Chapter 12 – BEAU
BEAU
Iclose my eyes and suck in a calming lungful of her scent. My claws are pushing through my fingers, and distantly, I hear Lisa’s voice, but I can’t make out the words as I battle to keep my bear in check.
He wants to go back and punish whoever has upset her. And she is upset. She might be trying to hide it, but there’s no missing the sour tinge to her scent.
These people are supposed to be her colleagues, her friends, yet they speak like this about her behind her back. When she just worked her ass off and helped to save a child?
Fuck them.
When I pick up the radio, finger poised over the button and ready to give them a piece of my mind for speaking about her like that, Lisa lunges across me.
With only one hand on the steering wheel, her entire body stretches across the console as she scrambles to grab the radio from my hand, the car swerving wildly, almost putting us in the ditch.
“What are you doing?” I shout, yanking the steering wheel back to the right position as she comes to a dead stop in the middle of the road.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she’s calm, she extends her hand, palm up.
"Give it to me," she says, an edge of desperation in her tone.
When I keep it above my head, all pretence of calm vanishes, and she tries to snatch it again, her fingers swiping at thin air.
"Beau. Please. Give it to me."
My rage subsides long enough for me to look at her properly for the first time since the chatter started.
Now, in the dashboard light, I can see what she's been hiding. The tears she blinks back are threatening to spill down her cheeks. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel, eyes wide, lips pressed thin.
She isn't angry. She's frightened.
The radio crackles, and she puts her face in her hands as another male voice joins the chorus. But I don’t take my eyes off her as the next person takes their opportunity to take aim.
"I mean, fuck, if the chief finds out? Even if it’s bullshit, he'd lose it. He's already pissed at her for wasting hours on the Reeves case, indulging the hysterical sister, ordering pointless drive-bys."
There’s a low whistle from someone else in the background. "He's been looking for an excuse with her for months. This'd hand it to him. She’ll be writing traffic tickets again before she knows what happened." A chuckle. “Then whose work will I take credit for? Not you lazy fuckers.”
My heart breaks for her. I work alone, but I can appreciate how betrayed she must feel, hearing them speak so disparagingly about her. I keep my eyes on her, waiting for her to fall apart, but instead, she doesn't flinch and doesn't react.
She just keeps her hand stretched toward the radio, eyes forward, still as a statue. Like turning it off is the only thing in the world that matters to her now.
Feeling like shit for forcing her to hear the entire thing, I place the radio into her hand silently.
Much as I want to stick up for her, if I press the talk button, my presence on the radio becomes proof that what they're laughing about isn't merely speculation. Whatever blowback she takes, I'll have caused it through my selfish desire to protect her.
When what will really protect her is making sure they don’t find out.
And it hits me hard then, that what she said in the hotel room about her not being able to date me really might not have been personal. It was just reality. If she has to deal with this shit regularly, she could accurately predict what would happen if news got out.
All she did was hug me, and they’re already going to town on her.
Her fingers close around the hard, black plastic.
She doesn't speak into it, just rolls the volume off and lets it fall into the centre console, the dull sound of it almost lost under the rain on the roof.
She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist before pulling away again slowly, both hands back on the wheel now.
"I'm sorry," I say quietly. “I didn’t realise…”
With a rapid shake of her head, she whispers, "Don't. Please. Not now." A pause. “I just can’t.”
So, I don't.
Instead, I sit in the passenger seat with my hands in my lap and watch the rivulets of water track down the windscreen while she drives the short distance to my truck.
The wipers beat back and forth. Lisa breathes in and out. Neither of us says a word for the rest of the drive.
She pulls up alongside my vehicle at the end of the logging road and puts the car in park. The downpour has eased slightly, but the windscreen is still streaked with it, the headlights catching every drop. For a beat, neither of us moves.
“Thanks for the lift,” I mumble awkwardly when she continues to stare ahead into the nothingness of the dark forest.
When she doesn’t respond, I push the door open and step out into the cold, the breeze hitting the heated skin on the back of my neck. I round the front of her car and stop at the driver's side window, expecting her to roll it down.
Instead, she shoulders her own door open and steps out into the rain to meet me, tilting her face up to the sky. She shouldn't be out here. It’s freezing cold, and she’s already exhausted.
“What are you doing? You’re going to get sick,” I warn, trying to herd her back to the car.
She ignores me completely.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” I ask. Again, my question remains unanswered.
It's coming down hard enough that her hair is immediately wet, soaked strands plastered to her cheeks. Yet standing in front of me, with her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket and eyes closed, she looks beautiful.
I ache to touch her, to pull her into another hug, to somehow replicate the joyous look on her face when she grabbed my hand and squeezed it, but the radio chatter rained down on both our good moods.
“I don’t have any family left,” she says quietly. “My career is all I have. But no matter what I do, none of them takes me seriously simply because I don't need to be there to pay a mortgage.”
I sigh and watch the rain wash away her tears. Reaching out to run my fingers along a loose strand of red hair, I give her a sad smile.
“I didn't get it before.” I stare at her full lips, her long eyelashes resting on her damp cheeks. "I really am sorry, Red. I don’t want to cause you any trouble."
She gives me a small, tight nod, and the subtle movement undoes me in a way the chatter itself didn't. I was mad before, now, I physically ache inside, feeling a ghost of her pain and unable to do anything to fix it.
I close the distance between us and cup her face in both hands.
She inhales sharply, eyes finally opening and locking onto mine, but doesn't pull back. I can't fight her battles with her colleagues for her.
"You're probably right," I say quietly, letting my thumb brush over a droplet of water that beads on her plump bottom lip. "It's for the best."
But it doesn’t feel like it. Right now, it feels completely unfair. So, I kiss her before she can answer, unable to resist touching her while we’re alone.
It's slow and sensual. Her mouth is warm against mine, and I let myself have just this. The soft press of her lips. The small moan she makes when our mouths meet, and the way her hands come up to rest on my damp chest, leaning into me.
When I finally lift my head, I keep her face in my hands and linger there, an inch between us, breathing her in. My bear is howling, and I commit every second to memory, because I may never get another.
Then I let her go.
I step back and turn for my truck without looking back at her, because if I look at her once, I won't leave.
The sweep of her headlights across the car park as she drives away feels final as I get into my truck and rest my forehead on the steering wheel with a curse.
Protecting her means staying away… but that doesn’t mean I can’t still watch out for her from a distance.
The roads are empty as I pull onto the main route back toward town. Her taillights appear ahead of me, and I fall in behind her at a careful distance, needing to make sure she gets home safely.
Twice, she takes turns I hadn’t predicted, and I have to hang back further to keep from spooking her, but the roads narrow as we get further out of town, and there aren't many places she could be going.
When she finally slows and signals to turn, I drive by in case she notices me behind her.
Moving past the entrance to the property at a normal speed, I watch in the rear view as her brake lights flare, and her car turns into the dark mouth of the drive. I count to thirty, find a verge wide enough to turn around in, then kill my headlights and roll back the way I came.
I tuck the truck in, maybe fifty yards down from her driveway, behind a stand of trees thick enough to hide it. The road is empty in both directions, so I sit and wait. And watch.
The house is visible in glimpses through the trees, and it's exactly what I should have known it would be. Even in the dark, with only the lights from a few downstairs windows to go by, I can tell it’s huge, two stories of stone and timber.
The driveway curves up through trees in a way that means the front is invisible from the road, providing privacy and security.
The grounds vanish into the darkness on either side, and I can't tell from here where they end.
Only less than ten feet from the front door, though, like my rental. I can tell that much.
The downstairs lights move as she walks through the house.
A small lamp comes on in what might be a study and goes off again a minute later, then a light comes on upstairs.
After a few minutes, the curtain at the upstairs window moves, drawing closed, and a shadow passes behind it.
The fabric twitches, like she's standing at the glass, looking out at the dark.
I sit very still in the cab of my truck. The big fat drops falling from the branches above are pounding on the roof while the engine ticks as it cools. Watching her shadow makes every part of me want to cross that lawn, bang on the door and tell her she doesn't have to give me up.
My bear is pacing the inside of my skull, snarling at me to do it.
Fuck her colleagues. Who cares what they’ll say. Choose me over your career. I’ll make you happy…
But I can’t do that.
She might be mine, something my bear has known since she walked into that hotel bar, but I’m not hers. At least, not yet, and maybe not ever. So, forcing it now, when dating me potentially comes at the cost of her job, would only make her resent me.
Upstairs, the bedroom light goes off.
I sit there for another long minute looking at the dark window. Then I reach for the key, start the engine once more, and pull away with my lights off until I'm well past her drive. The house disappears in the rear view, lost behind the trees, and I force myself to keep going.
Leaving my mate behind.