Chapter 10 #2
Behind him, the rookies were still laughing, but the sound felt miles away.
Shamrock stiffened when he looked toward Bear. The laughter on his face disappeared. He jogged to him. “Something wrong?”
Bear forced a breath through his nose. “Yes.”
“What—”
“Get your gear and get in the truck. Now.”
He froze, then moved. He couldn’t leave them. They were his responsibility. But he couldn’t stay here another second.
“Damn,” Shamrock muttered, startled but taking control. He shouted, signaled to Fly and Than, who immediately left the surf, grabbing their packs.
Bear was moving before them, crossing the sand in long, fast strides. His pulse hammered against his ribs. He needed to see her. To know for himself she was still breathing.
The tide slid back, smooth and endless. He thought of Bailee, her voice, her stubborn strength, the way she hid pain behind control.
He thought of how she had clutched him like she needed him, how much that had settled in a place no one else had ever touched.
There was only one thought slamming over and over in his head. Get to her.
He climbed into the truck, started the engine. The boys piled in without a word.
He didn’t look at them. His hands were steady on the wheel, but only because they had to be.
Bailee stood in abject misery and surveyed the wreckage of her life, the utter chaos of her home, her yard, and the woman standing inside it. Two weeks on the op, and two weeks convalescing. How could everything have unraveled so fast?
Both arms hung uselessly in their slings, her right wrist locked in a brace that pulsed with its own heartbeat every time she so much as breathed too sharp.
The last fourteen days had been a study in helplessness, a slow, grinding reminder of how much she relied on her hands to function, to fight, to control the world when her mind slipped.
Now she couldn’t so much as button her own shirt.
She had tried, God help her. Tried to tap her phone screen, tried to angle it between forearms to order groceries, tried to open a can of soup with her teeth and stubbornness. Every attempt had ended the same way: dropped phone, spilled soup, pain vibrating up her injured arms.
She had finally eaten the last of the prepared meals Helen had stocked before she left, scraping them out with the edge of a wooden spoon clenched awkwardly in her brace.
Now she was starving, aching, and—she winced—reeking.
She hadn’t been able to shower properly in days.
Only quick, miserable rinses she could barely manage one-handed.
Ancestors, her hair. A matted snarl that had once been sleek and black and unbothered by anything but humidity.
Now it clung to her scalp in tangled ropes.
She couldn’t hold a comb, couldn’t even lift her arms high enough to attempt it.
She looked like she had crawled out of a jungle, which, technically, she had—but she’d hoped that particular aesthetic wouldn’t follow her home quite so literally.
The yard outside was a testament to how long she had been running from her life, even while standing still.
One month of neglect had turned it wild.
Grass had surged past her calves, dense and ungoverned, hiding the walkway in a riot of green.
Weeds choked the flowerbeds she had once tended, climbing over the cracked stone edging like they were reclaiming territory she had abandoned.
A drift of leaves had gathered at the porch steps, brittle, sun-faded things that whispered each time the wind moved through them.
The fence sagged toward the earth, boards warping in the heat, as if even the wood had lost the will to hold its line.
Nothing in the yard looked cared for. Nothing looked claimed. It mirrored her a little too perfectly.
She imagined Bear standing here, seeing this wild, unclaimed sprawl, and something in her chest tightened with shame.
Helen had given Bailee her number, but she didn’t want the competent woman to come back to this.
The doctor had told her she could take the slings off soon, start using her arm again. A couple more days. She could make it a couple more days.
The rumble of a truck in the drive made her freeze. She shuffled to the window, using her good hand to pull the curtain aside.
Not Helen’s car.
The doorbell rang once, then again, sharp, insistent. She thought about pretending she wasn’t home, but the knocking got louder.
Annoyed that they wouldn’t go away, she marched to the door and stood there, fumbling with the lock with her good hand.
The door swung open and her breath caught. Bear.
She hadn’t known it was possible to forget how to breathe, not until the sight of him shattered her carefully built walls and left her lungs clawing for air.
Bear stood there like the storm she'd spent weeks trying to pretend hadn't happened, dark, broad-shouldered, soaked in wind and salt and silence.
The dark, silky strands of his hair were tousled, her fingers itching to touch them, feel the warrior power of him, and his eyes, Ancestors save her, those eyes, locked on her with such intensity she felt stripped bare.
For a second, she forgot the pain, the state she was in, the humiliating brace biting into her wrist. All she could feel was her pulse rioting in her throat, her body recognizing him before her mind caught up.
He was the one her bones had reached for in sleep.
The one whose name she whispered like a fevered prayer when the night pressed too close.
Every dream she’d fought off came roaring back, raw and unfiltered.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t speak right away. Just looked at her like he was drinking her in.
“Damn, Bailee,” he murmured, his voice low and reverent, like he was afraid if he spoke too loudly, she might vanish. His gaze swept over her in a single, encompassing sweep, cataloging, absorbing, claiming, and the heat in it was a balm and a wound all at once.
Ancestors help her, she remembered.
The way she’d sent him away after their fierce, aching kisses, her heart thundering with want and terror.
The way her hand had grazed his chest and met the scar, that jagged reminder of how close she’d come to losing him.
It had thrown her back to Rio, his body limp in her arms, blood everywhere, the shock of his weight like an anchor dragging her under.
She’d panicked. She’d recoiled not from him, but from the flash of loss so vivid it felt like death was reaching for him again.
That scar had made it real. Too real.
Her reaction, pulling away, pushing him out, had been pure self-preservation. A desperate scramble to outrun grief, fear, the unbearable thought of what it would mean to love him and lose him for good.
She had hurt him.
He so deserved an explanation.
She’d been the one to initiate that intimacy. She had reached for him, pulled him in with both hands and kissed him like she meant it, only to break away like he’d scorched her.
He’d burned her down to ash. This man who had bled for her, who had saved her life twice, who had saved so many in that hotel in Rio.
His heat, his sacrifice, his damn presence.
It had branded her. Searing her raw with a hunger so deep, so bottomless, she feared no one else would ever touch it. Not the way he had.
It was why she hadn’t been able to stay away from him after his surgery. Why she’d shown up at the hospital when she swore she wouldn’t. Why, even now, even like this, wrecked and helpless and too full of shame, she wanted him gone.
Not because she didn’t need him.
She did.
The sight of him here, in her home, seeing her like this? It cracked something loose inside her chest.
She didn’t want him to see her like this.
Bruised and battered, she didn’t want him to witness the loss of control.
But Ancestors help her…she wanted him still.
He stood there, calm and unmoving, watching her like she still mattered. Like none of it, her panic, her retreat, her silence, had changed what they were.
As if he had no regrets.
As if her words, those words she wished she could take back, were already forgiven.
As if he still wanted her to be his.
Hunger hit her like adrenaline shoved straight into her veins.
Ancestors help her, yes.
She wanted to be his. Over and over and over again.
In every way that mattered. Skin to skin.
No space between them. She wanted his hands.
His mouth. His body. His cock. The weight of him braced above her, inside her, grounding her with that big, beautiful body, heart, and soul.
To have such a man want her was humbling.
She wanted everything she’d denied herself when she’d been drowning in panic and ghosts.
But with him?
She felt almost found.
The air changed.
He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. But something in him shifted, something low and primal that struck her like a current. His nostrils flared. His jaw flexed. His eyes, already dark, turned molten, pinning her in place with a heat that saw straight through her.
He felt it. The want radiating off her in waves. The ache she hadn’t spoken aloud but had no chance of hiding now.
For a split second, the distance between them pulsed like a live wire.
Then, just barely, his hands curled into fists at his sides.
Control. It thrummed off him.
He was holding himself still with the same kind of restraint that cracked bones and forged warriors. Not because he didn’t want her. But because he wouldn’t take until she reached for him first.
That…that…undid her more than any kiss could.
She tried to retreat, to remember her pride, but her mouth moved before her spine could stiffen.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice cracked like brittle porcelain. “You need to go.”
His jaw flexed. That unreadable expression sharpened into something dangerous and immovable.
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going anywhere.”