Chapter 13 #2
He nodded. “Closest I’ve got to home cooking.” His mouth twitched. “Thought you could use something sweet.”
She looked up at him, at those big, capable hands that could kill as easily as they’d stirred dessert, at the angled face that had been carved by both wind and kindness.
Those lips she wanted to devour again. That deep, quiet presence that settled into her bones, her muscles, and, Ancestors help her, her heart.
There was nothing sharp about him. No hooks, no edges that cut.
Being near him was soft, easy, elemental.
Bear carried his heritage inside him, the land, the quiet, the still strength of it, and he honored that without even thinking.
That ease, that simple truth of who he was, was sweeter than anything in the bowl.
She loved that about him: that his honesty and simplicity could hold so much complexity.
She hesitated, the scent tugging at places in her she hadn’t touched for years. Indian pudding.
“I’m honored that you did this.” She reached out without thinking, slipping her hand around his, squeezing it hard and strong. He returned the gesture and settled next to her at the table. She pressed her shoulder against him, reaching for his grounding, his strength to bolster her.
Her grandmother had served a version of it every winter, thick, humble, full of patience.
It was a dish that didn’t rush but needed time and watching, the way medicine did.
Back then, she’d thought the stirring was a kind of prayer, her grandmother’s way of asking the old spirits to stay near through the long nights.
“So this was a family thing for you,” she said quietly, breathing him in.
“Yeah,” Bear said. “Comfort food. It always meant we’d made it through something hard.”
She didn’t trust her voice, so she reached for the spoon instead.
The first bite nearly undid her. Sweet and dark, grounded in corn, vanilla, and heat.
The flavor was honest, the kind her grandmother would have called earth-born.
It belonged to firelight and stories, to kitchens scented with sage and cedar.
The taste filled her chest until she couldn’t breathe right.
This was what tradition felt like, steady, waiting, unchanged by distance or failure.
It reminded her that even when she’d turned away from the path her grandmother had marked for her, the traditions themselves had never turned away.
They’d waited, patient as the stirring of a pot, ready for her to remember who she was.
“Damn,” Fly said. “That’s brilliant, Bear.”
Shamrock sighed in bliss. “I’m going to need this recipe.”
Than smiled, looking like he never wanted to be anywhere else. “Told you. My big bro is amazing.”
Bailee couldn’t argue with that.
The boys were still laughing, Fly arguing with Shamrock over who had burned what, but the sound had softened at the edges.
She looked at Bear. His eyes caught hers, warm and steady, and she knew he’d made it for her, even if he hadn’t said so.
She reached for his hand again and met his gaze.
His eyes, dark as fertile soil, caught the light and turned it to heat that collided with her.
They were the kind of brown that held the world together, steady, patient, full of life waiting to bloom.
Everything just stopped moving, sound, the earth, even the breath in her chest. Something pulled her closer to him, that intangible essence that called to her, uncontrollable, and she marveled at how miserably she failed to control anything when it came to Dakota Locklear.
Leaning in and pressing her face against his, she whispered. “Thank you for that.” She broke the gaze, but she kept hold of his hand.
Later, when the dishes were stacked and the night grew quiet, Than found her old guitar by the bookshelf. He asked, polite and soft, if he could use it.
Bear’s voice held that low, steady pride that always made Bailee’s chest ache. “He organized a rock band in high school. They played a few venues around town. I didn’t even know he could sing until I went to one of his gigs after graduation. Kid’s got a hell of a voice.”
Than ducked his head, the praise both humbling and bolstering. “Cut it out, Kota.” Bear’s nickname was said with fierce affection.
Bear chuckled. “Nope.”
Than shook his head, grinning. “How about I turn the tables and tell you all the truth? He made my singing, my studies, my life…everything...better. He used his bonuses and hazard pay to build us a new house, so Mom didn’t have to work double, sometimes triple shifts just to get by.
While he was out risking his life for the country, I was getting everything I needed. Not so with him—”
“Than,” Bear said softly before he revealed anything else.
Bailee’s throat tightened. The tenderness in that one word wrapped around her, steady and unguarded. It was Bear being humble, a quiet reflection of everything Than had just said about him.
She wanted him alone, not only to wrap herself around him, but to reach into the still water beneath his surface, to see the currents that had shaped him. To hear the story of the boy who’d had less and still found a way to give his family more.
She hadn’t thought she could melt any further, but she did. The truth of him undid her, the fierce strength, the quiet compassion, the man who carried love like duty.
Unable to sit still, she reached up and slipped her fingers into his hair, her touch trailing to the nape of his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, restraint warring with the need that pulsed between them.
Damn, she wanted him. Not just that gorgeous, ripped body, but his core unraveling in her hands.
Than stared at him for a few seconds, then smiled faintly. “You can’t stop me from being honest, or from telling everyone who you are. But I’ll honor you by shutting my trap.”
Bear chuckled again and looked away, a flush creeping up his neck. Fly and Shamrock watched in silence, their easy smiles gentling into respect.
Than sat on the edge of the sofa, tuning the guitar by ear.
“I’ve had the great privilege to have strong men in my life,” he said.
“Not just my brothers and my Lala, Grandfather Ray, but my mom’s boyfriend, Chayton Akecheta, poet and songwriter, former Marine, and a Lakota son.
He wrote this song, and I love singing it.
I’ll carry it with me as I go on my journey and find my path. It’s called Wolakota.”
The word hit Bailee like a slow drumbeat, deep and familiar. Her breath caught.
It had chased her through the fevered edges of the crash, burning in the jungle smoke, murmuring through the leaves.
Sometimes she still heard it when she drifted toward sleep, her mind not quite healed, her skull still tender where the concussion pulsed.
The doctors had called it trauma, the brain replaying fragments of memory.
But she knew better. The word hadn’t been in her head as much as it had been in her bones.
Now here it was again, in a quiet living room thousands of miles away, coming from the lips of a boy she’d only just met.
Her chest ached, and she wasn’t sure if it was wonder or fear.
Now, hearing it again, her breath stuttered.
The room seemed to tilt. Maybe it was the lingering concussion, or maybe it was something older, something that lived beneath her pulse.
Were the ancestors reaching for me again? Have I been deaf to them all this time?
The room blurred for a heartbeat, the voices around her fading into the hum of the sea outside. She steadied herself with a slow inhale, fingers curling in her lap.
Maybe this was how the old ones spoke now, through songs, through strangers, through moments that refused to let her look away.
She braced herself as Than’s fingers found the first chord, his voice, deep, compelling, and beautiful, and made the night shudder with the sound.
The first line rolled through the room like a slow tide.
The wind carries dust, the river carries stars,
Than began to play, the melody low and sure. The song was familiar and new all at once, Chay’s words about balance, the space between breath and belonging.
the earth holds both and calls it home.
We walk between them,
learning to breathe in rhythm.
Somewhere in the second verse, another sound joined, a deep hum that grew into rhythm. Bear’s voice, low and rough, rose in a gorgeous chant. The vibration ran through the floorboards, through her skin, through the hollowness she’d carried since the crash.
Her fingers tightened in the silk of his hair, her body tuning into him, her spirit with his, her heart beating in time to his homage. His spirit answered the song the way her grandmother’s had once answered the drum.
One heart, many hands—
the circle doesn’t end.
When you stumble, I steady,
when I falter, you rise.
This is Wolakota.
Not peace, but belonging.
Not silence, but balance.
We walk the same road,
side by side.
The chant wove around Than’s melody until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. The air felt thick with it, warm, alive.
Even Fly and Shamrock had gone still. Fly’s head was bowed, eyes closed. Shamrock stared at the floor, his grin gone, the sound pulling something reverent out of him neither of them could name.
Bailee’s chest ached. The sound was the same one she’d heard in her dreams, the word Wolakota rising like breath. Maybe the ancestors hadn’t been reaching for her at all. Maybe they’d been waiting for her to stop running long enough to hear them.
The sky leans down to meet the earth,
the wind finds its home in the grass.
Between them is where we stand,
learning how to listen.
Her throat tightened. She thought of the star quilt folded away in its cedar chest, the one her grandmother had given her, believing she’d carry on the medicine line. She hadn’t looked at it in years. It lay buried in the dark, like her heart, like everything she’d turned from.