Falling (Otter Bay #6)

Chapter 1

MILES

“You don’t know how to change a tire, do you?”

Evie snorted on the other end of the line. “I’m too gay to drive, you know that.”

“I know that,” I said, sighing and leaning back against the side of the car.

At least the scenery was nice, if you were into that sort of thing.

Big straight redwoods straining up toward a periwinkle blue sky, still lush and green while other trees around them were turning yellow after a long summer.

The sound of a creek trickling past just out of sight.

Birds calling to each other as the afternoon sun sank below the tree line and lit the whole place up in shades of gold.

I, unfortunately, was not into it. Nature and I didn’t get along.

I wasn’t sure what my excuse for not knowing how to change a tire was. Dad never showing me, maybe.

“Guess I’m walking into town.”

“You’re wearing brogues,” Evie said.

I looked down at my shoes. “How did you know that?”

“You never wear anything else.”

“I own boots. It’s coming into fall. I might be wearing boots.”

“Even if you were, they wouldn’t be hiking boots,” Evie said.

She was right. My little sister knew me too well.

I looked up to see a squirrel looking down at me with judgmental beady eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, you don’t know how to change a tire either,” I called up to it.

“Making friends with the locals?” Evie asked wryly.

“I’m talking to a squirrel,” I admitted.

Evie chuckled. “Wow. I knew small town life would drive you nuts, but I thought it’d take a little longer. You haven’t even gotten to… Chipmunk Falls or whatever yet.”

“Otter Bay,” I corrected, then paused to check the email I’d been sent, suddenly worried that Evie was right and I was wrong and therefore lost as well as stranded.

No, the email said Otter Bay. There was a helpful little map attached. There was a phone number, too, in case I needed help.

I didn’t want to call it and let Seth—whoever he was—know I had a flat and I didn’t know how to change it. He’d probably laugh at me. Small town people would’ve known how to change their own tires.

This was why I wasn’t cut out for this job.

“Otter Bay,” Evie corrected. “It might not be so bad, you know. Could be cute girls.”

“I’ll get you their numbers if I find any.”

“Some of them might be interested in you,” she said. “And it’d be good for you to move on after… y’know. You should have someone in your life who really wants to be there.”

The sound of a car engine made me turn to look just as a red pickup that was probably older than I was came around the curve in the road. The truck slowed, then indicated and pulled up behind mine, about fifteen feet away.

“Umm,” I said, looking between the truck and my surroundings. “So, if I get murdered you can have all my stuff.”

“Are you likely to get murdered?” Evie asked.

“I dunno, someone just pulled up in a pickup truck,” I said.

“They’re probably about to offer to help,” Evie said, reasonably. “Describe them, though. Just in case.”

I looked over at the pickup again, where a tall man with dark, short hair shot with threads of grey and shoulders broad enough to strain the seams of the plaid shirt he was wearing open over a plain black t-shirt was stepping out.

He caught me looking and waved. A bright, friendly smile lit up his face.

He still might have been a serial killer, but he didn’t look like one. Not that I knew what serial killers were supposed to look like.

“Little over six feet tall. Short black hair,” I said, waving back as he approached, since that seemed polite. “Late thirties, early forties, maybe? Built like one of your boxing friends.”

“A bear!” Evie enthused. “You’re always bear catnip, you’ll be fine now. Love you, bye.”

I took a breath to say something, but Evie had already hung up. Well. It was nice of her to answer the phone in the first place. She didn’t do that for just anyone.

The bear—she was right about that—stood a handful of feet from the car, looking me up and down.

Bear catnip. She was right about that, too.

Sometimes, I thought it was a shame I wasn’t gay. Might’ve been a whole lot easier.

“You must be the new librarian,” he said.

I looked down at myself, from leather shoes through wool pants to sweater-vest and actual tweed blazer, and smiled wryly.

“How’d you guess?”

The bear chuckled. “Seth mentioned you were late,” he said. “I have just enough brain cells left to put two and two together. Call me Sherlock Holmes.”

Despite myself, the day I’d had, the fact that I was still standing in the middle of a forest, and the fact that gas station coffee just didn’t cut it in terms of my caffeine needs, I smiled.

“So, is this something someone with limited mechanical knowledge can fix, or am I just giving you a ride and calling Big Dick?” Bear Sherlock Holmes asked.

I raised an eyebrow.

“He’s our mechanic.”

I wasn’t sure that explained the part I’d been wondering about, but it seemed rude to interrogate someone who was trying to help about someone else’s name.

“Do you know how to change a tire?” I asked, nodding to the sad, deflated state of my back-left tire. “I’m maybe seventy percent sure Achilles has a spare.”

Now it was Holmes’ turn to raise an eyebrow. “Swift,” I said, pointing to the badge on the back of the car. “Because—”

My strange friendly bear laughed. “Yeah, I get it. Swift Achilles. Guess the tire is his heel.”

“No one ever gets that,” I said.

Holmes shrugged. “I always try to be different,” he said. “Luckily for you, I also know how to change a tire. Pop the trunk for me.”

“So you didn’t get murdered, then?” Evie asked the moment she answered the phone.

“No thanks to you,” I grumbled, throwing myself down on the bed, wincing at the way every muscle group in my body complained about the long drive. At least the bed was fine.

The bed was about the only thing that was fine. The cabin itself was a disaster. Only one lightbulb in the whole place worked, the bedroom window was jammed open an inch, the kitchen sink didn’t so much drain as evaporate and the whole place was grey and cold.

I hated it. I missed my cozy little apartment full of house plants and bookshelves and furniture that didn’t smell like something had died on it.

“I would’ve avenged you,” Evie said lazily. In the background, I heard a ball bouncing off the wall. She never could sit still.

Something tapped against the window. I looked up to see the beady eyes of a squirrel—possibly the same one from earlier, all squirrels looked the same to me—trying to squeeze through the inch of open window.

“Don’t try me,” I told it.

“What?” Evie asked.

The squirrel looked at me for a handful of heartbeats. Then, wisely, it climbed down from the window and disappeared.

“The wildlife was coming to visit,” I said, flopping back down on the bed. It was new, at least. It’d obviously been replaced just for me.

That was something. I wasn’t sure what, but it was something.

“Not very hospitable of you to chase it off,” Evie said. “You sound unhappy.”

“Wow, you should be a detective,” I said, then smiled as I remembered Bear Sherlock Holmes. “The guy who rescued me told me to call him Sherlock Holmes.”

“The bear? He was obviously flirting. Bears love you.”

“I don’t think it was like that,” I said.

Evie was convinced every gay man I ever met would have cheerfully gone to his knees for me.

I was not convinced of this at all—what about me could possibly be alluring?

All Evie’s gay friends were stunningly attractive outgoing gym-sculpted Greek marbles with easy smiles and decent jobs.

I was a skinny, dorky, freckled librarian who made most average wallflowers look like extroverts.

“He just changed my tire and said he’d see me around. I didn’t even catch his name. Oh, and the library backs onto a bar for some reason,” I added. “Which I guess is fine. Unless I’m working late. I should’ve asked his name, it was rude not to.”

“He told you,” Evie said. “Sherlock Holmes.”

“Between you and me, I don’t think that was his real name.”

“Did he ask your name?”

“No,” I said. Evie made a fair point, maybe it hadn’t been all that rude. “He knew I was the new librarian, though.”

“There are people living on the International Space Station who can tell you’re a librarian,” Evie said. “So this is not a surprise to me.”

I laughed despite the day I’d had and the dripping I could hear coming from the shower. Another thing to put on the list of stuff I’d have to figure out how to fix.

Why had I taken this job again?

As soon as I asked myself I remembered, but I wished I hadn’t. The last thing I needed right now was to think about… everything.

“If it’s that bad, I’ll come stage a rescue,” Evie said. “But I think this could be good for you.”

“You’ve said.” I sighed. She might even have been right.

A change of scenery was the kind of thing lots of people thought was a great idea after…

stuff happened to them. “I’m grateful, honestly.

Thank you for finding this for me. Jobs in libraries aren’t exactly thick on the ground.

Also, the guy who met me, Seth? He was half the age I expected and wearing three-inch heels. ”

Evie laughed. “You’ll be right at home, then.”

“For a straight man, I do have a lot of gay friends,” I allowed. “They’re your friends really, though.”

“My friends are your friends,” Evie said. “Or they’re not my friends. They love you. The people in Squirrel Canyon—”

“Otter Bay,” I corrected, although I was pretty sure she knew and was just teasing me. “They do seem okay so far.”

“And it’s a new challenge for you!” Evie enthused. “You’re good at those.”

I didn’t feel good at those right now, but that might’ve been hunger talking. “Your faith in me is noted.”

“You’re my indestructible big brother,” Evie said. “I always have faith in you.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. At least I never had to doubt that, even if no one else was, Evie was always on my side.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Evie said, voice softening to something more sincere. “You know that, right? You’re better off—”

“I know,” I interrupted. My feelings on thinking—or worse, talking—about what’d happened hadn’t changed in the last two minutes. “All for the best. Better to find out sooner rather than later. I know. I…”

No. No, I didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t ready to explain to Evie how I really felt. Too many questions, and I knew I didn’t have all the answers, and I was her indestructible big brother. The last thing I wanted was to disappoint her.

“Enough about me. Tell me about cute girls at the gym or whatever.”

Evie laughed, but launched into a story about a newcomer who’d caught her eye, not least of all because they’d knocked one of the punching bags clear off the hook and then put it back on by themself without even pausing to look for help.

I listened as she told me about her day, her plans for the week, all the normal things we always talked about, and smiled at the thought that it was just like before. Before everything.

At some point I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was waking to sunlight streaming through the still-open window, the sound of birdsong, a good night text from Evie, and…

The dawning realization that I was over an hour late.