Page 30 of A Bear's Journey

“I’ve got a great feeling about this,” he said. “Yeah, she’s damaged, but who the fuck isn’t damaged? Your parents pretended that there were only two of them until you were a teenager, and you can’t tell me that your papa didn’t resent being kept in the background. Hell, my older brother went to Stanford, and I didn’t even go to college, and I don’t know if my dad is over it yet.”

Jasper looked down, nodding.

“All we can do is stand by her, and if our best isn’t enough, maybe it will be in six months, or two years, or five years, or whatever, right? Didn’t we wait three years already?”

Jasper nodded.

“The worst has already happened,” Craig said. “Everything else is gravy.”

Jasper nodded, then half-smiled.

“Do you want me to put on your tie?” he asked Craig.

Craig looked down at the knot that he’d started and then abandoned.

“Yeah.”

* * *

When they pulledinto Olivia’s driveway — technically, it was her parents’ driveway — Craig got nervous. He hadn’t really been up until then, but suddenly he felt like he was going to prom, waiting for his date’s parents to give him the ‘home by midnight’ talk.

He’d gotten around some in high school. Being the quarterback tended to have that effect, so there had been plenty of those talks and more than one given with a firearm in plain sight.

Craig paused at the sidewalk that left from the driveway into the house, and Jasper looked at him.

“What, cold feet?”

Craig shook his head.

I guess there are advantages to being a dork in high school, he thought. They’d gone to different high schools, of course, in totally different parts of Cascadia, but he’d seen Jasper’s yearbooks, and his mate had not been cool.

But that also meant he’d never gotten that ‘midnight’ talk with a shotgun. As far as Jasper was concerned, dating was strictly between two or three adults, and there was no one else to please.

An older woman who looked quite a bit like Olivia answered the door, a huge smile on her face.

“You must be Craig and Jasper!” she said, stepping back. “Please, please come in, make yourselves comfortable and Olivia will be right down.”

I’m in high school, Craig thought, adrenaline shooting through his veins, sweat soaking his palms. Oh no.

Jasper walked first into the living room, where two men sat on couches.

“Sit down!” the woman admonished. “I’m Lydia, and this is Norman and Gary.”

“Hi,” one man said.

“Pleasure,” the other said.

Neither said anything about Olivia being home by midnight.

“Tell me about yourselves!” Lydia said, sitting in between the men. “What do you do for a living?”

Jasper started. “I actually work for—”

“Mom!” said a voice from the stairs.

Lydia glanced over, then got off the couch.

“One minute,” she said, and disappeared.

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