Chapter 8
Will stood on the deck of his trawler. The day had dawned cold and gray, with low clouds hanging over the beach. It was as gloomy of a day as it could possibly be, and it reflected the feeling inside him.
He looked toward the clanhouse. Julie was in there, unless she’d decided to slip out at some point during the night. His instincts told him that she was still close by, even though she hadn’t made another appearance during the rest of the party.
“I should go up and talk to her,” he’d said to Dylan after Julie had retreated to her room. Stacey was the one who’d gone after her. Though Will had known it only made sense for her to hear all this from her best friend, he also knew there was an even deeper connection between Julie and himself.
“Easy there,” Dylan had coaxed, putting a hand on his arm. “I get it, man. I do. But Stacey said she needed time to be by herself, and we should respect that. You can explain it all you want to, but it won’t make the shock of it go away any faster.”
“It might,” Will had replied stubbornly.
If only Julie understood just what was between them.
If only she could see what he saw. But even in that moment, he’d known his twin was right.
His secret wasn’t a bad tattoo or a run-in with the law from his younger days.
It was a skeleton in the closet worthy of an archeological dig.
This morning, however, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to find some way to reach out to her. He couldn’t risk her heading back off to Boston without having a chance to explain himself. This wasn’t a simple matter, he knew. But he had to start somewhere.
Stripping down to his shorts and stuffing his clothes into a dry bag, Will plunged into the icy water.
It froze him down to his bones, but it woke him up and got his blood pumping.
He knew that even some of his family thought he was crazy for this morning ritual when he came home, but it was even better than a cup of coffee.
It only somewhat soothed his heated blood as he thought of Julie and whether or not she’d be able to accept him for who he was.
On the shore, he shook the water out of his hair and pulled his clothes on as he approached the back of the house.
Already, he could smell coffee brewing, and someone was making eggs.
Well, great. That was probably Dylan or Stacey, and they were likely standing by to tell him once again to give Julie some space.
But as he slid aside the glass door and stepped inside, it was Julie sitting at the table.
She had her coffee mug halfway to her lips, and her eyes were wide as she looked at him over the rim.
She took a slow sip, barely even blinking.
“Good morning.” Her voice was artificially even, like she was trying with everything she had to control it.
“Good morning,” he replied, though time was a bit of a blur for him at the moment.
He’d made efforts to lay down and go to sleep, but they’d been futile.
The comfortable cabin he’d built for himself aboard his boat might as well have been a jail cell, but he wouldn’t lay all that at her feet.
He noted her open laptop just to the right of her plate. “Getting some work done?”
“I, um, needed to do something,” she stammered. Julie watched him carefully, never taking her eyes off him for more than a fraction of a second.
Did she think he was just going to turn into a snarling bear in front of her?
He saw that mistrust in her eyes. Will had lived his whole life with this secret.
There were many days when he didn’t think of it at all, not in the sense of being found out, anyway.
Everything was different now. He just had to figure out how he could go on from here.
“Doing something is good,” he said after a moment. Will moved slowly toward the table but stopped short of sitting. Instead, he braced his hand on the back of the chair opposite her. “No one could blame you for focusing on the mundane things in life, considering what happened last night.”
She bobbed her head once, and this time, she looked away.
Though he hadn’t enjoyed that uncertain gaze, he found the complete lack of it to be more unsettling. “Julie, would you walk on the beach with me?”
“What?” She snapped her head back up, looking at him automatically.
“Just a walk on the beach, right out in the open. We can get some fresh air. Talk.” The thought had only occurred to him as he asked her, desperate for some way to rekindle that connection he’d felt.
Still felt, though it was rather one-sided at the moment.
“It only feels right for us to discuss things.”
Julie pulled in a breath and then nodded slowly. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll get my coat.”
A few minutes later, they walked out of the back gate and onto the beach. Will’s bear was pleased to have her at his side again, though it was still wary of how this might go. “I wanted to talk to you last night,” he said as they reached the water’s edge and turned right.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked. She was looking ahead of them, down the shore, her face pinched with contemplation.
“You’d already talked with Stacey. It didn’t feel right to burden you with too much at once.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, both to keep them warm and resist reaching out to take her hand. She wasn’t ready for that. “It also didn’t feel right not to talk to you.”
Julie trudged along beside him and didn’t appear to really be seeing any of the scenery around them. “It’s a difficult position for you. I might not understand what it’s like to be…you, but I do understand why you wouldn’t just announce that sort of thing.”
Okay. So she wasn’t angry with him for not telling her.
That was one in-road, at least. “Is there anything you want to ask me about it?” It wasn’t easy to just sum up who he was as a person in a single sentence.
This was the kind of thing that would take multiple conversations across a span of time.
He’d seen it happen, though. Dylan and Stacey had made it work, and because of that, Will knew this was possible.
She opened her mouth but then closed it again. The tip of her tongue darted out for a moment and then back in. Several breaths came and went, each sounding like they were about to turn into a question but ending in nothing more than a frustrated exhale.
“I really don’t mind,” he encouraged quietly. “Whatever it is you want to know, you can ask me. I won’t get mad or embarrassed about any of it.”
“Thank you for that.” Julie swallowed, and her shoulders hunched slightly. “I think the hardest thing for me right now is that I still can’t quite understand the idea itself, so I don’t even know what questions to ask. I’m curious, because how could I not be? But I just don’t know where to start.”
Will stopped walking. She took a couple more steps before she turned to him. “Let me shift for you.”
“What?” Her eyes roved over him and then toward the row of houses. “Out here in the open?”
“All the homes here are owned by the family, and it’s a private beach.
It’s always been that way, and now you understand why.
We don’t have a lot of safe places in the world, but this is one of them.
Even out here in the open.” He’d been wrestling with his bear ever since he’d met her.
Maybe it would be easier on both of them if he just let it out where it wanted to be.
“I—I don’t know.” She took half a step back. “I saw Ruby last night, but I’m assuming you’d be…” Julie spread her arms wide.
“Big, yes,” he said with a little laugh. “A full-sized black bear. But it’s not like a bear in the wild. Even if I’m in that shape, I still have full control over everything I do. The part of me that you already know doesn’t go away.”
Her mouth worked again, opening and closing and trying so hard to find the right words. “I’m not sure about this, and for so many reasons. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this for me, you know. Like you have to perform or something.”
“I don’t think of it that way,” Will assured her. “I just want you to see who I really am, now that I have the chance to show you. Actually, letting you see that part of me feels like small potatoes compared to everything I’d truly like you to know. It’s part of who I am, but it’s not all of me.”
No, there was so much more he’d like to explain.
Will knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Julie was his mate.
He knew in the very deepest parts of himself that the two of them were meant to be together, that there was a connection between their souls that’d been forged long before they’d ever even been able to walk or talk.
They’d been waiting their whole lives to meet each other, and now they were standing on the same beach.
Will also knew, though, that the knowledge of that fated pull would be even harder for Julie to understand right now than his identity as a shifter.
He’d tell her eventually, but first, he had to see if she could accept him for who he was.
Julie’s hands fidgeted nervously inside the cuffs of her coat. She wiggled her feet in the sand. “Okay, then. Do I need to do anything?”
“No. Just stand right there.” His bear had already been rising inside him as he’d thought about showing it off, and it was waiting just under the surface of his skin. He pulled in a breath and let go of his human on the exhale.