Page 44 of A Bear's Journey

Olivia went quiet for seconds on end, looking down into Ninety Nine’s eyes.

“Olivia?”

“Look, this is going to sound kind of crazy coming right now but that’s kind of my thing lately, so, what are we doing here? Was this just a one-time thing?” she blushed hard, her face turning bright pink as she kept petting the dog.

Ninety, at least, was in heaven. Craig’s heart sank through the floor.

“No?” he said.

In the kitchen, Jasper froze and looked at Craig.

“I hope not,” Jasper said, his eyes still locked with Craig.

“Why?” Craig asked, reaching for her shoulder.

She turned back toward them, her eyes bright with tears.

“You guys deserve someone normal and not broken,” she said, miserably. “I mean, look at this, we just had really great morning sex and now I’m crying all over your kitchen like a lunatic,” she said. “You can’t even take me on a nice date without me wrecking the place.”

“We don’t care about that,” said Craig. He felt like his heart had stopped in his chest. “Hell, I’d rather eat barbecue on the counter with you than some fancy bullshit. Olivia, we looked for you for years before we found you.”

She looked up at him, frowning slightly.

“What?”

We didn’t tell her, Craig realized. She has no idea.

“We met when you were feral,” Jasper said.

“We did?”

Jasper just nodded.

“It was for about ten seconds,” he went on. “We were bears, you were a bear, but we looked into your eyes and we knew we had to find you again,” he said. “So we did.”

“You were looking for me?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” said Craig. “When Jasper told me he found you in the garden by the library, he practically had to physically restrain me from tearing down every door in town.”

She looked at the counter, no longer crying. Ninety nudged her hand, and she started petting the dog again, absentmindedly.

“You weren’t disappointed when you met me and found out I’d been feral?”

“Are you kidding?” said Craig. “I was on cloud nine at square dancing, and I hate dancing.”

“You should have seen yourself tell off Buck,” Jasper added.

“And Ninety likes you,” Craig added.

Olivia seemed to consider all of this, and Craig took her other hand, sandwiching it between his.

“We know you probably need time,” he said. “But we’re not giving up on you. Whatever you need, we’re here for. We will do anything for you, Olivia, and I am dead fucking serious.”

She’d teared up again, and looked down at Ninety. Then she sniffled.

“Thanks,” she said.

She sniffed again.

“I think the pancakes are burning.”

---