by Roxie Noir
I should have just let it go, she thought for the thousandth time. It’s not like we’ve never had sex while drunk, after all.
She stood and started the shower, letting it rinse away the suds so she could see the spots she’d missed. Her father had, apparently, gone years without cleaning this bathtub, and it was a revolting mess, perfect for an angry midnight cleaning.
I didn’t want it to be some drunken mistake, though, she argued with herself.
Delilah had thought about what a reunion with Miles might be like more than once. Probably more than a hundred times, not that she bothered to count. What kind of loser couldn’t get over their high school boyfriend, after all? California had millions of men, and one of them ought to be the right one.
It was also true that she’d finally started thinking less about Miles in the past year or two, and when she realized that, she was glad that she was finally getting over him — only to have to come back to Fjords to deal with her father’s affairs.
Still, she’d expected it to be different. First, she’d fully expected him to be mated already. He had to be one of the most eligible bachelors in Fjords. He was stable, employed, and would be one of the top contenders for alpha when Roy passed it on. What shifter woman wouldn’t want that?
Second, she’d really, really thought that she was over it by now. She had assumed that, if she saw him at all, they’d be like old friends reminiscing about good times, but not particularly wanting a return to them. But instead, when she’d seen him smiling through the car window, she’d felt sixteen again, like she’d been struck by lightning, like her heart might stop right then and right there.
That, she was certain, was not how people felt when they were over their exes.
The knees of her ugly overalls were soaked through with stray shower water. She turned it on again, aiming the head around the stall, getting all the soap from the tiled walls, the bottom of the bathtub, and finally rinsing off her hands and feet. She dried herself on the towel she’d left outside the tub.
Suddenly, Delilah was exhausted, just looking at the newly clean bathtub.
There are a million reasons he hasn’t called back yet, she reminded herself. He could be out with his friends, or with his parents, or doing almost anything.
Not everything is about you.
Still, she couldn’t help but worry that this was about her, but she shook her head and shrugged it off, stripping out of her overalls and tossing them into the hallway outside the bathroom before she took a long, hot shower and then went to bed.
When the phone rang the next morning, Delilah was on her knees in the bathroom again, clearing out mini hotel soaps, shampoos and conditioners from under the sink. They were all half-empty and most had spilled somewhere over the years. Delilah was afraid she’d have to replace the whole cabinet, since the bottom where it had been wet was getting moldy and rotten.
“Shit!” she shouted to the inside of the cabinet, crawling backwards as fast as she could, and then running to the kitchen to find the phone. She caught it mid-way through the last ring before it would go to her dead father’s answering machine.
“What did I do to deserve two whole messages?” said a deep, familiar voice on the other end.
Despite herself, Delilah laughed.
“I just wanted to talk,” she said. “I thought maybe the first one had gotten deleted by accident or something, so I left the second.”
“Very thorough,” he said.
Something whirred and then clanked in the background of Miles’s phone. “Are you at work?” Delilah asked. She looked over at the clock and realized it was already nine in the morning.
“I’ve been here two hours already,” he said. “Mechanics work an early schedule.”
“Can we get coffee sometime today?” she asked. “Maybe when you get off work?”
“Not drinks again?”
Delilah blushed and was glad Miles couldn’t see her. “Not drinks again,” she confirmed. “I’d like to keep my head on right this time.”
“Winnie’s diner is still open,” he said. “I’m off at four. Any time after that.”
“Perfect,” she said, a knot starting to form in her stomach. “I’ll see you there. Have a good day at work.”
Delilah spent the rest of the day cleaning, throwing her dad’s junk away, and practicing what she was going to say to Miles. Last night had made it wildly, abundantly clear to her that she couldn’t have a brief fling with him. She was leaving in a week, and Delilah knew that she couldn’t break Miles’s heart again. Even if they tried to pretend, anything they did would be more than just a hookup, because every romantic feeling she’d had about him had come flooding back in the past twenty-four hours, and Delilah knew that they only way to stop that was to deny, deny, deny, and then once she left, she could start getting over him again.
It would be a lot easier if they didn’t sleep together.
Still, as she cleaned the house all day, she kept thinking about the sleeping bag in Miles’s truck. She couldn’t believe he’d kept it for all these years — was he keeping it as a reminder, or because he’d forgotten all about what they’d done under it, and now it was just another emergency blanket?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. You are going to keep it in your pants, and the two of you are just going to be friends.
At three-fifteen she got into the newly clean shower, washed all her sweat off, then got dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans — more or less the uniform she’d brought. She piled her hair into a bun on top of her head, didn’t bother with makeup, and was out the door in half an hour.
9
Miles
In a corner booth, Miles sat and waited for Delilah. He’d left work fifteen minutes early, barely able to concentrate on what he was doing.
At the diner, he sat and read the placemat over and over again, full of ads for things to do in Fjords and the surrounding towns. Most of the ads were for other places to eat, hotels, and fishing boats for hire. After all, tourists who liked to fish were big business in Fjords.
At least something was.
Miles took another sip of his milkshake and the door opened.
She walked through, just wearing jeans and flannel that somehow still hugged her curves perfectly, her auburn hair in a bun. Miles had been glad to see hadn’t changed that, even as it seemed like every other woman he saw was dyeing their hair blond.
When Delilah was in bear form, her fur was exactly that shade, somewhere between red and brown. With the sun at just the right angle, she looked like she was glowing.
How many times had he thought about a scenario like this: just sitting somewhere, looking up, and seeing her walk in? It was never exactly out of the question, not while her dad was still living in Fjords. Miles had always held out a secret hope that she’d come back home someday, and maybe, here it was.
“You were early,” she said, sitting down. “It’s only five ’til.”
Miles smiled and shrugged. He had to fight the urge to lean over and kiss her, the urge to act like she was still his.
“You know me,” said. “Prompt is my middle name.”
She watched him with an amused look at her face as she scooted into the booth. “I don’t think that’s the Miles I remember,” she said, teasing. “I remember a guy who was always redlining his truck to get me home by my curfew.”
Miles grinned at her, leaning back in the booth. Somehow, this felt incredibly right.
“That was totally different,” he said. “We had an excellent reason to be out late.”
He could have sworn he saw Delilah blush, but the waitress came over and saved her. She took a long look at Miles’s milkshake and ordered her own.
“I’ve spent the day cleaning my father’s disgusting house,” she said. “I think I earned it.”
“So what did you want to talk about?” asked Miles. He rested his big hands on the table in front of him, the underside of his nails clean but permanently stained by his work.
>
Delilah looked at them and not at him.
Then she sighed, lacing her fingers together and fiddling with them, nervously.
“About the other night,” she said.
“What about it?” Miles asked. He was starting to get a bad feeling about it. She’d run away, for one thing, and for another, he couldn’t help but notice that they were getting milkshakes at a diner, not having a romantic dinner and drinks, and certainly not getting busy by the fireplace at his house.
That last one he’d given a lot of thought to for the past day or so.
“I don’t think we should do anything,” she said. “I’m only in town for a week or so, and I think we should just stay friends.”
Miles felt like he was sixteen and getting dumped by a high school girlfriend.
“Just friends?” he said. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”
“I think it’s the best thing,” she said stubbornly. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes.
“Delilah, we’ve already—“ Miles heard his voice start to get a little louder, and he sat back, taking it down a notch for the benefit of the other diner patrons. “We’ve already done stuff. I know you’re not in town for long, but why not just have some fun?”
Deep down, Miles knew he couldn’t just have fun with Delilah. He wanted something more and he thought he probably always would, but he would take whatever he could get from her. If that was a week of “just fun” before she left again, then he’d have a fantastic week, and the future Miles would have to deal with all that heartbreak.
“It’s not fair to you,” she said.
“To me?”
“I know it hurt you when I left before,” she said. “I’d call my mom, and she’d say she’d seen your mom — this was before she’d moved to Anchorage — and hear all about how you were moping around, barely eating...”
Miles snorted.
How dare she. How dare she assume that she knew what was best for him, someone she hadn’t bothered to call for seven years. She’d just left after swearing up and down that she loved him, that someday they’d have a family together. All of that, and then one day, she decided she was going to California.
“I know I’m not a doctor,” he said, his tone full of barely-contained fury, “but I promise that I’m capable of knowing what’s best for me.”
Delilah looked alarmed and then guilty. She put her head in her hands, and Miles felt bad immediately.
Why’d you have to say that? he thought.
“Okay,” she said, her head still down. “I’m sorry, that was badly phrased. What I meant was— ”
The waitress came back, a bubbly human, with Delilah’s milkshake and a straw.
Miles and Delilah went dead silent, waiting for her to leave.
“Enjoy!” she said brightly, into the cold silence between them.
“What I meant was,” Delilah said, jabbing the straw against the table to break the paper off, “I think if we did anything, I would end up getting too emotionally involved, and I’m leaving.”
Miles’s heart nearly sprang out of his chest.
She would get involved? He thought.
He sat still, staring across the table into her hazel eyes.
“You could stay,” he ventured. His anger was totally forgotten.
Delilah shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, simply. “I don’t have a place here, with the pack.”
“You could have a place with me.”
Delilah wouldn’t look at him, only at the table. “Please,” she said. “Please, just — let this go.”
Miles looked across the table and could feel his chance slipping away.
For a moment, he wished she’d never come back at all. It had been seven years, and he’d been so close to getting over her for once and for all, almost able to finally think back fondly on their high school relationship without the sting.
But still. Still. He’d rather see her for the next few days, just as friends, just getting drinks and wishing desperately that he could kiss her while she stayed just barely out of reach, than not see her again while she was here.
How he felt about it a week from now was for the future Miles to deal with.
Present Miles made himself smile at Delilah, despite the horrible, gnawing feeling eating at him.
“Okay,” he made himself say. “Just friends?”
Delilah looked relieved, slumping a little into the booth and fiddling with her straw in her milkshake.
“Friends,” she said.
Miles spent the short drive back to his house in the woods telling himself to ignore the hollow feeling in his chest.
You got over her once, he told himself. You can do it again.
When he walked into his house, the light was blinking on his answering machine.
“Miles, it’s your father,” said the recorded voice, as if he couldn’t instantly recognize his father’s gruff, surly voice. “Pack meeting tonight in the chapel. Sunset.”
The chapel? Sunset?
Miles frowned. This was late notice, and if they were going to the chapel, that meant something serious was happening.
He listened to the message one more time, just to make sure, but the message had been left just that afternoon, for that night.
For a moment, he forgot all about Delilah.
He had a very, very bad feeling about this.
10
Miles
The chapel wasn’t a building, but a clearing in the woods outside town, about a mile from an unpaved dirt road. It was a beautiful spot, part of the rugged landscape of Alaska: bordered on one side by a rushing river, boulders strewn around, a tall embankment rising on one side. The pack had had important meetings there for as long as Miles or Miles’s father could remember — maybe forever, he thought.
He drove in on a fire road, parking behind the other vehicles that belonged to the other bears. There was Roy’s big SUV, his father’s Jeep. Miles tossed his keys onto the driver’s seat of his truck, then started walking through the woods toward the chapel.
This had to be about Larry, he guessed. The accident was only a few days ago, and Susan had finally been moved from the ICU, clearing Roy to think about exacting revenge.
Miles just hoped that they let the police deal with Larry, but he also knew that would never happen. No punishment that the justice system could dole out would be good enough for Roy.
Miles’s shoes crunched over dirt, sticks, and leaves as he ducked and swatted at branches. It was nine at night and the sun was finally lowering in the sky. Sundown wouldn’t be for another twenty minutes or so, and even then, the horizon would glow until the morning.
That was summer. Miles knew that it wasn’t like this everywhere, but he couldn’t imagine it another way. Full dark in the summer? Unthinkable.
When he came into the clearing, a little early again, he quickly noticed all the different clumps of men standing around. There was his father and Roy and some of the other older men, all standing around, arms crossed in front of them, talking angrily but quietly.
There was Nathan, his brother. They made eye contact but the young man quickly turned away, deep in conversation with Brock and a few other guys his age, all of whom looked strangely the same. Same haircut, same way of dressing. The same half-angry, half-awed look on their faces.
At least Nathan’s shirt wasn’t sticky with blood and pus, Miles noted, so he was probably healing.
He walked over to a group of men his own age, all with that bear look: tall, wide, bearded. Miles clapped them on the back, all guys he’d grown up with, gone to school with. Guys who also wanted to be alpha someday.
“How’s the kid?” he asked Evan, whose mate had just had a son.
Evan shook his head, sighing. “He’s great, man. I don’t feel like I’ve slept in weeks, though. I thought Kathy might set me on fire when I told her I was going out tonight, but it’s not like I had a choice.”
The others all nodded.
“I he
ard Delilah Silver was back in town,” someone else said.
“Her old man finally died,” said Miles. “She’s just getting his shit together. Here for about a week.”
He was interrupted by a loud clapping noise, and everyone turned to look at Roy, just walking into the clearing between two big gray boulders. To his right were Miles’s father Earl, and Roger, his right hand men.
“Tonight!” Roy shouted, his voice booming across the clearing. Everyone turned and looked at him, a man in his fifties just beginning to go gray. He had a commanding presence: he stood tall and straight, and had the kind of manner that made people want to obey.
“Tonight,” he said again, his voice quieter but carrying. “We come to the chapel so that we may serve justice on one of our own.”
He paused. Miles had a sick feeling in his stomach: where was Larry?
“This justice is the justice of our own people,” Roy went on. “Ursine justice, not human justice, as ours is the way of claws and teeth, as it had been since the old days.”
“And shall it be ever more,” the gathered men muttered, Miles included. He’d known this call-and-response since he was a cub. Not saying it along with the others would have been like not breathing.
“Bring forward the bear to the judged,” Roy boomed.
There was a silence. Everyone shifted, looking around, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing did.
Roy frowned. He wasn’t a man used to asking twice.
“Bring forward the—“
He was interrupted by a shriek and a growl from somewhere just inside the trees: the growl clearly from a bear, the shriek just as clearly human.
There was an enormous crash inside the forest, and then everyone began shifting at once, fifty men running toward where the sounds had come from, all in various stages of transformation into grizzly bears.
Then, pandemonium. Miles had been far on the other side of the clearing, and even as he shifted, he could tell that whatever had happened would be over by the time he got there — even five adult male grizzly bears at once could put a stop to nearly anything, let alone fifty of them.
