More than an Otter (Shifty Book 5)

by Sara Summers

“We’ll change it right up.” She promised. “What about your job?” she checked.

  “I’m remodeling a museum, and I’ll be running it as soon as it’s done.” I explained, feeling more and more free the more I told her. I’d kept everything in for too long—I’d tried to be the perfect shifter girl, but…

  I wasn’t.

  I was the shifter girl who loved the human world, who loved art and romance and poems and love. I loved love, the passionate kind that I’d seen my friends with, the kind that converted Leah to accept the male gender and had Jordie stepping in front of Sav to protect her before he even knew her.

  I loved art and history and art history and shifters and humans alike, and I was me. That was me.

  With or without Grant, that was me.

  “Do you have any ideas, or do you want me to surprise you?” Bailey checked. By the smile on her face, I could tell she already knew the answer.

  “Surprise me.” I said, my happiness level rising by the second.

  Was I that kind of girl? I hadn’t realized it, but yes. Yes, I was.

  When she told me it was safe to look, I opened my eyes to see my new ‘do. When I saw it, I almost cried.

  Not because I hated it. I almost cried because I loved it so much I could hardly believe it. It was beautiful, and elegant, with just a hint of Kennedy.

  “What do you think?” Bailey asked, and I could tell she already knew the answer.

  I couldn’t look away from my hair—my new hair. She’d darkened the top a little, while lightening the bottom. It was an icy-silver color, edgy but not too edgy. She had cut off a solid six or eight inches, leaving it long but not annoyingly long. It was perfect.

  “I love it.” I smiled, standing up and giving her a hug.

  “I’m glad.”

  She took me to the front and I paid for everything. After thanking her one last time, I left the salon.

  I already felt like a new version of myself, but I wasn’t anywhere near done. It was finally time to be honest with myself, to be myself, and I wasn’t going back to the house until I was confident in the real me.

  I stopped at a boutique in town, buying a pair of ripped jeans (I had always wanted ripped jeans) and leggings with holes cut into them for fun. I bought the white shoes I’d loved since junior high that had always been impractical because they would get dirty.

  Lastly, I stopped in the one place that would really change my life.

  The hardware store.

  I didn’t have a lot of space in my hands, to carry paint cans, but I would make do. If I was going to spend the next five months renovating the museum, I could make the time to work on my own house too.

  I’d paint the walls in bright, happy colors, I’d buy flowers to make it feel like home. I loved flowers.

  I would put paintings up, I would make it into my own place.

  I’d never been so excited for anything other than the museum I was going to get to run.

  It almost killed my fingers to walk back to my house with the paint, but I survived. When I finally stopped in the kitchen, there was a smile on my face that nothing and no one could’ve wiped off.

  After dropping everything off, I finally picked up my phone. I’d been avoiding it since the night before, after I called Bree and my mom without leaving a message.

  “Hello?” Bree answered on the first ring. “Finally, I’ve been worried about you. What’s up?” My friend asked.

  “A lot.” I sighed and leaned back against the couch. “For one, Grant left last night.”

  “He what?” Bree demanded. “Why did he leave?”

  “He wasn’t making me happy, and I wasn’t making him happy. He decided it was best for both of us that he go.” I admitted.

  “You don’t sound upset.” Bree said, her voice cautious.

  “I’m not. I feel… free.” I smiled up at the ceiling. “I’m free to be anyone I want now, Bree. I’m a shifter, sure, and I’ll always be that. But I don’t have to impress him or anyone else any more. I can be myself, I can wear ripped jeans, and carry one of those big stylish bags I love. I get to be me now.” I urged.

  “You cut your hair, didn’t you?” Bree asked, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “You knew it was the first thing to go.” I smiled wryly.

  “Of course. You’ve been wanting to cut it for years, but you always talked yourself out of it.”

  “Because my mate would want long hair.” I nodded.

  “Exactly.” Bree said. “I’m glad you’re happy.” She told me, though I knew she would’ve given anything to trade places with me. If I could be a human and she, a shifter, we would both feel less out of place in our worlds.

  “Do you want to come help me renovate? I have a spare room, and the house is quiet now.” I offered, hoping she’d take me up on it.

  “That sounds perfect.” Bree admitted. “Can I come tomorrow?”

  “Yes, get here as soon as you can!” I exclaimed. “We’re making a museum, Bree!”

  “I know!” Bree cheered, and I could hear her happiness. She and I had always had plenty in common. For years, we’d talked about running the museum together. That was before real life hit in college, but still.

  It had been our dream, and now we were going to live it.

  “Wow. I finally feel like me.” I smiled out at the wall in front of me.

  “I’m so, so glad.” Bree told me. “And I have to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow! Ah!” Bree was more excited than I’d heard her in months.

  Finally, everything felt good and right and real. I was being the real me, and it felt great.

  Chapter 20

  When Bree parked in front of the museum, I hurried out to give her a hug.

  “Your hair is gorgeous!” my friend exclaimed, picking up my fun-colored ends.

  “Thanks.” I smiled. “And thanks for coming. I don’t think I could finish all of this myself.” I admitted.

  “I’m glad to be here.” She smiled.

  We put Emma in her bouncer and spent the day clearing the museum of broken tiles. When that was done, we did some research to figure out what we had done wrong.

  There were a lot of feeding breaks and bathroom breaks and water breaks, but Bree and I had so much fun cleaning everything together, it almost seemed unreal. Between the singing and tile-lifting, we laughed for a good portion of the day.

  That night, Bree went to sleep early (Emma didn’t sleep through the night), leaving me with my messy house and a bed covered in letters.

  I walked into the room and looked at all of them. They were everywhere, and there were so many of them that I doubted I’d ever be able to read all of them.

  The first letter, the one that had been on top of the stack, was on top of the blue box. I’d put it there before heading over to the museum that morning.

  I picked it up and sighed. I felt on top of the world during the day, but now that I was sitting in my room all alone, life didn’t seem quite so great.

  I couldn’t describe the feelings I had, but if someone had held a gun to my head and forced me to come up with words to explain myself, there was only one thing I could really think of.

  Bittersweet.

  My relationship, my life… all of it. It was bittersweet.

  I’d lost my soulmate, I’d traded him for… my happiness, I guess. And while I was certainly okay with that, I had a nagging worry that I might’ve done something wrong.

  We were soulmates, after all. We were supposed to be each other’s missing piece. While I hadn’t always jumped on that bandwagon before, standing alone in my room, it felt true.

  What if the reason I was so desperate for romance was because of that missing piece? What if the conflicting feelings inside me were conflicting because of Grant?

  What if I was supposed to trade the museum for him?

  There had to be a way that we could learn to be happy with together, right? He was my soulmate, and he’d done a lot for me in the few weeks we had been togethe
r.

  I sat down on the floor (the bed was covered in letters still) and stared at the first envelope.

  My name was written in messy handwriting, the date was hardly legible, but the letter seemed ominous. What would it say? What would it tell me?

  I slid my finger under the flap that sealed it closed and took a deep breath. Whatever I learned in the letter, it couldn’t change what I already knew. Grant wasn’t in love with me, and I wasn’t in love with him. We were friends, but there was no romance between us.

  And I… I needed romance. I couldn’t live a life without it.

  That’s part of the reason he left, I guess.

  My fingers didn’t shake as I pulled the paper out of the envelope. My anxiety was gone for the time being. Probably, I figured, because I wasn’t afraid of what I would read in the letter. Whatever he’d written, it wouldn’t change the way I felt.

  My eyes focused on the greeting, on the word that began the letter.

  Kennedy,

  It said. No “dear,” no “dearest,” no “my Kennedy.” It just said one word, and that word was my name.

  That was possibly the least romantic way I could imagine for someone to start a love letter.

  Still, I needed to keep reading.

  Kennedy,

  I shouldn’t know your name, but I do. I shouldn’t know who you are or where you are, but I do. You’re my soulmate, and you’re in Washington. Somehow, I even know your address, though I won’t write it here.

  I saw you talking with your friends, saw you laughing and having fun. I couldn’t ruin that no matter how badly I wanted to. You’re my soulmate. Part of me wants to come and find you and hold you in my arms forever.

  That must be the otter in me, because in my mind, I know that would be creepy.

  I don’t know what else to say. Maybe I love you, but if I do, it’s just because we’re soulmates. I don’t know you, so how could I love you? I don’t know if you like pink or yellow, if you like sunsets or sunrises. I don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who I am.

  That’s why I left without talking to you, when I saw you that day. I couldn’t stand to be married to someone I don’t even know, someone I had cheated on by accident.

  I guess that’s all I have to say.

  Grant.

  I looked up at the ceiling, not sure if I should feel anything after reading the letter. Nothing he wrote had surprised me because I already knew he felt that way. We had both tried hard to make it work for a few weeks, but we had never fallen in love.

  We were just two people with matching marks on our collarbones and nothing else in the world that connected us.

  I picked up another letter, a random letter. The date said it was over a year after the first one, but I didn’t care about chronological order. I opened the letter. It said,

  Kennedy,

  Today felt like a nightmare. There was so much blood, so much hate, and so much death. I wish you were here, I wish I could see your beautiful face and remember that the world isn’t such a miserable place after all.

  My eyes scanned the last few paragraphs, and as I read on, I started to understand what had happened.

  Grant had been writing letters to a Kennedy that he had envisioned in his mind. He thought he knew who I was, he thought he knew how I should be.

  He wrote to a me that wasn’t me.

  No wonder he hadn’t fallen in love with me while we were together.

  “Oh my gosh.” I breathed, as the realization hit me.

  I had done the same thing he did. I pictured this romantic life, full of dancing and poetry and being swept off my feet, while Grant…

  He just wanted the Kennedy he’d been writing to for two years. He wanted the girl who he told everything to, a best friend and partner in life.

  We’d been in love with people we built in our minds. He loved a pretend version of me, and I loved a pretend version of him. We were wrong, so completely wrong…

  But I had no idea what to do about it.

  Whether Grant loved the real me or the me in his head, I was still deeply in love with the idea of romance. I wanted poems, but like he had told me, the real Grant wasn’t a poet.

  If I was right—which I was positive I was—where did that leave us? Two people, in love with the imaginary relationships they wanted?

  I sighed and shook my head.

  I had no idea.

  “Maybe messy, human love isn’t as exciting as the movies make it look.” I whispered, leaning my head back against the wall.

  I was in love with a Grant who wasn’t Grant, Grant was in love with a Kennedy who wasn’t me.

  We’d created a big tangled mess for ourselves, and I had absolutely no idea how to get it untangled. Or if I even wanted it untangled.

  I slept restlessly on the letter-covered bed, closing my eyes and hoping that maybe, when I woke up, everything would be the way I’d always imagined it.

  Chapter 21

  The next day, Bree and I fixed the base for the tiles and then started laying them again. We laughed and joked around and finished the front room, miraculously. That meant we had probably two weeks left of tiling to finish the rest of the museum, but we agreed that we would be fine.

  “We need a schedule or something, to see if we can even get everything finished.” Bree said, holding Emma and a bottle.

  “It’ll be rough.” I admitted, grabbing a piece of paper.

  For the next half an hour, we roughly guessed how long it would take us to do everything else that needed to be done. The schedule we made had us finishing everything only five days before the museum opened.

  “What about setting up all of the exhibits and the art gallery?” Bree checked. “That’ll take a week or so.” She reminded me.

  I sighed, slumping back in my chair. “How are we going to do this?”

  “We’ll just have to slice some time off the other projects. We can figure out a way to be more efficient.” Bree tried to cheer me up.

  “You’re right.” I nodded, looking over at the buckets of happy-colored paints that were dying to cover my walls. They would just have to wait a few months. “We can do it.”

  Bree went to bed a little while later, and I went to my room once again. I stood in the doorway, looking at the hundreds of letters that covered my bed like an extra blanket. There was nothing comforting about that letter blanket, though.

  “These aren’t even mine.” I realized.

  Those letters weren’t for me. They were for the me in Grant’s head, not the real me.

  I grabbed the blue box, flipping it open. I didn’t want them, I didn’t want the reminder that Grant was in love with me even though he wasn’t. I didn’t want to remember that my happily ever after had been postponed indefinitely, and I didn’t want to remember the way I had expected Grant to be a romantic poet who wanted nothing more to take me dancing.

  I had messed up, I knew, and it had cost me my soulmate.

  I piled the letters into the box in handfuls, not bothering with organization or carefully fitting everything. I smashed them down and forced them to fit in the suitcase-box.

  “I don’t want that anymore.” I shook my head as I shoved them down to fit everything. “I don’t want to be the Kennedy in his mind. I want to be me.” I felt fire start to build inside me, and I pushed harder against the letters, the envelopes that were the symbol of everything Grant and I had never had.

  Everything we would never have.

  “I was so stupid.” I slammed the suitcase closed, locking the box’s metal clasps to hold it shut tight. “I thought he should be who I wanted him to be instead of accepting him for who he actually was. This is all my fault.” I threw the box in the closet, pulling out another box from where I’d placed it in the back.

  Plugging in headphones, I turned my country music up loud, hoping the noise would drown away my problems. I put paint on my tray and focused on the masterpiece I had all but abandoned when I met Grant.

  My brush glide
d across the canvas, creating the picture that had been hanging in my mind for months. It meant so much to me, the image in my mind, and I had to set it free.

  I painted through the night, pouring my thoughts and feelings and emotions onto the canvas in front of me.

  Around 3 AM, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  I spun around, holding my paintbrush as my only weapon.

  When I saw that it was Bree, holding a very-awake Emma, I lowered my brush and pulled out one of my headphones.

  “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” I felt bad.

  “No, Emma did.” Bree shook her head. “Are you okay?” She looked down at my masterpiece. She had seen it before, but I’d been working on it like mad so it looked a lot different.

  “I don’t know.” I admitted, putting my brush down on the plate.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” Bree asked, sitting down on the edge of my now-clean bed.

  “You don’t want to hear my drama.” I shook my head, weary from thinking and living and just everything.

  “Since when is that true?” Bree raised an eyebrow, and I had to smile.

  “I guess messy human relationships aren’t as fun as I thought.” I admitted. “Breakups, wondering how he feels, realizing that we’re both stupid…” I shook my head again. “This sucks.”

  “I think everyone realizes that at some point.” Bree’s smile was wry.

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “At this point, I just kind of wish I was a better shifter. I shouldn’t have expected Grant to fit the idea in my mind, just like he shouldn’t have expected me to be the person he dreamed I’d be. We both messed up, and we both made mistakes. I just wish my mistakes hadn’t costed me my soulmate.” I sighed.

  “Hey, it’s not over yet. He only left a few days ago.” Bree argued, always hopeful when it came to me and my life.

  “You didn’t see the way we were when he left.” I looked down at the canvas, at the painting I was creating. “We weren’t angry at each other. We realized that we weren’t making each other happy, so he left. That’s all there was to it, and that’s all there will ever be.”

  “He’ll come back eventually.” Bree said. She seemed so sure, I wanted to ask her how she could know. She hadn’t seen us together since that taco dinner in her living room. “You’re always in the back of his mind. He can find you wherever you go, and he always knows where you are. Grant couldn’t forget you even if he wanted to. The Creator made sure of that when he made you soulmates.”