by Roxie Noir
He dried his hands on a gross-looking towel and finally took the jacket from her, glancing at the door to the break room as he did.
“Do you ever miss it?” he asked. “Fjords, I mean.”
He didn’t look Delilah in the face, instead staring off at the wall.
Delilah narrowed her eyes, trying to find the right phrasing for what she was about to say.
“Yes and no,” she said, slowly.
“I bet I can guess what you don’t miss,” he said, looking at her again, rubbing the spaces in between his fingers with the hand towel.
Delilah laughed. “Go ahead.”
He began counting on his fingers. “First, you don’t miss every restaurant in town closing at 8 o’clock every night. You don’t miss the winters. You don’t miss the Rusty Anchor.”
“All true,” she said.
He sat down in a folding chair, gesturing at the one opposite him, both around a flimsy card table. He reached over and took his jacket, flopping it across his lap and then leaning back, the chair squeaking under his bulk.
“If I know you, you don’t miss the bullshit pack politics,” he went on.
She shook her head. “Not at all.”
“You don’t miss every person in this town knowing about everything you do and who you do it with.”
“Nope.”
Miles grinned again and put his arms behind his head. Even wearing ugly, stained coveralls, Delilah had to admit he was gorgeous and had only gotten better while she’d been gone.
He was dead on with how she felt about Fjords, though.
“This part’s harder,” he said. “I gotta guess what you do miss.”
“It shouldn’t be so hard,” she said. “Want me to give you a head start?”
“Be my guest.”
“Spring,” she said. “Real spring, with melting snow and blooming flowers, the sun really coming out again. California doesn’t get that right at all.”
“I thought you were in northern California.”
“I am, but still. June is foggy and cold, and sometimes February is gorgeous.”
“Okay,” he said, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “You miss seasons. You also miss elk burgers at Smitty’s, and salmon fresh off the boats at the dock.”
“So far so good,” she said.
His face got more serious. “You miss being around other shifters,” he said, looking her right in the eyes.
Delilah just nodded.
“Yeah,” she said simply.
“You miss running through the spring forest with other bears,” he said. “And you miss having a town full of people who’d help you out of a jam, whether they liked you or not.”
Delilah wasn’t as sure about that one, but she nodded anyway.
“You miss drinking shitty beers that Jackson’s older brother bought us on the shore in the summer.”
Delilah laughed out loud.
“God, there was really nothing to do here as a kid, was there?” she said.
“There were a couple of things,” Miles said. His eyes were mischievous now, dancing blue in his face. “Drinking was one.”
Delilah could fill in the rest of that sentence: fucking was the other. She felt herself blush, just a little, as she remembered those warm summer nights when the sun barely went down, when they’d drink on the rocky shore until all their friends left and they were there, alone, and they’d go into the back of Miles’s truck and have sex in the sleeping bag he always kept there.
“Is that everything I miss?” she asked. She tried to keep her tone light, like this conversation wasn’t bringing up old memories.
Miles’s blue eyes bore into her face, and in an instant, she knew exactly what he was going to say.
“You miss the northern lights,” he said.
Delilah broke his gaze and looked down at the card table.
She knew exactly what he was talking about, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him just then. Instead she played with a pamphlet lying on the table advertising Goodyear All-Weather tires.
The silence between them stretched out.
“I should let you get back to work,” she said, still not looking Miles in the face.
“Come get a drink with me,” he said.
Delilah crossed one ankle over her opposite knee and looked up at him, searching his face.
Was he asking her out again? She hesitated, feeling a little like she was on the edge of a cliff, staring over it at the water breaking against the rocks below. She had left Fjords once and she knew it had broken Miles’s heart.
She didn’t think she could stand to do it to him twice.
“Just a drink,” he promised, like he could read her mind. “Friends, nothing more. We haven’t seen each other in years. You can tell me what California is like, and I can tell you which of your high school classmates has three babies by three different fathers.”
Delilah laughed, her guard down a little.
“Is one of the fathers you?” she asked, teasingly.
“I hope not,” he said, grinning back at her.
A sudden, small pang of jealousy stabbed through her.
Could one of them be? She wondered. Who else was in the back of that pickup truck?
Stop it, she told herself.
“We don’t even have to go to the Rusty Anchor any more,” he said. “We got an upscale joint a couple of years ago.”
Delilah raised both her eyebrows. She suspected that she and Miles had different definitions of ‘upscale,’ but she was interested in his.
“Place called Bella Notte. They’re open all the way until eleven on weekends, and their wine doesn’t even come in gallon jugs,” he said.
Delilah had to laugh. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll get a fancy drink with you.”
“Tonight?”
Is this really a good idea? Delilah wondered.
“Okay,” she said.
“See you there at six?”
“I thought this was drinks only, not dinner,” she teased.
Miles stood, went to hang his jacket on a hook on the wall.
“It’s whatever I can talk you into,” he said.
Delilah stood and followed him back out, into the repair shop.
“See you tonight,” he said, walking back underneath the car he’d been working on.
“See you,” she called and walked back to her car.
Delilah could feel the other mechanics look over at her, but she tried to ignore them.
We’re just friends, she wanted to shout. We’re catching up. It’s no big thing.
People move on from their first loves all the time, she told herself.
5
Miles
Barstools are never made for someone my height, Miles thought for the thousandth time. He’d managed to find a table in the bar area at Bella Notte, but they were all tall tables with tall chairs. At six-foot-five the last time anyone had checked, he just didn’t fold into them right. Either he was half standing, or his legs were crushed practically into his chest.
He sighed a little and shifted himself again, beginning to wish that he’d just stood at the bar. Delilah was tall too, and she probably wouldn’t have minded it. Instead he tried to ignore the unpleasantness and sipped at his Alaskan Amber. Bella Notte poured all their beers into glasses, and Miles felt classy just drinking there.
The doors opened again and this time, Delilah walked in.
Miles took one second — just one, he told himself, don’t be weird — to appreciate how good she still looked. She’d gotten even better looking since high school. She’d always been curvy, but at twenty-five, she really knew how to show them off, and the effect made Miles’s mouth go dry. Time had given her a certain confidence and radiance that she hadn’t had at seventeen.
Miles stood up and waved one arm in the air. The place was close to empty — it was Wednesday night in a dying town, after all — so she spotted him right away.
“You were right,” she said wh
en she got to their table and hung her bag across the back of the chair. “This place is pretty classy.”
“It’s Fjords upscale, for sure,” Miles said. “They put your beer in a glass.” He raised his to her and then took another swallow.
The waiter, probably some high school kid, came over and Delilah ordered an Old Fashioned, not too sweet. Miles raised his eyebrows.
“What?” Delilah said.
“Just not what I was expecting,” Miles said. His eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Were you expecting me to order a Rainer and a pocketknife so I could shotgun it right here at the table?” she asked, teasing.
“I would pay to see that,” Miles said, making his face as serious as he could. “I’d love for you, Dr. Silver, to come back to town after years away, only to go into the fanciest restaurant and shotgun a beer.”
Delilah just laughed. “It would make an impression, huh?”
“For sure.”
She leaned forward across the table, onto her elbows, close enough that Miles could smell her scent. She’d changed her shampoo since high school — not surprising — but underneath that, she smelled exactly the same, still Delilah.
Still her.
Miles had to fight down his instinct, to grab her and kiss her as hard as he could. He could feel his bear deep inside him, fighting against his more civilized nature.
“So,” Delilah began. “Tell me about my classmates. Start with you.”
“But I’m the least interesting,” he said. “No kids, no arrests.”
“Do you have a mate?” she asked, blurting it out.
Miles laughed.
“You have been away for a while,” he said. “Since when can a mated man get drinks with a woman who’s not his mate?”
She smiled, embarrassed.
“True,” she said. “I guess I got used to the outside world.”
To be honest, Miles thought it was a little weird that not all couples were possessive like shifter couples — or the shifter couples of the Fjords pack, anyway. His own parents rarely went anywhere without the other, as far as he knew. It just wasn’t done — seeing someone who wasn’t your mate, no matter how platonic, was grounds for an explosion of jealousy, bear tempers flaring, and probably at least a few people shifting in the middle of town.
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.
The question made him oddly nervous, even though it was a perfectly normal question. She didn’t have a ring on her finger, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a boyfriend.
“Nah,” she said. “I’ve tried dating some humans, but it doesn’t... I don’t know. It gets weird at a certain point.”
The waiter came back with her old fashioned and set it down ceremoniously in front of her, on a small bar napkin. Delilah thanked the kid, and he walked away slowly, looking back over his shoulder at her. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, and Miles guessed he didn’t see a lot of new faces — especially ones as pretty as Delilah’s.
“Is that certain point when you explain that sometimes you turn into a large bear?”
“It is,” Delilah said, sipping her drink through its tiny straw. “That is exactly the point where it gets weird.”
“I’ve never dated a non-shifter,” Miles admitted.
“It almost always falls apart before that,” Delilah said. “I’m always going out to the country for two, three days, and they want to come along at first, but of course I tell them they can’t. After a little while, they decide I’m cheating on them and end things.” She stirred the ice in her drink idly, looking down at it. “It’s been a while since I bothered dating.”
“Shifters aren’t necessarily better,” Miles said, leaning in. He’d dated around some in Fjords — well, dated was a very fancy term for some of what he’d done, particularly in the year after Delilah had left — and he didn’t need any girls or their fathers or brothers or friends overhearing him.
“They all think that they need to be mated by the time they’re twenty-four, and if they’re not, there’s something wrong with them,” he said. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
Delilah nodded. “You can add that to the pile of things I don’t miss,” she said.
Miles lowered his voice even further. “I don’t know about this one true mate thing,” he admitted.
“Me either,” Delilah said, her voice conspiratorial. “I mean, there are all those stories you hear as kids, about the woman who walked across Siberia for her mate, or the man who waited until he was eighty, but they’re just—” she waved her hands, “—fairy tales.”
“More like beary tales,” Miles said, and Delilah burst out laughing, covering her mouth with one hand. She laughed until she snorted.
Miles felt a pang at the snort. It was so... dorky, and lovable.
“I’m sorry,” she said, still giggling. “That was the dumbest pun.”
“It wasn’t my best.”
“Are there good puns?” Delilah asked, tilting her head, still stifling laughter. “Are there really?”
Miles looked down, admitting defeat. “Probably not,” he said.
“Beary tales,” he heard her mutter. “God, what was I even saying?”
“You don’t believe in true mates,” he said.
“Right,” she said, lowering her voice again. “It’s such a part of our culture, but how many couples do you see that you think are true mates? Are your parents?”
Miles shook his head. “They buy into it wholesale, but it’s not true,” he said. “I mean, they’re always telling the story of how my dad asked for my mom’s hand in marriage every day for a month, and that’s supposed to be a big romantic thing and all, but I don’t think they even like each other any more,” he said.
Miles didn’t want to elaborate — not there, anyway — but even though his father was the pack’s beta, the second in command, he slept in the guest room most nights.
It was true that his brother Nathan was causing his parents to fight, but there was never a glimmer of real affection between them, just the show they put on in public. In private, they barely acknowledged the other’s existence.
“You know what happened with my parents,” Delilah said, and Miles nodded.
“Or maybe there are true mates,” he said. “But it takes more than just love to maintain a lifelong relationship.”
“Then why aren’t they selling that to all the kids getting mated when they’re twenty?” Delilah hissed. It almost seemed like she was starting to get upset about it. She took a long drink of her Old Fashioned, which was half gone by now.
Miles shrugged. “The pack needs new members sooner and not later?” he said.
He’d gotten his own fair share of grief from his parents over not being mated, lots of How can you be sure she’s not your true mate if you won’t even go out with her again, lots of When I was your age, you were a year old already.
He didn’t believe in true mates, that was for sure. But he didn’t tell Delilah the real reason.
It was because he already know, bone-deep, that if true mates existed, she was his.
Obviously, she wasn’t. Therefore, the whole thing was a sham.
“Okay,” Delilah said. “That got heavy, quick. Tell me who’s got three kids by three fathers.”
“Crystal Johnston,” Miles said. “She keeps threatening to go on Maury.”
“So she can turn into a bear on national TV?” Delilah said, shaking her head and then taking another sip. “I guess she didn’t get any smarter.”
They gossiped for a while, going over babies and arrests and DUIs, who else had left town and which couples hated each other but couldn’t get divorced, not while they were still in the pack. Reciting all of it, Miles felt quaint, left behind, like Delilah had gone out to see the world and he’d just stayed in Fjords, one tiny little corner of it.
Well, that was technically true, he guessed.
He was describing a classmate’s misspelled tattoo when he saw someone get up from a booth
across the room. He was on his third beer and Delilah was on her second Old Fashioned, and he knew that they were getting a little loud. As he watched, he realized it was Roy — his pack’s alpha, and the mate of the woman who’d nearly been killed in the crash the day before.
“Miles,” he said.
His eyes flicked to Delilah, and he had a smile on his face that wasn’t quite in his voice.
“Roy,” Miles responded.
He tried to make a show of looking cool and relaxed, even if he didn’t quite feel it. He was always uncomfortable around the older man, always somehow aware that their priorities didn’t exactly line up, and always aware that, in a grizzly pack, that could get dangerous.
“And you’re the lovely lady who saved my mate, aren’t you?” Roy asked.
Miles grit his teeth.
Roy knew exactly who Delilah was and Miles knew it. “This is doctor Delilah Silver,” he said. “She grew up here.”
Roy made an exaggerated movement with his hands, acting like he was surprised or something. “Of course,” he said. “Marge and Ethan’s daughter. I’m so sorry to hear about your father.”
“Thank you,” she said. “It was a long time coming.”
“Well, I just wanted to thank you for saving Susan’s life,” Roy said. “She’ll be up in Anchorage for a while, still, but she’ll live.”
“I’m just glad I could help,” Delilah said. “It was an awful accident.”
Roy’s jaw tightened a little, and Miles could see his barely-contained rage. “It was,” he said. “And that asshole’s going to stay in jail until he dies, if I’ve got anything to say about it.”
Delilah’s eyes widened a little, and Miles felt them flick to him. He straightened up, his own bear on alert: Roy was the alpha, sure, but if he was about to do something...
Roy’s hands flexed into fists, but then he nodded quickly and walked away. Both sets of eyes followed him as he walked through the glass doors, into Alaska’s long twilight.
“He doesn’t like me,” Delilah said. She seemed almost amused by the fact, removed from it. “Even after I saved his mate.”
“He doesn’t like your parents,” Miles said. “He’s always been a big believer that blood will tell and all that. Only likes me because he’s best buddies with my father.”
