Page 15 of Holly's Grizzly

Another swallowed rumble, and I murmur what might be a ‘no problem’ or a ‘that’s alright’, but it’s a little hard to tell with how loudly my grizzly is making his godsdamn satisfaction known in the corner of my mind I’ve relegated him to.

Conversation flows easily while we eat. Holly offers a few more details about the type of work she does, describing how she creates computer programs that let the company’s scientists leverage data to gather new insights about their work. In return, I tell her a little about the apprenticeship I did with a master carpenter when I was fresh out of high school, and how much more I feel like I still have to learn.

Midway through our conversation, it strikes me that it’s been years since I had one even remotely resembling it.

Most of the people and paranormals I see and talk to on a regular basis are mountain folk. And while we’re not any better or worse up here than anyone who lives in a city and leads adifferent kind of life, this conversation with Holly only serves to highlight how very different those lives are.

It’s refreshing, on one hand, to hear about her home and her job and enjoy the soft cadence of her voice as she talks about everything waiting for her back in Seattle.

On the other hand, it puts a strange weight in the bottom of my gut—a weight I’d swear was disappointment if I didn’t know better—to be reminded again she’ll be off this mountain and back to that life in just a couple of days.

After we’re finished eating, I deposit our dishes in the sink, and Holly wanders back into the living room to look out the windows at the snow still falling hard and fast outside.

I settle into a chair at the side of the room, and she sinks down on the couch. She pulls a blanket over her lap, watches the embers crackle in the hearth, and looks so damned cozy and adorable that I have to battle the urge to go cuddle up next to her and make sure she’s got all the warmth she needs.

“So,” I say, venturing slowly back into conversation, though it almost seems a shame to disturb the peace of the moment. “What was it that brought you all the way out here?”

Holly shoots me a quick glance, a bit of color climbing her cheeks, and she takes a few seconds to think before she answers. Her eyes turn back to the fire and her expression falls, all her calm and satisfaction melting away.

It’s the same look she was wearing earlier when I asked if there’d be anyone searching for her—some combination of frustration and guilt, maybe even a bit of shame, and I regret my question immediately. I remember how hollow she sounded when she said she’d come on this trip all alone, and I want to kick myself for spoiling the mood.

“It’s… a little complicated.”

I’m about to change topics, or let her know she doesn’t have to answer, when she suddenly looks up at me with something resolved and heartbreaking on her beautiful face.

“It started with a breakup.”

5

Holly

I really, really don’t need to trauma-dump all over the kind, handsome shifter who’s taken me in.

But Irving’s doing thatthingagain.

The thing where he’s quiet and patient and watching me like he’s really interested in what I have to say. And I must either still have my brains scrambled from falling in the river, or I’m so thrown off balance by having a guy seem genuinely tuned into a conversation, because I start speaking before I think better of it.

“It started with a breakup.”

His brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

For a second, I almost let it go, backtrack, give some excuse. There’s no reason at all I should share this with him. Not even when he looks like he’s more than willing to listen, and not when he’s been so damn nice to me since the moment he found me out in the woods.

“I… sorry. It’s just a long story, and it would probably bore you. Or bum you out. Or both.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” he says gently.

I hesitate… but there it is again, in those soft brown eyes of his. Something that makes me want to trust him.

Maybe it’s fine.

I’ll be gone in a couple of days. All of this is so far from the realm of normality that maybe it’s fine for me to just say the hell with it and confide in him. What happens when you’re snowed into a cabin in the middle of the woods stays in the cabin in the middle of the woods, right?

Maybe I’m also tempted because I’ve never talked about it, not really. Not even with Kenna and Nora. It’s always felt easier to pretend I wasn’t struggling so much. If I could convince them that all my talk about personal growth, all my hiking trips and meditation were really healing me, and not just the bandage I slapped over all my cracks so I could pretend I wasn’t hobbling around half-shattered, maybe eventually it would be true.

But I’m tired, so incredibly tired.

From everything that happened today and everything that brought me here. From the way it feels like all the walls I built around myself came crashing down the moment I hit the water and thought I was about to die.

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