by T. S. Joyce
“But you’re the one still hurting after all this time. You keep that picture of them in your bedroom because you feel some connection with them, but you keep them at an arm’s length. You don’t have to, Bruiser. You can’t ever heal from what was done unless you accept who you are. And like it or not, dark-headed or not, same mother or not, you’re a Keller same as them. Now I’ve said my piece, but know this. If my father or half-brothers ever tried for a relationship with me the way your half-brothers have tried, I’d be happy just to have them care.”
Bruiser rolled her over and made her into a little spoon against his chest. “You had to come in here and be all logical and make me feel like a complete douche wagon, didn’t you?”
“You are definitely not a douche wagon, lover. Just hurt and stubborn about bundling that pain and keeping it inside of you when you don’t have to.”
“Okay,” he conceded, kissing the back of her hair. “I hear you.”
She smiled at their shadows against the wall. Limbs all tangled up until they were one big indiscernible lump.
“Now, your turn. What do you want to ask me?”
“That’s easy. When are you going to let me see your dragon?”
She chuckled and snuggled her back even closer to him. With a happy sigh, she said, “Whenever you want. If you’ve seen my father’s dragon, though, I can assure you, you’ll be utterly disappointed with mine.”
Chapter Ten
Bruiser couldn’t sleep. Not after the conversation with Diem about his family. She saw things differently, and for as bad as he’d thought he had it growing up, Ma Keller had taken him in when she didn’t have to. It must’ve been hard on her to feed the boy that meant her mate hadn’t loved her like she thought. To tuck him in, read him stories, and raise him alongside the sons she’d had with the man she was mourning the death of.
And connecting with Gage, Cody, Boone, and Dade had been difficult, but hell, they’d never sold him off in an arranged marriage knowing he would die having a baby. Diem’s family was four shades of fucked up, and if she thought he should think twice about throwing away a relationship with the Kellers, well, maybe she was right.
As carefully as he could, he lifted her head off his arm and slipped out of bed. Barefoot and dressed in his swim trunks, he checked that he had enough battery life on his cell phone and let himself out the front door as quietly as he could manage. Which was actually ridiculously noisy, because he was a damned house-sized grizzly who wasn’t known for his light-footedness. Plus, he lived in a thirty-five year old singlewide with creaks under every floorboard. He waited outside for a few minutes to see if Diem stirred, but the house remained quiet.
Everyone had gone to bed, and even the outside light strands had been turned off. It had to be three in the morning, and hell, he knew he would pay for this in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep until he called Cody.
Cody was the leader of the Breck Crew. He and Dade had tried the hardest to include him when he’d lived with them. It had been Cody who had asked him to come back and visit soon when he’d left Colorado a few days ago. He’d told him okay, but they could both hear the lie in his voice.
Bruiser climbed up the trail toward the clearing on the mountain with the best view and the best cell phone reception. It was windy tonight and smelled like rain. The clouds covered most of the stars, but he still loved the landscape out here. Dark blue, churning sky, casting blue light across the mountains of evergreen forest.
With a steadying breath, he hit the speed dial for his oldest half-brother and waited through two rings. Cody picked up on the third.
“Bruiser, are you all right? What’s happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing, man, I just—”
“Who is it,” Cody’s mate, Rory, asked in a sleepy voice.
“It’s Bruiser, baby. Go back to sleep. I’m going to take this outside.”
“I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have called so late.”
“Hang on,” his half-brother whispered.
The click of a door sounded, and Bruiser imagined Cody standing on the front porch, looking at a mountain scape much like this one, just a couple states away.
“No, stop apologizing. I’m glad you called. I’ve been wondering what happened with you and Damon Daye’s daughter.”
Bruiser smiled and leaned up against a giant pine tree. “I’m a married man now. I claimed her tonight.”
“You marked her and everything?” Cody asked, voice low and serious.
“Yeah, she ended up being amazing. I lucked out. I think I… Well…”
“Oh, damn.” Cody gave off a knowing chuckle. “You love her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. I know it doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop my feelings. God, I sound like such a dipshit saying that out loud.”
“Nah. Maybe to Dade and Boone, but I’m newly mated too, remember?”
“Yeah, how are Rory and Aaron?” Aaron was Cody’s son he only recently found out he had.
“They’re amazing.” Cody’s voice was filled with a smile. “Aaron is all signed up to do this shifter pre-school in the fall with Gage’s kids. He keeps asking me every five minutes when school is gonna start. He’s already driving Rory up the wall talking about bear school.”
Bruiser huffed a laugh imagining it. Silence filled the line, and it was now or never. “Cody, the reason I called is that I wanted to say sorry about not talking to you more since I left. You and Dade and Ma and everyone. I know I just dropped off the face of the planet, and now I think maybe that wasn’t fair of me.”
“Stop,” Cody drawled. “That isn’t your fault. I know it was hard for you to be raised with us, and getting out of Breckenridge must have been a great relief. We miss you is all. And we regret things hadn’t been different.”
“I just…” Bruiser blinked rapidly, because he obviously had some sort of pollen in both eyes. “I just didn’t know how to be a part of your family.”
“Which was dad’s fault.”
“Yeah, for having me behind your ma’s back.”
“No, that’s bullshit. He messed up worse than that. He hid you from your family for a decade, then left it up to all of us to try and piece together this family he’d blasted apart. The man I remember was a good man, a good father, but he was also a stick of dynamite with the shit he pulled. His death lit a long fuse, but none of that was on you. If anything, it was more on us for floundering with your existence for too long. It was like we just couldn’t accept that he’d do something like that, but you were there, proof he’d hurt Ma. I can’t take back the way things were. I wish I could because it’s something I deeply regret. You should’ve felt a part of us. Hell, you should be part of the Breck Crew right now. We should’ve tried harder to help you fit in with us.”
“Now you stop. You were kids, and Ma had just lost her husband and found out he cheated on her in the same week. It is what it is. I just wanted to say sorry for my part.”
“Ma has a photo album of you,” Cody blurted out. “I saw it the other day. She has one for each of us, and I caught her crying over yours when you left Colorado. I know it probably doesn’t seem like Ma bonded to you when you lived with us, but she did. She just didn’t know how to show it to you.”
Bruiser wiped his blurry eyes with the back of his hand before the damned tears could escape. Fuck. He had to wait a minute before he could speak again so his voice wouldn’t crack with emotion. “I used to wish she was my ma. I know I’m not blood related to her, but I saw how she was with you boys, and I wanted that so bad, too.”
“I’m sorry.” Cody sounded as choked up as he did. “I can’t begin to explain why she treated you different. I think you should call her sometime, though, because I know her regret with you runs bone deep. She can’t say your name without tearing up. Bruiser, I’m gonna beg you again. Please come back and visit more. I know I already asked, but in case you don’t pick up my calls again. I’m not asking you to leave the Ashe Crew and join our
s. I just want a chance to get to know you again. You saved our family, man. I mean, you didn’t have a stake in our battle with IESA, and you dropped everything and made a deal with Damon Daye that could’ve ruined your life, and you did it to save us. You think you’re different, but the way I see it, you’re the best one of us.”
Bruiser scrubbed his hand over his face and leaned his head back against the rough bark of the tree behind him. “Okay, man. I will.” And this time, his words rang with honesty because he knew he would go see his family again and try to repair the deep cracks in their foundation. “You mind if I bring my mate when I do? I want you all to meet her.”
Cody huffed a laugh. “Yeah, brother. I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to meet the woman who tamed you.”
Bruiser sat there for a long time after he and Cody had hung up. Already, the ball of pain he kept well-fed inside of him had become lighter and smaller. He smiled and shook his head as he stared at the dark screen of his phone.
Diem had come in here and shaken everything up.
She’d pushed him to man up in ways he’d been lacking, and that’s how he knew she was a keeper.
She made him want to be a better man—the type of man a woman like her deserved.
Chapter Eleven
Diem bounced on the bench seat of Bruiser’s truck. Over the crunchy, shell-riddled scrambled egg breakfast she’d made this morning, he’d joked that it was Bring Your Mate to Work Day. Diem didn’t care what he called it, as long as she didn’t have to spend the entire day at the trailer park away from him. After last night, and his admission about calling his half-brother this morning over breakfast, she didn’t want to be away from him for a single minute, much less an entire day.
Plus, she’d always run the numbers side of this business, and she was finally getting an up close and personal look at what the Ashe Crew, the Boarlanders, and the Gray Backs really did. And she had her very own, sexy-as-all-get-out tour guide to show her the ropes—or rather, the skyline and cables, as the lumberjacks called them.
Bruiser had already explained the theory of lumberjacking over breakfast. He’d told her about the machinery, the beetle infestation wiping out the trees, hauling schedules, who ran the processor and cables, as well as the role the Boarlander Crew of cutters played. But still, seeing the things her mate had described would be much different than trying to imagine it all.
Bruiser pulled to a stop beside Kellen’s truck and settled a yellow hardhat on her head. It was cute that he worried about her. He leaned forward and kissed her, and they giggled when they knocked hats with a thunk. Bruiser licked his lips in a decidedly delicious manner, then leaned her hat back and leaned in again, taking his time to pluck at her lips with sexy little smacking sounds.
“I like you,” he whispered, but she knew what he meant. Bruiser was falling for her just as hard as she was falling for him. She could tell because he was so open and honest with her. She could tell by the way he looked at her that she was precious to him.
Leaning forward, she whispered against his ear, “I love you, too.”
Bruiser’s face went comically blank as she slid from the truck. She wished she had a camera to take his picture right now. A smile as slow as molasses took his face as she rounded the front of the truck, grinning like an idiot at him through the front window.
“Hey,” he said, jogging after her as she followed the rest of the crew toward the processor. “I was going to say that first.”
“Too slow, Keller.”
“I wasn’t slow, D. I was just working my way up to it, when I was sure you’d feel it back.”
“Now you know,” she said cheekily.
Bruiser grabbed her ass and bit her ear gently before he jogged on up ahead. His eyes twinkled with happiness when he looked back over his shoulder at her. Diem’s belly dipped and warmed under his adoring gaze, and she giggled and looked at the ground as heat flushed her cheeks.
The Ashe Crew went to work, Brighton on the processor that stripped trees and cut the ends evenly so Everly could load them onto a truck for the log buyer. Kellen worked the main machinery that controlled the cables that dragged logs up the steep mountainside three at a time. Tagan oversaw the landing while he and Denison cut loops of cable with a saw that cut through metal. The rest of the crew worked down the hill, attaching the skyline cables to logs and scrambling out of the way before Kellen dragged them up toward the processor. It looked like grueling, dangerous work, but the crew was careful and worked well together. It wasn’t an hour into the work day when they were all sweating through their T-shirts and chugging water. Even though heavy, dark rain clouds blocked the sun, the job was physically demanding enough that they all were drenched despite the cooler day.
A niggling disappointment took Diem as she watched them from the landing. They seemed to have enough workers here, and no positions were lacking. She’d hoped to find some kind of work to occupy her days, but she simply wasn’t needed.
She wasn’t needed.
Diem frowned.
“What are you pouting about?” Tagan asked, chin lifted high and exposing a long dirt smear down his jawline.
“I don’t pout,” she said primly. “I was just thinking that I’m going to have to find a job in town.”
“That’s quite a commute.”
“Yeah, but I can’t just sit around the trailer park waiting for Bruiser to come home every day. I’d feel stagnant.”
“A hard worker. I respect that.” Tagan rested his hands on his hips and watched his crew shove loops of cable around a large felled tree. “Your dad won’t let you work for him anymore?”
“No. Likely, he’ll have one of my half-brothers take over my work.” In Father’s eyes, their life expectancy was much longer than hers.
Tagan jerked his head behind him, and the hairs rose on her arms as Brighton cut the engine of the processor and turned in the same direction with narrowed eyes. Bear shifter hearing was much better than dragon’s.
“What is it?” she asked as dread slammed into her gut.
“Sounds like that fancy car the boar shifter drives your dad around in.”
“Shit.”
Tagan pursed his lips and arched his eyebrows. “Indeed.”
“I’ll handle my father.”
“From the look on your face, you don’t think your dad is here to just do some friendly jobsite overseeing, do you?”
She shook her head miserably and made her way toward the mouth of the thin mountain road. She could hear the car now, too, and it definitely lacked the throaty sound of one of the work trucks. Stomach souring, Diem clenched and unclenched her hands in an effort to stop them from shaking. Living in Asheland with her friends and mate had been a vacation away from the reality of her situation. The continuation of her species rested solely on her shoulders, and now she had to find a way to tell Father she was bowing out of the breeding game.
This was going to suck.
She’d grown used to smiling, laughing, frowning, showing any emotion on her face over the past couple of days, and with great effort, she smoothed her features the way Father had taught her.
The dark car pulled up and came to a silent stop right in front of her. She stared passively at the heavily tinted window and clamped her sweating hands behind her back.
Mason turned off the engine and stepped out from behind the wheel. With a nodded greeting for her, he opened Father’s door and waited, face as stoic as she hoped hers was.
A trickle of sweat ran between her breasts, and Diem fought the urge to wipe it with her T-shirt.
“What are you wearing, daughter?” Father’s formal words floated to her on the breeze as he stepped out of the car and made a show of lifting his chin to look down at her.
Void of any intelligent response, she looked dumbly down at her shirt and jeans that were now threadbare at the knees from a game of charades she’d played with the Crew the other night. She’d pantomimed an elephant in the dirt and hadn’t washed them since. Her
sneakers used to be gray with purple trim, but now they were the color of the rich dirt on the landing, and mud was squished out the sides of her heel. “A T-shirt I borrowed from Brooke. Brooke is Tagan’s mate.” Hopefully he wouldn’t read the label across her chest, which was the logo of some small-town beer brewery Brooke had visited once.
Father’s nose twitched. “Hmm. I suppose to fit in you must act like the people I’ve given you to.”
Diem narrowed her eyes and regretted not bringing sunglasses to shield her dilating pupils. “Speaking of, I think we should discuss that. You didn’t give me to anyone. Bruiser and I chose to follow through with the deal you made, but it was my decision.”
Father snorted indelicately, and Diem clenched her hands harder behind her back to resist the urge to clutch air and pretend-strangle him.
“You know why I am here, so let’s get straight to the point.”
“Right. I’m very happy, and I’ve found a good match. For the first time in my life, I feel like I can breathe. I’m having fun and fitting in with the Ashe Crew. That’s what you wanted to know, right? About the happiness of your only daughter?”
Father’s face was frozen like a statue in that bored expression of his. “Don’t trifle with me, child. Have you consummated your marriage?”
“Father, I don’t think that is any of your business—”
“Diem!” A crack of power rocketed from Father and washed across her skin, covering her in a chill.
A shrill whistle sounded from behind her, and the rumbling engine on Kellen’s machine cut to nothing. When she turned, Tagan was approaching with steady strides, flanked by the rest of the Ashe Crew. Drew and Denison tossed their hard hats beside the processor, and Brighton cracked his knuckles loudly. It was Bruiser’s furious gaze that held her, though. His eyes blazed gold, and all around her wafted the scent of fur.
“I think you should leave.” Diem turned to her father and leveled him an empty gaze. “I have consummated my marriage, but we have chosen not to have children. My husband values my life over the need to procreate to make you proud of me.”