Page 3 of Coveted By the Bear

With seeking hands, I found my cleanest looking shirt, then stood in one fluid motion.

I looked critically into the weathered, rust-eaten mirror over the dresser. Hips, legs, stomach, neck. All looked normal in the marred mirror. In a cleaner one, the scars of my struggles would have stood out like stars against the blackest backdrop of night, shining and dimming in the various stages of age and healing.

Elbows locked, I leaned forward onto the dresser. It buckled and complained under my weight. I glared at my reflection. “I’m gonna kill you…squirrel.”

I liked to call what I would hunt. It was my ritual. A weird one, admittedly, but it wasn’t as if anyone were watching. No one was ever watching. If ever there was a benefit to being utterly and uncompromisingly alone, shamelessly talking to one’s self would be it. And if I happened to be in town when I talked to myself, all the better. Townies would say, “There goes Crazy Mira. That kooky girl has gone to talking to herself now, too.”

People asked less of crazy people.

I pulled the threadbare cotton shirt over my head and shimmied into my cut-offs. At a loss for socks, I pulled my boots over bare feet. I’d pay for it later, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

A gurgling growl ripped through me, and I lifted the hem of my shirt out of habit. Brushing my fingertips against the scars over my hip bones again, I weighed my options. Go to town and face the mortifying possibility that Caleb McCreedy might be there to torment me again, or hunt something down. What I couldn’t do was sit around and wait for someone to save me. I had to save myself in this life.

I scribbled a quick explanation about where I was going on a sticky note, stuck it to the quiet refrigerator, and then turned to leave. On second thought, the note was unnecessary. The habit had only been for appearances. No one would ever read it or wonder at my whereabouts. It was for show in case some nosy cop came to the doorstep wondering where my guardian was. It had made it easier to convince them he was out to the liquor store in town if there was evidence we still had some sort of communication.

Unless I sprouted the ability to raise the dead, communication with my uncle was definitely off the table.

Turning, I fixated on that note. I had counted down the days, and it had finally arrived. The day I didn’t have to fear someone discovering Uncle Brady’s untimely death and dragging me by my wild hair to some state home to live out the rest of my adolescence. Today was my twentieth birthday, two years past when I had to worry about the foster care system anymore. Happy birthday to me.

It felt strange to celebrate another one alone. It was as if the life I wanted and the life I was living warred with each other in my mind. A million tiny battles fought throughout the day that determined whether I’d stay in the here and now, or if my mind would flit to the relief of daydream. To Bora Bora where my lavish friends and family would bake me cakes and buy me extravagant presents. I didn’t actually want or need these things, but the imaginings felt necessary for my continued existence. Knowing there was more to life for others kept me going.

The note plunked satisfyingly into the metal trashcan, and I slid my hand comfortably into the worn leather strap that hooked to the smallest of Uncle Brady’s guns. Hefting it over my shoulder, I glanced once more at the house before I left to hunt down something that could ease the ache in my stomach. There was no point in locking the front door. Anyone could kick it in if they were so inclined, and the alarm system of the house was the fact that no one would willingly enter what looked like a meth lab. Unless it was a meth addict looking for meth, in which case, he could have the damned house.

Sure, I’d have to alert the tiny town of Bryson about Uncle Brady’s death, and the power in the town wouldn’t like it when I enlightened them that my guardian had passed last year. No one had even bothered to wonder why he just stopped showing up to work. Being the town alcoholic enlisted you with some pretty special benefits, such as absolutely no accountability.

I hopped over the missing stair on the front porch and landed with a little dust explosion onto the front lawn. Bull nettle and sticker burrs made up the floral bits of the yard. Yep, I’d have to tell the town about my uncle’s passing, and the will he’d left in my care, too, but I didn’t have to do any of that right now.

The ground was rough and hard to navigate, even for someone skilled at walking these trails. The potholes and hidden dips created the perpetual danger of a twisted ankle that kept my eyes on the road, but my other senses in the woods. A broken ankle meant no hunting. There would be no bandages and painkillers and time on the couch for me. A broken ankle meant a likely and painful death by starvation.

A sound caught and held my attention. I froze, one leg locked into place and one bent and resting on the toe.

There it was again. The softest of sighs, the barest of whispers. A noise as quiet as a breath. It was the death chant of something that had already accepted its impending doom.

I changed direction. Footstep after quiet footstep steered me toward the noise. I wouldn’t have cared if I wasn’t so hungry and that sound didn’t present the possibility of an easy meal. It’s not like I had the ammunition to waste to put the poor creature out of its misery, anyhow.

Or perhaps it was curiosity, pity, or something more that led me closer to the noise.

The leather strap of my weapon zinged against my shoulder as I pulled it off. The click of the safety sounded loud in the quiet of the woods. All had gone still and the hairs began to prickle and raise on my neck.

I bit my bottom lip. A wise woman would just leave. Instinct was a powerful deterrent, and mine was screaming for me to get out of here. My deep hunger, however, failed to get the message and pressed me closer still.

A break in the foliage of my woods revealed something so unexpected and surprising, I stopped and stared at the crumpled thing, dumbfounded. Lifting the rifle, I trained the scope on it out of a sense of self-preservation, though it was likely already dead. I sidestepped, taking a wide and cautious loop around it for a better look.

It was a man. His young face was made to look older by the grit and blood that painted it. As soon as I saw the blond, shoulder-length hair caressing the side of his face, I recognized him.

“Shit,” I muttered as I glared at Caleb McCreedy. Gold stubble graced his jaw, and the sunlight reflected off the sharp angles of his face. He was the most alluring man I’d ever seen, but all the looks in the world didn’t mean a thing if his heart was black. His hand rested on his chest, like he’d been trying to keep pressure on a wound there when he’d been conscious. Two of his fingers flicked in the barest gesture, like he was hailing someone in his dreams.

He wasn’t dead then. Not yet.

I lifted the rifle to see how it felt to train it on someone so cruel. His face was slack in my scope, his fingers still. Perhaps I’d imagined the life I’d seen there.

A bigger movement near a towering oak tree startled me, and as dread slammed into me at the danger I’d really stumbled across, I lifted the gun and pulled the trigger.

The sound was deafening.

Chapter Three

Mira