Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 72(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 72(@300wpm)
So pain was what I sensed beneath all that anger. I hurt her. The one woman in the world I’d do anything to protect.
Yet I was the one to hurt her.
I rub my chest, where it’s aching something fierce. “It was all rage today.”
“So she’s got a bit of a berserker in her, too,” Mama says with a little smile. “Which is good for you.”
Sam could have a whole lot of berserker in her, if she wanted. But I don’t say that aloud, because my mama wouldn’t nope me. More likely she’d cuff me upside the head.
“How is it good for me?” I say instead. Because I can think of several reasons but I’m not sure of Mama’s.
“The bear is your peace. The berserker is your rage. And peace is a fine thing, but you don’t need love to find peace. Yet you do need love to rage. Anyone can become angry. But you’ve got to know hurt to rage; you’ve got to fear losing what you love. You’ve got to know devotion. In the legends, a berserker’s devotion was to a king. But sometimes it must have been to a village. A family. A person. It’s love and devotion that makes us go berserk, Brandon. Not rage. That’s just how it presents.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Travis asks. “You went berserk on her and took off?”
I have to swallow a few times before I can answer. “Something like that. But Mama, you’re saying Samantha went berserk on me, too. But she wouldn’t rage unless…”
There was already love. Somewhere in there. But I don’t want to speak her feelings before she does. Because she might never.
“Mmm-hmmm,” Mama hums in agreement. “Which isn’t to say it’ll be easy. You’ve got a lot of work to do, my boy.”
“She’s worth it.”
“She must be, if you came out of the woods for her. It’s often easier to stay. And you’d save yourself if you went back in.”
Maybe. But it never even crossed my mind that I would. “What brought you out?”
After her grandfather and grandmother died within days of each other. She’d been fifteen when she went in. Five years later, she came out.
“I don’t know.” Mama gives a little shrug. “It was just…time to come out. Or maybe I smelled your father on the wind, and somehow that bit of knowing that the man I’d fall in love with was out there worked its way through my head.”
“But you didn’t go back in when Grandpa died,” Travis says.
“Well, I had you boys. And your father. I still spent a lot of time as a bear that year. I just didn’t lose myself as one.”
“You were spending a whole lot of time as a bear before you left, brother. Even before you met Sam. As soon as you got out of the service.”
“Was I?” I ask flatly, knowing it’s true. But not wanting to go there now.
Mama looks at me pointedly but lets it be.
“Alicia says the worst thing you could have done was leave.”
Christ. I love my brother. But that’s just twisting a knife. “Have fun staying in your office for the next few hours, fucker. Mama and her favorite boy are gonna go to play with your cute baby.”
“Mama’s going to,” she says. “Because I leave tomorrow. So you’ll be waiting your turn.”
Fuck. The whole goddamn world is against me.
***
And if not the whole world, then Emma’s grandmothers are. Carolyn Green also leaves tomorrow, so I’m stuck watching them cuddle the baby instead of cuddling her myself. Pop comes in from whatever he was doing outside, hugs me hard and in a way that tells me he was also listening in while I talked to Mama. Then I try to help Travis’s pretty redheaded wife in the kitchen but get driven out by Alicia’s evil eye.
My sister-in-law is the sweetest woman, and I love her with all my heart—but if ever anyone wanted to see how loyal two people could be without sharing any blood between them, they just need to look at Samantha and Alicia, who didn’t come to live with Sam and her mom until they were in high school. I know the whole story of how, back in the day, Alicia used to get bullied—and Sam came near getting expelled multiple times while defending her. Often by using her fists.
If Mama knew that story, of how Samantha went after everyone who’d hurt Alicia, she’d probably just say it was just another way that Samantha Green had a little berserker in her. But that protection doesn’t go only one direction. If Alicia had her way today, I’d bet she’d be putting me in a shallow grave.
No, not a shallow one. She’d probably bury me real deep.
But I’d crawl my way out of Hell itself just for a chance to lay eyes on her sister.