Chapter 27
emergency
BELL
No more accepting gifts. No more evening walks. No more losing track of time. New agenda: take control of my life.
My woodworking had a purpose now. I ignored the humming of the one totem statue I’d been researching in favor of freeing a cute pair of Kodiak and polar bear cubs—womb twins—from one of the smaller stumps and a black bear cub from another.
They’d be wedding gifts for Holly and Noelle.
But I no longer allowed myself to get lost in the process of making them.
All wood sculpting was reserved for normal workday hours now.
I programmed the alarm on the phone Ravik said I had to keep on me for 5 pm every day so I’d always be back inside the house making my own dinner by 5:30. A signal to the three guys that I was a grown woman who didn’t need them to do everything for me.
Instead of watching old episodes of reality baking competitions or turn-of-the-century movies with Zion, I spent my nights on the phone—but not like Ravik dared me to when he tried to force me to disrupt Noelle’s and Holly’s happy lives with all my toxic problems.
I signed back into my bank account, which had three hundred forty-seven dollars and eighteen cents.
The number made my stomach drop. Three hundred forty-seven dollars—that’s what leaving Dennis had left me with. Barely enough for a bus ticket.
I was done. Done.
No more hiding scared from a slip of paper with a dead man’s writing.
I looked for a job, any job I could submit to online.
Retail. Data entry. Administrative assistant.
It didn’t have to be at a gallery or museum this time.
I’d take anything I was remotely qualified for that would pay me enough to escape.
That’s what this was. Not starting over.
Escaping.
Away from here. I hated that I had to submit the number for the phone Ravik had given me. But I needed a working number.
I’ll pay him back, I kept promising myself when I switched off the cottage’s lights and climbed into bed as fast as I could so I’d be fully tucked away when Zion or Boone reported for sentry duty.
I’d forgotten that vow I’d made to him back in May. But there wasn’t any forgetting it now. Yes, I loved working on Holly’s and Noelle’s wedding gifts, but I had to put that unpaid work in its place.
It was time for me to grow up. Face my daughters. Give them their presents, then get the hell out of Bear Mountain.
However, none of the jobs bit. Days passed without anything more than an automatic form acknowledgment that I’d submitted an application in my inbox. Probably because of the Canadian country code.
I was beginning to think I’d need to start putting my old number down on applications, even though that would mean going through the pain of accessing my last phone’s remote voicemail box.
One of the reasons my account was low was because it’d never stopped withdrawing automatic payments for my phone plan. So it was still working in its ephemeral cloud sense—just not in its physical form.
But one Saturday afternoon, the trill of an incoming text message made me look up from the nose work I was doing for the little polar bear on Noelle’s statue.
I picked up the phone from the metal chair I always set it on just in case one of the job places called.
But it wasn’t a job texting me.
Boone: HEY SUGAR, CAN YOU COME OVER TO MY HOUSE RIGHT NOW? 9-1-1
9-1-1. American shorthand for emergency. But what kind of emergency could Boone need me for?
I set the phone down. Thinking it had to be a joke. Some kind of trick to get me to come running after days of radio silence.
I picked up the detail knife to return to the little polar bear. Then lowered it.
But what if it isn’t?
What if Boone, who’d done so much for me, actually needed my help?
With a worried feeling in my chest, I set the tool back down on the metal chair and rushed over to the one-story cabin to the left of the widow’s cottage to make sure he hadn’t fallen or burned himself or gotten hurt in any other way.
None of the doors in the Outer Limits had locks for reasons that came down to: you don’t steal from or try to harm the kind of paranormals who can easily track you down and murder you in a myriad of grisly ways. But I knocked anyway.
“Boone,” I called out. “It’s me. Bell. Are you in there?”
By now, my heart was racing with increasing concern.
What if he really was hurt? What if I got here too late and he—
The door opened on my panicked thoughts. I caught my breath…
…then burst out laughing when I saw Boone.
“‘S not funny,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his Herculean chest in what I could only describe as a toddler-like sulk.
“You’re right! You’re right!” I agreed, biting down on my lip to make myself stop. “But what happened?”
His messy white hair, which had grown even longer and wilder over the past few weeks, looked like it had been attacked by a weed whacker.
One side was still long but of blunt varying lengths.
The other was significantly shorter and spiking out from his head in a way that made it look like he’d been partially electrocuted.
Or...
“Were you planning to hit an eighties new wave festival without me?” I had to ask. “I love Flock of Seagulls!”
“Stop laughing!” he growled when I lost it again.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped between giggles. “I’m sorry, it’s just—what happened?” I asked again.
“I tried to give myself a haircut,” he replied between gritted teeth. “It didn’t go so hot.”
“I can see that.” I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes. “But why didn’t you call Ravik or Zion to help you?”
Boone huffed in a way that put me in mind of the Gemidgee Paul Bunyan statue having a bad day.
“They’re both busy up in Bear Mountain doing Christmas in July shit.
You would not believe how seriously that town takes it since they’re always too busy stuffing their faces for incoming hibernation when the real one comes around.
And you used to cut your own hair all the time when you were younger, so. ..”
He stepped back to let me into his house. “I need you to come unfuck this up.”
So it wasn’t exactly an emergency. But as much as I was trying to keep my distance, it turned out that turning down any request for aid from the guy who’d already done so much for me was virtually impossible.
A few minutes later, I found myself standing behind a stool in Boone’s disheveled front room.
Apparently, he hadn’t spent all summer fixing this place up.
The kitchen table hadn’t been replaced like Ravik’s.
It was old and warped with visible splinters poking out everywhere.
Floral wallpaper was peeling away from the walls.
Random clothes were draped over the saggy furniture—like maybe he hadn’t discovered hangers yet.
And there was still a thin layer of dust over everything.
The contrast to Ravik’s pristine house was... stark.
“Why me, though?” I asked after he settled in the seat and shoved the “tools” he’d been using to give himself that hatchet job of a haircut toward me—a standard Barrington’s clipper set and a pair of old metal house scissors.
“I’m still not sure why you didn’t just drive into Blue Water to visit a real barber. ”
“Don’t like humans. They talk too much,” Boone answered. “Plus, they’re nosy as fuck.”
Okay, maybe Zion hadn’t been exaggerating about Boone being a bit of a grump.
“I’m a human,” I reminded him.
He mumbled something that sounded like, “For now.”
“What?” I asked.
“Said you’re the exception,” he answered a little louder. “And you mentioned to Zion that you used to cut your own hair all the time, so...”
I’d told Zion that in passing the last time he’d cleaned up my sides. But, of course, that meant all three bears apparently knew one of the very few things I’d shared about myself.
“Wow,” I said as I placed a towel around his shoulders. “I’m never going to get used to all of you being privy to every conversation the other two have. But be aware, I’m Black, so my fix might not be much better than what you’ve got going on now.”
Boone answered my warning with a baleful look.
“It’ll be better than this,” he insisted gruffly. “Seriously, I look like a Karen with a beard.”
This time, I didn’t even try to hold back the laugh as I got to work.
“It’s not so bad, you know,” he said out of the blue when I was almost done combing the layers near his right ear.
“My haircut?” I raised both eyebrows since he couldn’t see what I was doing.
“Having Vik and Zion in my head all the time,” Boone answered. “Zion talks too much. But he ain’t so bad. And Vik’s great.”
“Seriously?” I paused mid-snip. “He’s not giving you orders all the time?”
“No, he only tells us what to do when it’s for our own good—or, you know, for your own good,” Boone answered. “But there’s always some kind of good intent behind it.”
“Hmm.” I resumed snipping. “Why do I feel I’m getting reverse Jehovah’s Witnessed?”
Boone chuckled, a low rumble that sounded more bear than human.
“You’re the one who brought it up. I’m just saying, with the bond, I don’t need words.
Vik feels what I feel. Zion knows what I mean even when I can’t say it right.
I guess I was kind of lonely and didn’t realize it before we came to Canada.
’Cuz now I never feel all alone, or like everything’s all on me.
” He paused. “Never misunderstood, like when I was working for the humans.”
Something sharp twisted in my chest.
Never misunderstood.
That sounded... nice. Terrifying, but nice.
“And you don’t feel crowded?” I asked. “Like you can’t have your own private thoughts without having to police them, or feeling really self-conscious?”
“Nah. We can mute it if we've got something we don't want the others knowing, but I stopped caring about it one way or the other after a few days.” He shrugged those massive shoulders. “Mostly, it just feels right. Like I’m supposed to have them there. Like I was incomplete before.”
Incomplete.
The word lodged in my chest.
As much as I’d been working on myself since getting there, why did I suddenly feel like an unfinished art piece? Like there were parts of me still trapped in the wood, waiting to be freed.
“You know what, we should probably stop talking,” I suggested. “I really don’t want to mess this up, and I need to concentrate.”
Long pause.
“Alright, sugar, if that’s how you want to play it.”
Again, he was technically agreeing with me, but it didn’t feel like he was.
I worked in silence after that, and a few minutes later—with the help of a Barrington comb I found in his messy bathroom, still in its original plastic—I had him looking more like a hulked-out Ernest Hemingway and less like that divorced mom from that one big family reality show.
“Just have to get these few strays in the front,” I told Boone when I spotted a few strands flipping forward because they were too long. “I’m just having a little trouble getting to them.”
Even sitting down, Boone was so big his bent legs put me too far away to cut with the precision I wanted.
“Here.” Boone spread his legs wider. “Get closer.”
I hesitated for just a second, then stepped between his thighs.
His hand settled on my hip, steadying and warm, casual—like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Still, my pulse spiked and my breath caught. It was touching.
But just for a few seconds, I reminded myself.
I forced myself to focus on the hair. Just the hair. Not the heat of his skin. Not the way his thumb had started moving in the smallest circle against my hip. Not the—
Boone’s nose suddenly flared in a way that was becoming way too familiar.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no...
“Sugar?” he said, voice dropping low and rough.
“Almost done,” I said, trying to play it off. “Just one more piece and I’ll be...”
He pulled me closer with one hand. Not rough. Gentle, but … touching...
“…done,” I finished weakly, looking only slightly down into his blue eyes. Now dark. And burning.
“I can smell you, sugar. And I’m not going to lie.” He shook his head without taking his eyes off mine. “It’s been a bunch of shitty days, not getting to see you on the evening walks, and I’m having a hell of a time not kissing you now that you’re back.”
Then, instead of thanking me for my service and letting me go, he dipped his head to ask, “Can I kiss you?”