Page 29 of The Bear's Second Chance Mate
June traced the rim of her glass. “What about me?”
“You seem...distracted. Since the pet store.” Barb’s gaze was steady, penetrating. “Getting attached, are we?”
“I’m just grateful he’s been kind to Oli,” June said, the words feeling hollow even as she spoke them.
Barb sighed and set her glass down with a soft thud. “June, honey. Remember why we came to Bear Creek? A fresh start. No complications.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Barb’s voice softened. “Because I see that look in your eyes. The same one you had with Daniel. Hoping. Seeing what you want to see. Even when you knew things would never work out.”
June’s throat tightened. “This isn’t like that.”
“Isn’t it?” Barb leaned forward. “I told you about the shifters here. About mates. If Stanley Thornberg were your mate, he’d know it. He’d have made a move. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.”
“Maybe it’s not that simple…”
“It is that simple,” Barb insisted gently. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. With shifters, there’s no gray area. No wondering. They know their mate the moment they meet them.”
June stared into her whiskey, the amber liquid reflecting the kitchen light.
“Don’t let yourself believe there’s something when there isn’t,” Barb continued. “You’ve been hurt enough.”
Old memories surfaced. Daniel’s voice, cold and final.I never signed up for this. For a kid who can’t even look me in the eye.The way he’d walked out without a backward glance, leaving her to explain to a five-year-old why his father wasn’t coming home.
“I’m just trying to protect you,” Barb said, finishing her whiskey in one swift motion. She set the glass in the sink and squeezed June’s shoulder. “Don’t stay up too late.”
June nodded, not trusting her voice. She listened to Barb’s footsteps fade up the stairs, then the soft click of her bedroom door.
As silence settled around June, the kitchen felt suddenly too confining. June took her whiskey and slipped outside onto the porch, the wooden boards cool beneath her bare feet.
Above, stars scattered across the sky, brighter than she’d ever seen them in the city. She sank into the porch swing and took another sip of whiskey, letting the quiet seep into her bones.
What if Barb was wrong? What if there was something between her and Stanley that defied explanation? The way he’d looked at her in the pet store, like he was seeing something precious, something worth protecting, had felt so real.
But what if Barb was right? What if she were just projecting her own lonely wishes onto a kind man who was simply good at his job?
June closed her eyes, swallowing against the tightness in her throat.
But then a strange sensation prickled across her skin. A feeling of being watched. Not in a threatening way, but in a way that felt...familiar. Like the moment in the pet store when Stanley had handed her that coffee, their fingers brushing, and her breath had caught in her chest.
She opened her eyes, scanning the darkness beyond the porch railing. Nothing moved in the shadows of Barb’s garden. Just the gentle sway of branches in the night breeze.
And yet...
The feeling persisted, warm and electric. Like a current humming just beneath her skin.
Maybe it was just the whiskey. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the desperate wish not to be alone anymore.
But it felt real. Terrifyingly real.
And thrilling.
June took another sip. She wasn’t ready to go inside yet. Not with these thoughts spinning through her mind. Not with this inexplicable feeling making her heart race.
For just this moment, under the vast canopy of stars, she would allow herself to wonder. To hope. To imagine that maybe, just maybe, there was more to her relationship with Stanley Thornberg than met the eye.
And maybe, just maybe, just like the stars at night, soon it would all be revealed.
