Chapter 4
Margaret sat on the floor and fought panic. She felt, with every cell in her body, a need to run to the farthest corner of the world and hide. Yet she resisted.
She couldn’t leave Gary. Not after he’d begged her to stay.
He was her best friend, and he needed her.
But he was also something she’d never seen.
Something that shouldn’t exist and sure as hell shouldn’t be in the same vicinity as her.
He was a bear. Or at least he’d been a bear.
A huge, terrifying grizzly who could cut her in half with one swipe of a paw.
But he hadn’t. When he’d come to her, he hadn’t snapped her in half. He’d nuzzled into her hand and then dropped his head into her lap. He was like a really, really, big dog, except that he wasn’t. He was a man who’d turned…changed…
She took a calming breath and tried to count to twenty in her head.
At least the last dose from her inhaler was still working.
She could breathe easily, which was a surprise since she didn’t make it past the number three before she was back to seeing her best friend on her lap.
Naked. No more fur. No six-inch claws or teeth that could rip apart a wildebeest. And no clothes because they were in tatters about the room.
Focus on the man and not the change, she told herself. See him.
It wasn’t a hardship. His body was sculpted perfection: broad shoulders, thick muscles, a sweet tush.
She might be asexual, but she could still appreciate male beauty.
A moment later she realized she was brushing her hand through his hair.
The feel of those soft brown waves quieted her terror.
His fur had been coarser, if nice in a different way.
Wait, what? What the hell was she doing, sitting on the floor with a man who had become a bear?
If she doubted the truth of her memory, all she had to do was look around the ruined loft.
The couch was toppled, the coffee table in pieces, and the metal floor lamp caved in on one side.
It would take some work to clean everything up, but she wasn’t moving.
She’d barely stopped shaking, and only that because gently stroking her fingers through Gary’s hair was soothing.
Oh. Her gaze had fallen upon the black ring box, and she remembered how he’d proposed to her.
Looking about the devastated room, she shuddered.
This was how she felt: bent, toppled, even shattered.
And yet here she sat, absently running her fingers through Gary’s hair and thinking about his marriage proposal.
If only she were a normal woman who could love him like he deserved. But she wasn’t made that way.
She stayed on the floor for another half hour, trying to process the details of the night, but she couldn’t.
Not really. Then her back started to ache.
The floor was hard and Gary was heavy on her legs.
Adrenaline had obviously kept the pain away for a bit, but now she was starting to feel the lumps in the brick wall that pressed against her back.
Still, it took her another ten minutes before she got up the nerve to try to change anything.
She gently poked Gary’s shoulder. “Hey, you in there?”
She was terrified of his response. Was she literally poking a bear? Would he wake as the normal Gary she knew or something entirely different?
Nothing happened. He might have snorted a little. She shook his shoulder.
“Come on, Gary. Wake up.”
Nothing, though he did mumble a little then shift slightly in her lap. Both normal things sleeping people did.
Normal. He wasn’t that. He could metamorphose.
Did he just change into a bear, or would he become something else?
A cat? A bird? A cockroach? Who the hell knew?
Not him, probably. He’d seemed as freaked out as her.
She’d never forget the sight of him as a bear staring into the mirror and whimpering.
But now she had to move. Her legs were numb from his weight.
With a sigh, she gingerly lifted Gary’s head. He was heavy and her body was stiff, but she gently maneuvered out from under him.
Oh God, it felt good to have blood flowing to her legs again. But now she needed something for his head and body. He couldn’t just lie there naked on the floor, but she sure as hell couldn’t pick him up either.
She put a pillow underneath his head then opened the thick blanket she’d bought back for him from Iceland.
What a shame to hide all that glorious male flesh.
How could a paraplegic have muscle definition in his ass?
How were his thighs taut with ropey muscles that looked like they belonged on a linebacker?
Hell, even his feet seemed artistically formed with their masculine size, long arches, and blunted toes.
Huh. He was a beautiful man, no doubt about it. And surprisingly not hairy. She’d have thought a person who changed into a bear would be covered in…well, fur, but nope.
She looked around the room, and her gaze fell on the door.
Now. Now was her chance to escape. Gary was covered.
She could set his phone by his hand so that he could call someone to help when he woke, assuming he didn’t change in his sleep.
She could leave, go back to her loft, and in the morning fly away to California.
That’s where her job was taking her tomorrow.
Sunny beaches where no one randomly changed into a rampaging predator.
But his last words kept echoing in her head. Don’t leave me alone.
He’d been frightened. She’d seen it even in the bear. In the eyes. But now he was just sleeping. Perfectly safe. No danger to anyone.
That was a lie, and she knew it. And yet she couldn’t abandon him. So she chose to clean up instead.
She started with the dented lamp then swept up the broken glass and shards of furniture.
She couldn’t do anything about the toppled couch, it was too heavy, but after a half hour, the room was clean enough that she could maneuver Gary’s wheelchair up next to him.
When he woke, he’d be able to get back into it using the desk as partial support.
So, now it was time to leave. After all, she was so exhausted she could barely see. Gary wouldn’t mind, right?
Another lie. But he’d forgive her.
Could she forgive herself?
She sighed and grabbed more pillows and a blanket. What she was planning was stupid. Who slept near a grizzly bear? Her, apparently.
Her back to the exit, she made a space on the floor facing him. Her heart beat triple-time as she slowly extended her hand. His arm was outstretched, his hand big and lax as it lay palm upward on the floor. She gingerly touched it and felt heat, callouses, and the blunt length of each finger.
Comforting, like always. How was that possible when she knew it could become a grizzly paw with six-inch claws?
It didn’t make sense, and yet she entwined her fingers with his.
How many times had she fallen asleep on the couch while holding his hand or snuggled against his side?
Countless times, and this felt no different, just as welcome, just as reassuring.
And pretty soon her eyelids drifted closed.
It would probably be hours until she relaxed enough to sleep, but at least she was horizontal.
Turned out she was wrong. It felt so good to be lying down. She was asleep within seconds.
* * *
Even wrapped in a thick blanket the floor was pretty hard, and when she woke Margaret had the backache to prove it.
That was the first thing she noticed. The second was that Gary hadn’t moved.
He was sleeping like the dead and they were still holding hands.
Then she realized something had woken her.
Her phone. It was buzzing all the way across the room. Well, that was a stupid place for it. If she’d needed to call 911 in the middle of the night, that was too far away. And if she wanted to answer the damned thing now, she’d have to get out of her cocoon.
She ignored it, exhaling in relief when it finally stopped vibrating. But then her alarm went off. Crap. What time was it? If her alarm was ringing, that meant she had to be at the airport in an hour, and half of that time would be taken up by the drive.
Letting go of Gary’s hand, she was startled to realize how much she missed its warmth. She half walked, half stumbled to her phone, thumbing the alarm off with a grimace. Oh God, how she ached.
Just as she was thinking about coffee, her phone buzzed again, right in her hand. Startled, she nearly dropped it as she fumbled to answer.
“Yeah?”
“Margaret! Thank God! Are you all right?”
It was Jesse, the corporate pilot and her direct supervisor. He was also the guy who had tried repeatedly to kiss her at the Basilica. The situation felt even more gross when she looked at Gary and thought about how much she wanted to kiss him.
She rubbed her eyes and tried to shift into a more professional mindset. “I’m fine.” She glanced at Gary, who was still unconscious. But Jesse couldn’t possibly know what had happened.
“You’re feeling okay, right? No fever? No…I don’t know. Weird stuff?”
Weird stuff? Did her friend turning into a bear count? “Um, no. I’m fine. Why?”
“The Detroit Flu. It’s gotten worse. Half the city’s inside with a fever. There’s a quarantine.”
Margaret frowned. A quarantine? She hadn’t heard that. “I’m sorry. I haven’t had any coff—”
“The city is on lockdown. National Guard surrounding us. No one in or out. Everyone is supposed to stay inside.”
Wait, what? “You’re kidding.”
“No. People are going crazy all over the place. There was a shooting in a grocery store, another in a park. Weird shit everywhere.”
Margaret blinked. “From the Flu?”
“From the hallucinations. The shooters say they’re shooting at wolves or something.”
Wolves? In Detroit? That was crazy. But then, certain areas here were always a hair’s breadth away from violence and—