by Lynn Red
“Thanks,” he said. His voice was a low, deep, rumbling sound that made my chest vibrate slightly. “For the compliment I mean. That’s Leena. She’s got a thing for videogames. Loves that Mario. I try to play it sometimes, but I’m absolutely horrible. My hands are so big I end up breaking controllers. She always tells me that I suck.” He had a mind-bendingly cute smile on his face.
“I could play with her,” I said without even realizing I was doing it. “Videogames, I mean, I’ve been...”
The way he was staring at me was disarming. I could hardly think, he had me so flustered. I cleared my throat and then tried to salvage my conversational dignity. “Pretty name,” I said. “I mean sweet. She looks sweet, not pretty. Also, she looks like she’s got some brains, er...”
I got a really funny look. “You seem upset?”
“Ugh, no,” I said. “It’s just that I heard on the radio you shouldn’t tell girls they look pretty because all that does is set them up to think of themselves as looks-first instead of what’s inside first. So, she looks pretty, yeah, but more importantly she looks sweet and—”
The hand that was beside mine suddenly was on top. “It’s okay,” he said, with half a smile. “She is both pretty and sweet. And smart. So all three.”
His fingers curled gently against the back of my hand. Every time those fingertips slid along me, I couldn’t help feeling really naughty things.
I just stared for a second – I couldn’t look away. Unashamedly, he looked right into my eyes for a long, wonderful moment. “Thirty-two,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I’m thirty-two. I could tell you were wondering. She’s six,” he said, with a fond smile. It was really obvious how much this little girl meant to him, which made me feel even better about getting him those burgers.
“Oh shit!” I gasped. “Er, sorry, I, er, burgers.”
He chuckled again. “Everything’s fine. Thanks,” he said, sliding the bag through the bars. “That’s strange,” he said, lifting and lowering the bag, like he was testing the weight.
“I thought you said you were bringing me ten? This is...” his eyes got a little darker, and his voice went low, quietly fierce.
I jolted. “Oh no, I’m sorry, Cooper—”
And then the jackass started laughing softly. “You’re... I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop harassing you any second. I promise. I still can’t believe you did this for me. Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
I’d climb naked through so many windows for you... I’d do anything naked for you, and I don’t even know why. I covered my blushing with a downward glance. Yeah, I totally do. I totally know why. “Nah,” I said. “It was nothing. Just went and picked them up.”
He lifted the bag to his nose and sniffed deeply, then set it on the little wall-mounted table beside him without taking his eyes off me. “Smells wonderful,” he said. “Lilah, I—”
Before he could finish, there was a noise at the other end of the hallway, down by Cooper’s area. My stomach sank. It was Tommy, coming to get him for Judge Rawls. The noise caught both our attention.
“Rex Lee?” A booming voice with a deep southern drawl came ringing down the concrete walls. “That you, son?”
Rex, I thought. Fitting.
“Yes sir,” he answered.
“Yup,” the round-bellied, ruddy-faced bailiff said. “You ain’t that half-stupid Edgewood boy. That’s good enough identification for me.”
“You doin’ all right tonight, Lilah?” he asked. And then, just as I was about to answer, he said, “Boy if them damn burgers don’t smell good. Say, where’d you get ‘em, anyway?”
“Oh,” Rex said, smiling in my direction. “My friend got them for me. I think it was a reward for not screaming and yelling all night.”
“Damn, son, really? You must’a done somethin’ right,” Tommy said. “She’s kinda mean most times. One time she bit someone, I think.”
A wheezy, loud, boisterous laugh shook his big body. Tommy’s face made it past red, and almost into purple territory before he finally got ahold of himself. The whole time he was carrying on, Rex just stared at me, like he wanted to say something, but he let his eyes do the talking.
“Anyways,” Tommy continued, “you better bring those with ya. I doubt the judge is gonna send you back down here tonight. Awright, turn around and stick them hands through the slit.”
Rex did as he was told, but tilted his head just enough to keep his eyes locked on mine.
At that moment, I would have traded the whole world for thirty seconds of telepathy.
Tommy tried the regular handcuffs, but let out an irritated sigh. “Bears,” he said. “We should really get some of those plastic zip-tie numbers. But,” he shrugged dramatically. “I guess if we did that, the alpha would have to budget more money for the police and less for those stupid little cups that he uses to make his coffee.”
Both Rex and I laughed, but more to make noise than because either of us was actually listening to Tommy. Just the sound of his laugh was enough to send me whirling into the sky.
God, I felt stupid.
“Well, good then,” Tommy said. He had managed to get a pair of leather restraints on Rex’s wrists, though I imagined if the bear tried very hard, he could have torn them. He didn’t, of course. “Lilah, thanks again for all you do down here. This big feller’s got a date with the judge.”
Why can’t it be a date with me? I wanted to say. “What about his burgers?” I actually said. What I left off was that there was a bandana in the sack and inside the bandana was a note with my phone number on it. I felt like a legitimate high school princess doing all that. The only step left was a note that said ‘will you go out w/ me? Check yes/no’ with two empty boxes.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll take ‘em.” Tommy grabbed the sack. “I might have to steal one of these things from you.”
“Be my guest,” Rex said. He craned his head, looking back at me as Tommy led him down the hall. “As good as those burgers are, there’s something else I have in mind.”
He gave me a quick, almost impossible to see smile, and a wink, and then he bent his head, stooping to go into the stairwell up to Judge Rawls’s courtroom.
Did that really happen? Or was I making it all up? No, no, he really said that. My stomach was in a knot, my mind was going in a circle. And then... he was just gone.
I sat down, heaving a sigh.
It was better this way. It was better for both of us probably. It was just a little game, a little fun, to kill time, for him. He couldn’t possibly be interested in an ex-street urchin like me. There was just no way. He had so much going for him, that cute little cub, and... that’s when it struck me that he never mentioned a mate. There must be one, if he had a cub, but that wasn’t any of my business.
He didn’t need a wayward painter who moonlighted at the local lockup to make rent.
But even still, I wasn’t able to beat myself up as much as I normally did. Something about the way he’d looked at me, the way he’d smiled, and the words he said prevented my normal trip down mopey lane.
Maybe, I thought. Maybe this time, I’ve actually felt fate tickle at my feet instead of just another guy to play with my head, mess with my heart.
Maybe I had. Maybe not.
Either way, Davis Edgewood had apparently awakened from his drunken sleep, and was starting to get cranked up again.
“Lilah!” he squealed. “Lilah Jorgenson! I need some food! You need to feed me!”
I took a deep breath, adjusted my bandana, and tucked the white streak of hair underneath it, then pursed my lips.
Whatever it was – fate, luck, or just a little diversion – all it was right then, was a question mark.
A really big, really hot, question mark.
-6-
Lilah
I’m not even going to pretend like I knew why the hell I was doing what I was doing.
My phone buzzed. My sister, Desdemona, was calling but I ignored it. Answe
ring a phone while I’m dangling thirty feet in the air, in a tree? Not the best idea. And anyway, it’s not like I could say “hey Dezzy what’s shaking? Oh, I’m not up to much, just spying on a guy I met in jail last night, no biggie.”
I mean, I guess I could say that, but then I’d seem even crazier than I actually am.
I thought this as I was flicking my tail back and forth, and trying to catch a glimpse of Rex through his window. I’m totally not a stalker.
Seriously.
No, really, I’m not.
I have no idea what got into me, but after I saw the backside of Rex heading up the stairs to meet with Judge Rawls, something in my head switched on. I’m not the kind of girl who chases boys around, nothing like that. I’m usually trying to get away from them.
I realize how that sounds. I’m not saying that I spent my entire life staving off a line of lusty-eyed calendar hunk looking guys. Not by any means.
Look, I’m not perfect. That’s a fact of which I am keenly aware. So keenly aware that I tend to obsess over things that no one else could ever notice. My hair, there you go, perfect example. There are days when I almost forget that white streak is there, and then I’ll see it in a mirror or whatever, and just... I dunno. It hits me in the stomach, kinda takes me by surprise.
And then there’s my curves and how they tend to make jeans fit a little funny, or make shirts poof out in the wrong places.
A light flicked on inside the little, log cabin-looking house, and I craned my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man who made me do things that, well, I’d never do in a million years.
Rex left jail directly from the Judge’s quarters, so I never saw him after the hearing. Davis Edgewood, though, I heard from all night long. I could really do without any Edgewoods in town. Jamesburg probably could, too, come to think of it. Officer Cooper told me it was Rex’s first time in the can, and then he told me all about why he’d been there. The whole story kinda got me in the heart strings. Even more than Rex himself had, if that’s imaginable.
I squinted, using my raccoon eyes to see perfectly in the dark, and sniffed the air. Even partially transformed, like I was then, I had a nose and eyes about a thousand times better than a human.
And as an excellent fringe benefit, raccoon noses are super cute.
Finally, I caught a glimpse of my huge bear.
Wait, I thought. Did I just think ‘my’ bear? I shook my head. I really must be as hard up as my sister thinks. I met the guy for like twenty total minutes, and now I’m thinking he’s mine. Goodness.
Anyway, getting over all that cognitive dissonance for a second, he was standing in front of the stove, doing something with a pan. Cooking, I thought. It’s called cooking. Keep your mind from falling apart, at least.
He pulled a large book off what I imagined must be a shelf beside his stove, and opened it to a marked place. I watched him lean close to the book, then frown, and then pull back away. Whatever he was doing seemed to require a supreme amount of concentration.
He shook his huge head and pursed his lips, irritated about something. Rex looked back and forth for a second, and then fished something out of his pocket that made me choke.
A pair of half-moon shaped reading glasses, the kind with the long chain that goes around your neck to keep them from falling off, appeared from his pocket. The frames were finger painted, it looked like.
I shook my head. How could anyone like him be this good of a person? Wearing reading glasses his cub painted? That’s a man I could really get behind having kids of my own with. When he put them on though, my eyes got wide with surprise.
He looked a little like Dumbledore, sitting there with his reading glasses perched on the end of his broad, broken-in-a-couple places nose. Somehow the gold chain on the earpieces seemed to match perfectly to the tattoos around his face... but still, the thought of this huge werebear with finger painted reading glasses? I defy any woman on this planet not to melt at the sight.
But then I had another thought. If he was this wonderful, this perfect, then what the hell was I doing sitting out here, staring at him? Why wasn’t I in that house with him? Why wasn’t he rubbing my feet as I sat on his old, brown couch, watching TV and rubbing my big, baby-filled belly?
If seeing his glasses had me gawking, thinking that had me blushing so furiously that I was probably lighting the night up around me.
I giggled, absolutely mortified at the things running through my mind, but not exactly willing to stop thinking them. I saw him turn to the side and smile – probably at little Leena – and then look back down at the pan.
He lifted it off the burner, and flipped the chopped up vegetables, rice, and meat once, twice, three times, and then stirred some kind of thick, brown sauce into the mixture.
Gorgeous, loving, kind... and a cook? I couldn’t have come up with anything better to ask for if I found a genie.
Rex picked up a blue, marbled looking glass, and took a long drink, then smiled again, but down at the pan this time. When he laughed, lines framed his mouth, and the dimple on his left cheek stood out even more than when he just smiled.
I... was falling for him.
I realized it and got pretty much the same feeling I got when I ate way too big of a burrito way too fast. It was like a concrete ball landing in the pit of my stomach.
I can’t do this. Not now. I can’t let myself fall for another guy who is just going to leave me high and dry. It wasn’t like I even had a reason to think he’d do that, but I couldn’t let myself fall for anyone.
Not again.
Why am I even here? I’m just teasing myself, torturing and taunting myself. I’m staring at him like there’s anything I can do...
And then there she was.
Interrupting my pity party, Leena, with her hair in pigtails on either side of her head, appeared in the window. Her hair was exactly the same color as her daddy’s, but her eyes were the darkest, deepest shade of blue I’d ever seen.
I have to stop, I thought. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t imagine a life with... with him. No matter how much I might want it deep down inside, I can’t do this. I can’t be responsible for anyone. Not like he’d want me to anyway. Here I am, peering through this poor guy’s window and leering at him. What’s wrong with me?
It didn’t make any sense. For years, I’d kept my promise to stop doing all this breaking and entering. I promised my dad I’d stop, and I’d done such a good job until the night before this, but here I was, sneaking around someone’s house and staring.
Neither of them could see me – I knew I wouldn’t get caught, but this is... it kind of reminds me why I am the way I am. I spent a whole lot of years running, a whole lot of time afraid and trying to survive and stealing to live. All those years, I told myself the same thing I was telling myself there, sitting outside Rex’s house.
You’ll never get caught, I always thought. Life is hard and shitty and mean, and you’re just making it the best you can. You don’t owe anything to anyone.
For a long time, it was true.
That’s when I realized that as I watched Rex and his little girl, I had started crying.
Nothing big and dramatic – that never really happens – I was just watching someone who loved his little cub. She was tugging on his shirt, and at the same time, tugging on my heart. I’d always wanted to care for someone the way my adoptive dad took care of me, but... I was scared. I didn’t know if I had it in me to love someone like that the way they deserved to be loved.
He reached down, picked her up off the ground and she clambered around to his back, wrapping her tiny arms around his huge neck and clinging to him. Rex started laughing, play acted like he was choking and then squatted down. Leena let go, hopped off and skipped off into the other room.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t just misty-eyed anymore. Good God, when had my biological baby-clock started ticking? I’d never even thought of this. But I guess the right man can make you feel really funny things.
<
br /> Hot tears covered my cheeks. From the corners of my eyes they rolled down my neck. Is this what it was like? Is this what love and family looked like?
I don’t want it to sound like I’m ungrateful or that I don’t love my parents... because I do, I absolutely do. But watching Rex and his cub just exist, just be together, it made me feel things I didn’t know were possible.
There, with them, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to be part of a family where a cub climbed on her daddy, he acted like she was choking him to death, and then she scampered off to do whatever she was doing.
That pan of stir-fry doesn’t look too bad either.
That’s when I realized that I was smiling through the tears. I was sitting there watching, and biting my lip to make sure I didn’t make a bunch of noise. A salty drop ran between my lips and I tasted it as it evaporated on the end of my tongue.
Rex turned to what I assumed was the living room and said something I wish I could hear. A second later, he looked out the window in my direction, like he was searching for something. Instinctively, I shrank back, flattening myself against the trunk of the tree I was in, though with the darkness cloaking me, there was no way he saw me.
Still, watching his eyes peer out, I imagined he was looking at me. That the smile he had on his perfect lips was meant for me.
But then he grabbed his pan, portioned out two plates full of veggies and meat and sauce, flicked off the light, and vanished.
My heart sank about eight inches lower in my torso as soon as he was gone. It was like gravity pulled a little harder at just that second, and didn’t let up for a few more.
Again, my phone buzzed insistently in my back pocket. This time though, I figured there wasn’t any reason to ignore.
“Hello?” I whispered. “What’s shakin’, sis?”
“Not much,” Desdemona said. “Just wondering what you were up to. Kinda bored.”
“Bored?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be a college girl now? You should be partying!”
