Page 10 of Coveted By the Bear

Before we left, Mira handed me a shot glass overflowing with whiskey. “No pain killers,” she informed me.

I told her, “Whiskey’ll do,” and downed the liquor neatly. I hissed as the cheap, amber liquid seared down my throat.

Riding a horse in my condition was comparable to getting hit by a mac truck repeatedly. My body felt like the strips at the bottom of a paper shredder, and I wanted to curse at every bouncy step the old horse took. The brown horse Mira had brought up to the house was named Blue and was the oldest, most ill-bred horse I’d ever seen in my entire life. It was no small miracle it could walk, much less carry me. It followed Mira without prodding, though, and the reins lay slack and manageable in her hands as she led us to the truck. It was obvious the horse loved Mira and the feeling was mutual. She talked to the animal as if I weren’t even here. Whether her chatter was habit from being lonely, or from something more unsettling, I couldn’t tell.

“What can I do to repay you?” I asked, desperate for something other than the painful ride to focus on.

“Live. I don’t want you on my conscience,” she said shortly.

“That’s not enough. What do you need? Just tell me, and I’ll leave you alone about it.”

Mira growled and kicked a rock with the toe of her boot. “Dammit, Caleb. I don’t want anything.”

The saddle horn creaked under my weight. It felt better if I was leaning forward. “Stop being so stubborn, Mira. I have a debt to repay you so let’s just get it over with and then you can be done with me.”

She was quiet for so long, I thought she was refusing to talk to me anymore.

“The house could use some repairs,” she said over her shoulder.

“Done,” I said. “I work the early shift on the rig every day but Sunday. I’ll come over to the house when I have time off.”

“Okay.” She said it like she didn’t expect to ever see me again, and I wondered if anyone had ever followed through with anything in her entire life.

“Caleb?” she asked, pulling Blue to a stop. Her eyes were wide and frightened looking.

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to be different now.”

I leaned back a little and shook my head in bafflement. Sure, I felt different about her. She couldn’t know that, though. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She took a long drag of air and dropped her gaze to my work boot that rested in the stirrup. “The bear that did this to you wasn’t just an animal. He was a man, too.”

I waited for her to tell me she was just kidding, like she’d done earlier, but she just stood there, waiting for…something.

“Mira, that thing wasn’t a man. I think I’d know if I was clawed and bitten and tortured by a man or a bear. I spent all night with the damned thing.”

“He was a shifter. A bear man. He maybe should’ve killed you.”

“What are you saying?” My voice sounded harsh, even to my own ears, but so what? “You wish I was dead? Then why did you just say you wanted me to live? Why did you save me?”

“I don’t wish you were dead.” Her voice dipped to a whisper. “You’ll wish you were dead, and maybe you’ll hate me for bringing you back.”

There it was. That was the sign I’d been looking for. After all, the entire town couldn’t have been wrong about her. She was as crazy as her uncle. I wanted to yell at her. To tell her the things she was saying weren’t real. That she’d made them up as a coping mechanism for her loneliness or whatever else was going on in that head of hers. But when I opened my mouth to fling my angry words at her, the only thing that came out was a helpless sound.

I was disappointed. There. I was fucking disappointed, okay? Something in me had reached out for Mira at Jake’s the other day, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since. Then I’d spent some time with her and realized she was a decent person, and I wanted her to be okay.

But she wasn’t.

And no amount of kindness from me was going to fix her.

“Okay, Mira. When I start feeling different, I’ll let you know.”

****

Mira

Today had been one of the best and one of the worst days of my life. The best because I had actually had a conversation with another human being who didn’t make the devil horns at me, and the worst because Clancy Clayborn, the town sheriff, and one of his deputies I didn’t recognize, pulled up in a patrol car at almost the exact same time we reached the truck. One look at Caleb, who looked like a murder victim, and they instantaneously decided I was his assassin.