Out of the Woods

by Sophie Stern

  Where the hell had that thought come from?

  I wasn’t the kind of guy who claimed a woman.

  I definitely wasn’t the kind of guy who felt a connection to someone the way that I felt one with Elizabeth. She was pretty, and she was soft, and she seemed really funny, but there was something else, there, too. There was a deep familiarity when it came to her, like she was someone I’d known my entire life.

  Like she was someone I wanted to know forever.

  “We shouldn’t do this here,” she murmured.

  “Kiss?”

  “We shouldn’t kiss here,” she clarified.

  “Why not?”

  Elizabeth pointed toward the lone bartender who was currently standing with their arms crossed over their chest. The bartender was giving us fuck-off eyes, and I nodded, understanding that our make-out session was not exactly welcome here.

  That was fine. This wasn’t our bar, and we had to play by their rules. Kissing a gorgeous human? Well, I could take that outside. That was no problem at all. As long as I got to keep touching her and kissing her, I was a happy bear.

  “Yeah, we shouldn’t kiss here,” I agreed, nodding. I stood, offering her my hand. “Come on.”

  Elizabeth accepted my offer. She grabbed my hand and let me tug her to her feet. Her hands pressed against my chest and she looked up at me. It was all I could do to keep from taking her right there, claiming her on the table.

  I couldn’t do that, though.

  I wouldn’t.

  Instead, I led her outside. It was Colorado, which meant the night air was chilly. Elizabeth rubbed her shoulders, looking around nervously.

  “Where should we go?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

  It seemed a bit forward to assume she wanted to sleep with me, but I knew that I damn well wanted to be with her. I didn’t want to make her feel like we had to do anything she wasn’t ready for, but it was also cold. She was right. We couldn’t just stand outside.

  “I have a car,” I told her.

  “Let’s go,” she nodded. That sounded good to her. Good. We could go park and be alone for a little while, but first, I wanted another kiss.

  I took her hand and brought it to my lips. As I did, I noticed there was a little mark on the inside of her wrist.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oh,” she giggled, holding it out for me to see, “it’s my tattoo.”

  “A bear?”

  “Paddington Bear was always my favorite story when I was little,” she laughed again. I loved the way Elizabeth laughed. “It just seemed fitting, you know?”

  Fitting indeed.

  “Come on,” I led her to the car, managed to get the car unlocked, and we climbed into the front seat. I started the car and turned on some music. Then I cranked up the heater.

  “I feel like a fucking teenager,” I laughed, rubbing my hands together.

  “Me too. Did you spend a lot of time parking?”

  “Yes,” I shook my head. Was I really telling her this? “You?”

  Elizabeth laughed out loud and shook her head.

  “Do I look like the kind of girl who spends a lot of time parking?”

  “You look like the kind of girl who knows what she wants,” I said, and I reached for her face, cupping her cheeks, and kissed her again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Soon I stopped paying attention to the music.

  I stopped paying attention to the fact that it was cold.

  Soon everything faded away except for her.

  It was only her.

  1

  Present Day

  Dale

  “LIVE A LITTLE.”

  That’s what my old roommate, Matt, used to say. He used to tell me to live a little and to relax more. Those are two things I always struggled with. Even though I was Air Force, had an incredible job, and owned a beautiful home, I still struggled to just be.

  I couldn’t seem to find peace.

  Maybe it was a flaw that I would always have.

  It had been a long day at work. I was out of the military, but I still had a job that kept me physically active. Thanks to the degree I got before enlisting and my on-the-job experience, I was more than qualified to become an administrator at Westvale Community College. Nestled in the heart of the mountains, the college had perhaps one of the most beautiful campus designs in the country.

  Then again, I might have been a little biased.

  My home was located close to Westvale, just up in the foothills. The small town itself was cute and although it was surrounded by forests and mountains that could easily make you think it was some sort of ghost town, it actually had several shops, cafes, restaurants, and of course, the community college to keep the town alive. It wasn’t exactly a tourist destination, but it was comfortable.

  It was home.

  After work, I grabbed a muffin from Bears ‘n’ Bagels, and then headed back to my place. I wanted to do some yardwork, play with my cat, and just read a damn book. Even though I’d been out of the military for two whole years, it seemed like I was still trying to find ways to destress after living that lifestyle.

  My life now was different.

  I was 30 years old, and I was ready for something wonderful and peaceful. As a bear shifter, I had the inner urge to find a mate, but the outward laziness that came from total exhaustion. Being in the military had been hard. Losing Matt had been hard. In some ways, everything had been hard.

  Sometimes, I kind of just thought I was ready for life to be easy.

  I was ready for a period of time where nothing bad happened. Good vibes only. That was going to be my new motto. I didn’t need the stress or anxiety that came from dating, or trying to find someone, or anything at all like that. I just needed to chill.

  When I pulled up to my cabin, I hopped out, slammed the door, and marched to the front porch. There was a large envelope sitting flat on the welcome mat in front of the door. Apparently, it had been too big to place in my mailbox. I grabbed the junk mail and bills out of the box itself, picked up the envelope, and then I went inside.

  My home was large and comfortable. I had two floors with plenty of space. If I ever wanted to start a family, I had a huge backyard with lots of trees. The back of the house was practically all windows, which meant any kids I had could play outside and I could watch them from inside. The second floor had a ton of room, as well. Snowball didn’t take up nearly enough space to be running this entire house the way he did.

  Now, though, the house felt empty.

  Lonely.

  I kicked off my shoes and dropped my wallet and keys on the little table in the entryway, and then I headed toward the kitchen. My stomach growled, as if to let me know it was ready to eat.

  “Yeah, I know,” I muttered aloud.

  Once I was in the kitchen, I tossed all of my mail onto the counter and called for Snowball.

  “Here, kitty kitty,” I yelled out into the house.

  Snowball came prancing into the room like a little horse. Oh, he was cute as hell and twice as naughty.

  “Meow!” Snowball wasn’t shy about showing affection or his feelings, and he certainly wasn’t shy about letting me know he was starving.

  “You can’t be that hungry,” I laughed, gesturing at Snowball’s food dish. It was still mostly full with a little spot in the center where he’d eaten straight down, pushing all of the kibble to the sides of the bowl. “Just because you can see the bottom doesn’t mean the bowl is empty.”

  “Meow,” he complained, but I just patted him on the head, smoothed out his food so it looked a little fuller, and then went to the fridge. I grabbed a beer, popped the top off, and started sorting through the mail.

  Bill.

  Bill.

  Spam.

  Bill.

  Spam.

  There was nothing interesting today except for the package. I went for that next. It was really just a big brown envelope. It had been sent just two days ago, but someone ha
d paid for express shipping.

  Well, wasn’t that interesting?

  Who wanted to contact me that badly?

  I wasn’t exactly a person people were dying to write to. I certainly wasn’t the kind of person people were clamoring to get in touch with. Not enough that they’d pay an insane amount of money for shipping, anyway.

  I had never been married, so I didn’t have any ex-wives trying to get in touch with me. My family was gone, and Matt had been buried for years. There was nothing more for me in this world except for Snowball. Trying to find something to live for had been difficult, to say the least.

  Still, I opened the envelope with a curiosity that I hadn’t felt in a good, long while.

  A single letter slid out of the envelope and onto the counter.

  “Seems like a lot of work for one letter,” I muttered. Whoever sent it must have felt their news was really important because a regular stamp would have been just as good, in my humble opinion.

  I picked up the letter and scanned it.

  Then I set my beer down and held the letter with both hands.

  “What the fuck?” I said out loud.

  I looked over at Snowball.

  “What the fuck?”

  Snowball blinked at me, unbothered by my swearing. He was used to it by now. He just meowed at me and I turned back to the letter and read it again, wondering if there had been some sort of mistake.

  Dear Dale,

  I’m sorry to tell you this way, but you have a child. It’s kind of a horrible way to tell you, but the truth is that I never actually planned on sharing this with you. We had one incredible night together and I never expected to get pregnant from it. I was so shocked when I found out I was expecting, and I just didn’t have it in me to do anything but keep the little baby we created. He really is a cool little boy, and I think you’ll like him.

  Anyway, I’m writing to you because there’s a problem. I’m hoping you can help explain a few things for me. Our little boy is four, almost five years old now, and even though I can’t believe I’m actually writing this down, he’s got an issue.

  Last week at daycare, he sort of...

  Well, he turned into a bear?

  Um, is there any chance you might have shifter genes on your side of the family?

  I’m hoping you can help me figure out what to do.

  Don’t worry. I’m not asking for money, and you don’t have to be involved at all. I was just hoping you could tell me if you know that any of your relatives are shifters because, well, apparently our kid is one, and I’m not really sure how that could have happened.

  I would have called, but I couldn’t get your number. My friend Jake remembered where you and Matt lived five years ago, so I went there, but of course, you were long gone by now. One of the neighbors was able to help me, and she gave me your last known address. She said you’re really kind and that you still send her a Christmas card each year.

  I’m hoping you can help me, too.

  Please call.

  Ruby Rogers

  At the bottom of the letter was a phone number scrawled in perfect penmanship, but I didn’t even look at it. I just kept staring at the name.

  Ruby Rogers?

  That name didn’t sound the least bit familiar. I might have been a bit of a floozy while I was in the service, but I never forgot a name. Ruby Rogers wasn’t someone I had ever hooked up with.

  Had I?

  Suddenly, I was doubting myself, but I was pretty sure that I hadn’t met anyone with a name like that. It sounded too much like a comic book villain for me to have just forgotten.

  Furthermore, how would this person have known I was roommates with Matt? I never brought girls home.

  Ever.

  I certainly didn’t introduce them to my gay roommate. Matt and I both valued our privacy too much, and even though it was okay to be gay in the military, being a gay shifter in the military? Well, that was messy. Matt and I kept a lot of things to ourselves. He was the one who brought people home: not me. He brought people home he felt safe with. I never wanted to make him uncomfortable, so I only ever went to other peoples’ houses.

  Now there was a woman claiming she had my child, and I had no idea who she was.

  I stared at the phone number.

  I thought about calling her for all of two seconds before I pulled out my phone. The woman said our kid was a shifter. That made sense. It definitely made me more likely to believe that the kid was mine than if she’d presented me with a human kid. I wasn’t human, after all. Never had been.

  Instead of calling Ruby Rogers, though, I went through my contacts list. There was one number I had never deleted. I clicked it and called our old neighbor, Mrs. Worthington.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “Dale,” she said in that sweet old-lady voice of hers. “What a nice surprise! How are you?”

  “Mrs. Worthington,” I said politely, “I’m just fine. What about you?”

  “Well, I’m doing all right. I’m surprised to have you call me on the telephone. Usually, you just send me a holiday card each year.”

  “Well,” I glanced at the letter in front of me, “something’s come up.”

  “It’s about that girl, isn’t it?”

  I could practically hear Mrs. Worthington grinning. I rolled my eyes. When Matt and I lived in the apartment next to hers, she had always been a nosy busybody. She was sweet, of course, but nosy. She always kept track of who was coming and going. She knew everyone’s schedules, and everyone’s partners, and everyone’s kids.

  “Did someone come by my old apartment?” I asked her carefully. The amount of information I was able to get from her depended completely on how excited she was about this development. Since Matt and I were no longer her neighbors, Mrs. Worthington likely had someone else that she watched and paid attention to. This must have been like a blast from the past for her, though, and I knew that she was going to get more and more excited as she started talking.

  Hopefully, that meant she would share more information than she intended on sharing.

  I needed to know who it was who had come by. If she could tell me a little more about the woman – even what she looked like – then maybe it would jog a memory. There had to be a reasonable explanation for what was going on.

  Women with secret babies didn’t just come crawling out of the woodwork for no go reason.

  Women I couldn’t remember definitely didn’t come barreling back into my world.

  That wasn’t the way this worked.

  “Yes, it was a few days ago,” Mrs. Worthington told me crisply. “I didn’t feel comfortable giving out your phone number, so I lied and said I didn’t have it.”

  Well, that definitely sounded like something my old neighbor would say. I wasn’t sure if the woman would buy that lie. Who kept addresses, but not phone numbers?

  “But you gave her my address?”

  To me, that seemed even worse. I would much rather have a crazy lady calling me on the phone than showing up at my house or sending me packages. I knew Mrs. Worthington was just trying to be helpful. Maybe she knew I’d ignore a phone call, but it was hard to pretend I hadn’t received certified mail.

  “Well, I figured a letter wouldn’t hurt too much. Did she get in touch with you, then?” Mrs. Worthington sounded both optimistic and hopeful, not to mention a little gossipy. This was probably the most excitement she’d had in weeks.

  I sighed.

  “She did,” I nodded even though the old woman couldn’t see me, “but I have a small problem.”

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Worthington said. She sounded a little nervous. “What is it?”

  How the hell was I going to tell her?

  It was probably best to just be blunt, I figured. After all, what could it hurt? I didn’t know what the woman looked like or sounded like. I didn’t know when we had supposedly slept together. I also had no idea why this particular woman thought I was the father of her child.

  There w
as a growing sense of discomfort at the back of my mind, though. I never, ever told women I was dating that I was a shifter. I definitely never told anyone I was a bear shifter. If this was some sort of scam – and I wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t – then how would she have known what kind of shifter I was?

  No, there was more to the story. I wasn’t ready to admit that I could have a kid I knew nothing about, but it was starting to look like an actual possibility.

  “I can’t seem to remember what this lady...looks like.”

  “Well, I was a bit surprised to see her,” Mrs. Worthington said. “You and Matty were always so careful about bringing people home...you more than Matty.”

  Mrs. Worthington was one of the few people outside of Matt’s immediate social circle who knew he was gay. She had always been kind to him and never seemed to care. When he’d died, she had baked me a week’s worth of lasagnas and told me to take care of myself. She’d stopped by every day to make sure I was actually still eating and drinking water.

  She didn’t know it – or maybe she did – but she was the reason I had managed to stay alive during that time. I’d sunk into a deep, dark hole after I lost my best friend, and I still missed him every single day.

  “Yeah,” I felt myself tear up just the littlest bit thinking about Matt. He’d been the best friend a guy could have asked for. Shifter or not, he was a really, really decent person.

  “There was only the one fellow I really remember,” Mrs. Worthington continued. “He and Matt dated for a while, you know.”

  I hadn’t known.

  Then again, there were quite a few things Matt didn’t tell me about.

  When I cleaned out his side of the apartment after his death, I’d learned that he was still in the closet when it came to his family. Not only that, but they didn’t know he was a shifter, either. Matt had been adopted, and he’d hidden that part of himself from his adoptive family. I’d done my part to keep his secret. They should have known the Matt I’d known – the true, wonderful Matt – but it wasn’t my secret to share, so I’d kept it to myself.