Page 17 of A Bear's Journey

Craig gave him another look. Then he got back into the vehicle and shut the door.

“Okay,” Craig said. “Do you remember when we met?”

Jasper nodded.

“Did you have a plan then?”

“That was different.”

“I didn’t have a plan then.”

Just the memory made Craig get a half-chub. Jasper had been with his father at the groundbreaking of the new campus of Cascadia State University, back when the Senator had only been a representative in the Cascade House.

Craig had been one of the guys doing the groundbreaking. That morning the whole crew, wearing their cleanest jeans, shirts, and work boots, had gotten an earful from the foreman about presenting themselves well in front of Representative Sargent.

During the ceremony, Craig had locked eyes with Jasper once and completely forgotten that anything else was happening. Afterwards, at the first moment he could, he sneaked away and found Jasper at the refreshment table.

His line had been, “So you work for the Representative?”

It wasn’t a great line, but it had worked well. Very well.

Well enough that the Representative had found them, sweaty and naked, in a state-owned SUV forty-five minutes later. He hadn’t liked Craig since.

In the car in the library parking lot, Craig leaned over and kissed Jasper on the side of the neck, thrilling at the tiny sound that the other man made.

“Loosen up,” he said.

“Okay, okay,” Jasper said. “I’ll follow your lead.”

Then he pointed at Craig and half-smiled.

“Don’t fuck this up,” he said.

Craig laughed.

* * *

Then,after all that, she wasn’t even in the library.

Craig and Jasper stood in the kids’ section, towering over the short bookshelves, arms crossed. Jasper still held a ragged copy of A Wrinkle in Time in one hand, glaring at a display with a cartoon flower on it.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Three moms instantly shot him death glares, and he raised one hand in the universal gesture of sorry.

“This isn’t really part of winging it,” Craig muttered.

“We could ask when she’s working again,” Jasper said.

Craig just looked at him.

“...If we wanted to be weird stalkers,” Jasper said.

Craig grunted in response. His hands squeezed into tight fists, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding through his palms.

He wanted her now, a feeling that utterly defied all reason and rationality. He’d never even seen her as a human. Only as a bear, and only once, but there had been something in her eyes that he’d found so captivating, so beautiful, that he hadn’t stopped looking for her since.

“We know she’s here somewhere,” Jasper murmured. “Maybe this just takes patience.”

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