Chapter Eight #2
“Okay, I know you were trying to convince me that your shifter animal is lame, but when you Change, you get to eat as much as you want, and you still look like this.” Ava waved her hand at Birdie’s petite body. “All I do is rootle around and eat grubs.”
“Ew,” Natalie said around a sip of her drink.
Okay, now Birdie’s smile was turning to a grin.
They were making her feel better about her unfortunate reveal.
It was actually nice hearing that she wasn’t the only one with a pointless shifter animal.
“I can’t even run fast, and I fall a lot, and I am not really there.
Like…I have flashes of memories of my dumb hamster almost dying seven times a Change, but I have no control.
I can’t even understand English in that body. ”
Ava snorted and sat on the bathroom counter as she sipped her drink. “When I get scared, which is a dozen times a Change, I just curl into a ball and freeze. Half the time Brock just carries me around like a pet rock.”
“I love rocks so much,” Birdie said, and sipped her ginger ale. “I promised myself I wouldn’t talk about rocks when I met you. That was an accident. Pretend I didn’t talk about them.”
“Rocks are cool,” Natalie said kindly.
“I have one thousand and ten rocks,” Birdie said excitedly.
“Oh. Wow,” Natalie said, her dark eyebrows arched delicately.
Be. Cool. Birdie fastened the oversized bra and wished her boobs were a little bigger like Ava’s. She pulled on a gray sweatshirt next and now she felt a little better.
“Hey, the truck’s warmed up,” came a voice on the other side of the door. It sounded like Lance. “Is…Is Birdie okay?”
“See,” Ava whispered.
Natalie opened the door a crack. “If you’re going to join our shifters-mated-to-humans club, you have to be nicer to her when she Changes.”
“What? Your mate wanted to eat her. Can I talk to her?” came Lance’s reply.
Natalie pointed at her eyes with two fingers, then turned her hand and pointed at him. “I’m watching you.”
Lance shoved the door open. “They’re kicking us out of the bar, but I want to give you a ride home.”
“You mean back to the cabins?” This place was not home, and it was time to start distancing from him.
“Yeah. I mean the cabins.”
Birdie hiked her loose jeans up higher and nodded. “I’ll ride with you. I think we need to talk.”
He swallowed audibly, and lowered his gaze, then nodded.
She could see it. She could feel it—the shutdown.
Gah, Birdie hated this.
What else had she expected though? She closed her eyes tightly against the ache in her chest and then followed him out of the bathroom and out of the bar.
Outside, his truck was running. The others were loading up in an old Bronco she’d seen parked at the Woodpecker Inn. Brock’s, perhaps.
She waved to them. She would absolutely overthink all of this later tonight when she had some time to be by herself.
Lance opened the passenger’s side door and waited for her to scramble up there. He shut the door beside her and as he made his way around the front of his truck, illuminated by the headlights, she looked at the hamster supplies on the floorboard by her feet.
He’d thought she was a pet.
He got in and closed the door beside him, waved to the Bronco as it pulled away.
The silence in the cab was heavy for a few seconds, and then at last, he said, “I should’ve known it was you, shouldn’t I?”
Birdie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, but I mean, we just slept together. I should’ve felt it or something, right?”
Birdie looked out the window. The snow was falling in earnest, and the town’s main street looked abandoned under the halos of streetlight illumination. “This place is really beautiful in the winter.”
“It’s beautiful in the summer too,” he said softly.
“What are we doing, Lance?” she asked, turning toward him.
“I think…” He looked confused and shook his head. “I think I’m trying to figure that part out.”
“We haven’t known each other very long—”
“No,” he said. “You aren’t diminishing what we have.”
“It was just a fun vacation fling—”
“Birdie—”
“This isn’t what I want, Lance.”
The argument died in his throat. She could tell.
“I have a life back in Kansas, and you have a life here. We got too serious too fast. I mean for goodness sake, we slept together before you had even seen my animal. Before you even knew what she was.”
“You didn’t want to talk about her.”
“I had no plans to ever show her to you either and I think that’s a bad sign. We should just cool off before we make a mistake.”
“Make a mistake,” he repeated softly, and now she could see it—the shards of anger in his green eyes.
He looked away from her and stared straight ahead. Through the bar windows, the bartender was closing the cash register. “You think I’m a mistake?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes or no?”
Her eyes burned and she clenched her fists on her thighs. “The answer isn’t that simple—”
“Yes. Or. No.”
No, because she loved him already and love was never a mistake.
No because she would cherish the memories with him for always.
But yes, because now they would both be hurt when she left.
Tonight had dragged her back down to earth.
He wasn’t a shifter. She wasn’t a human.
They were different. Maybe he should’ve guessed she was the hamster, she didn’t know.
They had dived way too deep, way too fast, and now there was real risk of drowning in him.
Away from him. He needed to go back to his apartment here, with his family and his friends and his job, and she needed to figure out her life at home.
Figure out a way to go out more and socialize more, and work on herself so that someday she would be ready for a man like Lance to come along.
In Kansas. A man like Lance. She shook her head. There was no one like him.
She couldn’t take back her feelings, and she couldn’t stop the hurt of separation that was coming.
Was he a mistake?
“Yes,” she whispered.
Lance gritted his teeth and nodded. He gripped the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I think we both need space tonight to think about all of this. I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“Don’t be,” he said. He sounded so hurt. “The last one said the same thing too.”
Ooooooh hell. Birdie closed her eyes tightly. His ex had called him a mistake. The ex getting married tomorrow. The one he was supposed to marry. The one who had left him just a few days before happily ever after.
God, she couldn’t take it back now.
“Lance?” she squeaked.
He turned and offered her the saddest smile. “It’s okay. You should know I really had fun this last couple of days.” His eyes were so full of emotion, and he ripped his gaze away from her, shook his head again and put the truck into park.
And oh, she could feel the pain washing off him. It made it hard to breathe and made her chest ache.
“I had a lot of fun too,” she whispered.
The trip home was quiet. She didn’t know what to say to end this gracefully. Everything that needed saying? They’d done it. They’d kept it simple, as it needed to be.
When he pulled up to the cabins, he hesitated before shutting the truck off. The snowfall in the high beams was quiet beautiful, and she thought she would remember this moment, for better or worse, for always.
“I’m going to want to text you tonight. I need you to be clear about what you want from me,” he said low.
“I want you to think about everything that happened today, and to accept it, and then I need you to forget me.”
“Forget you,” he repeated in a hollow voice.
“I can leave tomorrow if it’ll be easier.”
“Nah,” he said. “You stay. I can make it easier. Wait there, let me get your door.”
The burning in her eyes turned to twin steaming tears on her cheeks and she hung her head, so confused by the emotions swirling inside of her chest.
There was no one like Lance, but she couldn’t get deeper with him. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her after her Change back. Even if they lived in the same part of the country, he was human, and she was a shifter, and they were different.
They were not meant to be. Simple as that.
They’d just gotten all swept up in the excitement of it all.
They’d both made a mistake.
He opened her door and offered his hand to help her out.
And for the last time, she touched his warm skin.
The snow crunched loudly under her bare feet as she made her way toward Lodge 9, and as she looked at Lance, he was pulling away, headed for Lodge 10.
They would be next door from each other, but it might as well be in different universes.
The hollowness inside of her enveloped her completely.
He turned toward her and forced a small smile.
God, he looked so handsome here in the snowfall.
She dedicated this moment to memory. He’d left his soccer bag in the truck and stood there with his hands shoved deep into jean pockets.
He wore a tight, white long sleeve shirt, and a gray beanie to ward off the cold.
His eyes were so green in the light from his porch.
She’d never met anyone even remotely close to Lance. Even now, as she let him go, he was being kind to her.
He pursed his lips into a smile and gave a two-fingered wave.
Goodbye.
She ripped her gaze away from him and forced herself to go inside of her cabin, so she could fall apart.
The time on the clock said it was 2:25 in the morning.
Valentine’s Day, officially.
She curled onto the couch and drew her knees up to her chest.
She missed him already.
This was, hands-down, the worst Valentine’s Day, or UnValentine’s Day…ever.