked.

"'Course I do, how could I forget? It was twenty... five years ago. I remember because you'd just come home from a dance at Thomas Jefferson school. Remember that place?"

Ryan laughed. "I remember Cedar Falls, but just barely. That combined school, it went all the way to eighth grade, right?"

"Ninth," Boston corrected him. "The joke was after ninth grade, anyone had learnt all they needed. Reality was they just bussed everyone to the next district over. Say, you know that dentist in town? And his rabbit mate?"

Ryan shrugged. "I don't pay much attention to that."

"Well you should, because they're from Cedar Falls. And also, you need those chompers polished. As much tea as you drink, you probably need some dentures." His uncle laughed his whistling, airy laugh, and Ryan smiled. "Any rate, you should talk to them, they're from there. And now I'm coming back to the point. That school was mixed in more ways than one. To hear Thor tell it, town’s almost empty of our kind now, but back in those days it was about half and half."

"I cold-cocked Greg Richards because he whistled at my date," Ryan said, leaning back on his elbows and remembering one of the good times in his past. "And—"

"She wasn't even your date!" Boston slapped his knee. "I'll never forget. Little seven year old Ryan gets into the back of my old Buick after they called me to get you early. You looked like Lancelot himself, you were so puffed up about having defended that girl's honor. You were seven, Clarice Redman was thirteen, and the boy you knocked out was fourteen. Of course, you had a little extra help."

"Seven years should have been enough of a head start on growing for it to be fair." Ryan's eyes were glittering up into the sky, reflecting the slender, quicksilver crescent moon.

For a moment, they sat in silence, both looking up into the night sky, absorbing the millions of stars that stared back. "Sometimes I think I'm letting life pass me by," Ryan murmured. "Like I spend all this time helping everyone out, but it's just to fill a hole. If I don't have to spend too long looking at myself, I don't have to see the darkness, so I just keep busy."

Boston moved the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other and took another draw. "I was like that, too, you know," he finally said. "We Drakes have our... issues. Your father was the same way. Except his made him leave. You ever think about him?"

Ryan shrugged. "Sometimes, I guess. It isn't anger, though, it's just curiosity. We weren't ever close enough for me to really miss him, you know? I guess the fact that we had our last hoorah right before he died," the younger bear clenched his teeth and took a second to collect himself. “Anyway, I think we finally came to terms with each other.”

Boston nodded and puffed again.

"How did you know? With Aunt Maude, I mean. At what point did it occur to you that—"

"You're in love, aren't you?" Boston cut him off. "Or... no, that's not it. You're scared you might be. I've seen that look before."

Without replying, Ryan looked back up at the sky and sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. "Something like that. I've only seen her a couple of times. The first time, I didn't think much of it, but I couldn't get her out of my head."

"And the second time?"

Ryan scoffed a laugh. "That's a hell of a story."

"So you were makin' it for three days?" Boston slapped Ryan on the back. "You old dog, you!"

"Actually," Ryan said, "it's much funnier than that. I went to that ranch down the way. I got a wild hair up my ass to steal a cow - don't ask. But while I was doing it, she sorta... fell out of the sky and onto my back. She did something to me, and the rancher and his mate took care of me until I came to."

Boston's eyes were wide enough that his disbelief was fairly obvious. "Did the fella know you were tryin' to steal a cow? And she fell out of the sky? I've seen some curious things around these parts, but that's a new one."

"Oh yeah. It's hard to believe even for me, and I was there. But she's... it's hard to explain."

"Love always is," Boston added. "Never much makes sense. At least not the same way that algebra or facts about the Civil War make sense. 'Specially for our kin."

"Our kin?"

Boston nodded. "You're doubly screwed, I'm afraid. When bears fall, they fall hard. When Drakes fall?" he let out a long, low-pitched whistle. "You asked about Moo-maw? How I knew?"

"Yeah?"

"I met her after the war. The Korean one, you're familiar with that one?"

"Well, yes, of course. I didn't go to college, but I'm not a moron. I have seen M*A*S*H."

"Startlingly accurate, right down to the cross-dresser.” Boston congratulated himself with a short belly laugh at his own joke. “Anyway, when we came home, it was chaotic. Too many hot-headed men running around who didn't much have a clue about how to live in the real world. Any rate, she tended bar at a place I frequented, so I knew she was a different sort of gal. If only I'd known how different."

"So that's it, you two just hit it off like that?"

"Hit it off is the right way to put it. One night, she was mixing drinks and pouring beer for a bunch of increasingly rowdy former soldiers. This was in New Jersey, where I'd settled in a fashion, with some war buddies of mine. Making a go at the big city and all that."

"All bears?"

Boston shook his head. "Couple of us. But it's a good thing, because if there were more, that night might've turned into a full-on riot. A bunch of the boys were drunk and getting drunker. Some were already in over their heads, and others were getting that way. One of the younger ones, he got it in his mind he wanted to get his hands on your aunt, so he started hitting on her somethin' fierce."

"Oh God," Ryan said. "I see where this is going."

"No you don't." A mischievous smile spread across Boston's face. "He was chatting at her, she was ignoring him, and then he started gettin' indignant. I told him to lay off her. He wasn't one of the regular crowd, y'see, he was a newer one. Any rate, he took a swing at me, and I laid him flat out. For a time, that was that. Those things happen."

"Sure, yeah, I know what you mean."

"Couple hours later, everyone's a couple hours' drunker. Same little guy comes back, this time he's got himself a little boot knife. Maybe three inches long, all told. Two inches of blade at the most. He sticks it in my ribs, right here," Boston lifted his shirt and pointed in an area with a very faded pink scar.

Even in his old age, he was solid, and tall. Ryan remembered his younger years, when he stood taller than Ryan did now, and was stouter across the chest. "I bet that didn't work out quite like he thought it would," the younger bear said.

Boston snorted. "You shoulda seen the little guy. He stuck that thing in my ribs, and you know us, we've got that thicker skin, thicker muscles. It hurt, sure as shit, but that was all. I grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground. I said somethin' I've long since forgotten, but I'm sure was very witty at the time.

"Next you know, that little jackass," Boston laughed again. "He reached past me, grabbed my beer off the bar and hit me square in the head with it. From there, things escalated mighty quick."

"Why have I never heard this story?"

"You never asked. Anyway, so this young fella's friends, they start to scuffling, and us older guys are losing our patience. 'Fore you know it, the whole place is a brawl. In all this, I lost track of your aunt somehow, but a couple of youngsters grabbed ahold of me and hit my head on the bar. I was a little woozy, seeing stars and the like. I'll never forget it."

He was beaming by now. "Your Aunt Maude blew a hole in the roof of that bar with a shotgun that she had back there. Soon as she shot that thing off, everyone froze, and she laid the sucker holding me down out with a half-empty bottle of cheap Scotch. Then, she poured a drink for me and for her, and that was that. Never felt more loved in my life."

Ryan was staring, mouth agape, at his uncle. "She seems so... so sweet."

"She mellowed in her old age. Though you won't ever catch me saying that within earshot of 'er. But that's how I knew. In that instant, with her holding a bloody liquor bottle and yelling, I felt that lump in my throat, the knot in the pit of my stomach. I knew she was the one for me."

Ryan was silent.

"I take it you've felt the same lump?"

Hurriedly, Ryan hopped off the log. "It's getting late. Early, whatever. I gotta get this thing back before the sun comes up."

Boston sat in silence as his nephew finished unloading the stolen food and filled the van from a gas tank he kept on site for the farm equipment. He climbed in the cab and had just started the old engine when his uncle finally stood up and sauntered over to the van, sticking his head through the window.

"That's the other thing Drake boys excel at," he said.

"What's that? Starting cars?"

A smile crept across his uncle's lips. "Not answering direct questions. Though I suppose your lack of an answer was just as good."

"You know me too well," Ryan said. "I just hope I'm not making a mistake."

"And this is why I tell you to listen to your heart. Even if you do screw up, you'll never regret tryin' something and failing the same way you will never taking a chance."

––––––––

S
weat ran down Jamie's temples, and her cheeks. Her hair hung in plastered sheets, stuck to the sides of her face, her neck, and her bare back as she tossed and turned, unconscious and asleep, but as active as ever. One of the things she had practiced for most of her life was lucid dreaming - she was aware she was dreaming, and able to manipulate them.

But this one? This one didn't need any help.

Ryan's hands were running up her back, clutching at her sides. She groaned, softly at first as his lips caressed her neck, her breasts, and the soft skin above her sex, but when he dove in, hungrily lapping at her, she gave up trying to be demure.

She let out a wail, the sensations of her dream as close to reality as anything that didn't happen after a long romance. Except this one would end with no commitments, no frayed feelings, and no paranoia about her overactive reproductive system giving her two weeks of panicked worry. Not even condoms helped very much. It was like her ovaries were magnetized in just the right way to pull those swimming jerks through the latex and... then again, that had only happened the once. That was sufficient enough terror.