Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“B-bear?” he asked weakly. “What happened?”
My heart gave a crazy leap at hearing that name on his lips. I loved all the things it represented—the teasing, the familiarity, the trust we’d built, the knowledge that I’d do anything to keep him safe—and I hated it, too. Because I wanted it to mean even more.
I forced myself to focus on my training.
Breathing good. Pulse strong. But there was a trickle of blood streaming down the side of his face. “Car accident.” I stabilized his neck and ignored my own pain. “Stay still and tell me what hurts.”
Suddenly, he let out a heart-wrenching keening noise, and my heart rate went into full panic mode, wondering what possible life-threatening injury I’d overlooked. I scrambled to pat him down gently, trying desperately to figure out what I was missing. “Zane! What hurts? Tell me what it is.” I couldn’t see any blood other than what was on his face.
“All the people hit by the storms,” he said, tears starting to fall and mix with the blood on one side. “The fundraiser, Bear. We won’t get there in time to help them.”
I stared at him. We were lucky to be alive—in fact, I wasn’t sure yet if everyone involved was alive—and this man was worried about raising money for people in need.
“Who gives a fuck about that right now?” I barked at him. “We need to get out of this vehicle. Can you move? Are you hurt?”
“What? No. I’m fine.”
Fine.
The man had blood down his face and into the collar of his shirt. I didn’t know it at the time, but he also had serious thoracic contusions from the seat belt that made him breathe shallowly for several days and a severely bruised elbow from where it had been smashed between his body and the door, and he ended up getting six stitches in a cut by his hairline.
“You’re not fucking fine!” I shouted as I hustled him out of the crushed vehicle and onto the side of the highway. “Why do you always say you’re fine when you’re not? You drive me absolutely fucking batshit with your ‘I’m fines’! Why can’t you allow yourself to be hurt for once when you’re… oh, I don’t know… actually hurt?”
He was pale and shaky, eyes white in shock and fear. I wanted—needed—nothing more than to take him into my arms and comfort him… but I couldn’t.
Zane was my principal. This was my job. And the man deserved to know there were people in his life who would put his wants and needs before their own.
Cars sped past us despite the angled presence of the three scattered vehicles that had been involved in the accident. Thankfully, emergency vehicles were almost to us, and their lights and sirens began slowing down traffic approaching the site of the accident.
After insisting he be transported in an ambulance to the nearest emergency room where he was treated for his injuries, I watched him ensure everyone else involved was okay, too.
When we finally got to a hotel in the early hours of the morning and they asked for a name for the reservation, I was so filled with frustrated need, so angry and outraged on Zane’s behalf, I couldn’t remember the fake name we always used for Zane’s hotel reservations.
“Last name?” the receptionist asked, blinking at Zane in disbelief. Even with a bandage on his forehead, blood on his shirt, and a tangled nest of hair, he was the most beautiful man within several city blocks.
“He’s fine,” I snapped, wishing I could burn the world to make it so. “He’s Mr. fucking Fine.”
And the horrifying truth hit me in that moment—a truth I could never tell Zane without losing my right to stay by his side and protect him.
Somehow—through my own hubris, or chance, or the fucking Ventdestinian winds of fortune—Zane Hendley had crawled under my impenetrable professional walls… and burrowed himself claws-deep in my heart.
ONE
ZANE - SIX MONTHS LATER
Bears are bottomless pits when it comes to food, gobbling up honey every chance they get. And when their favorite snack is in danger, they’ll be the fiercest bodyguard in the wild. Nothing will stand between them and their most cherished bite!
—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 17
I hadn’t even felt the stamp this time. The best I could tell, it had happened when I’d been jostled to the side by a stage tech rushing past during the set break. Immediately afterward, Carlo and Kim, the makeup and hair duo, had stepped forward for a quick touch-up, and Kim had quirked her head and asked why I had red ink under the collar of my shirt.
There hadn’t been time for the words to even sink in until I’d taken the stage. But there, in front of the hometown Atlanta crowd at the Shaky Knees festival, I’d realized what she meant.