Novak Grizzly

Page 21

This was the smallest town she’d ever been in, but she’d looked at every shop on the main street and was totally falling in love with it. Bakery, general store, hardware store, pottery and painting store, grocery store, antiques store, boutique, and right where she parked was a salon.
A salon. She stared at the sign that read Getchur Hair Did and then looked at the address in white lettering on the door. 1010 Main Street.
She huffed a laugh and shook her head. Okay, time to go back to her roots. Literally.
Remi poured out of Rhett’s truck because, hell yeah, she’d stolen it again and made her way into the salon to see if they had any walk-in appointments available.
****
One hour.
One hour in a chair with hair dye slathered on her tresses, and she looked completely different. Not in a bad way. Remi caught her reflection in the rearview mirror and grinned. This was her natural color. Mom would be happy. She’d always loved that Remi and her sisters had black hair like hers. Her grizzly had come from her father, but this hair, dark as raven feathers, was all Mom’s. And Remi’s.
She strong-armed all the bags of groceries up the trail toward the trailer park, and when she made it to the clearing, Grim was there, carving something with a knife on his front porch. His face and neck looked awful, all clawed up and angry looking, but he had less venom in his bright gold eyes than he had the last time they’d spoken.
He glared down at the grocery bags she was toting but then went back to carving. When she reached Kamp’s front door, he asked, “Is that all the groceries?”
“I have one more trip.”
Silently, Grim stood and made his way to the trail that led to the parking lot.
Stunned, Remi blinked hard as he disappeared into the trees. “Okay then.” He might’ve been headed to burn the truck, purchase a voodoo doll of her, or walk out of here forever for all she knew, but she got the feeling he was planning to help. That was nice of the monster. She let herself into Kamp’s den and unloaded the bags, and when she came back out, she found the rest of the bags on the front porch and Grim setting up the Cornhole game she’d bought on clearance for half off.
“You hurt Kamp last night,” she said.
Grim straightened his spine and lifted his chin. The claw marks on his cheek looked so painful. “So?” he asked.
“So someday, I hope you get the Reaper under control.”
“Why do you care?”
“For lots of reasons. But Kamp is the biggest one. He’s good, Grim.”
“You know what the Tarian Pride always teaches dominants?”
Remi shook her head slowly.
“To kill the weak.”
Remi gestured to Grim’s clawed-up face and neck. “He doesn’t look weak to me.”
A flash of something she didn’t understand roiled in his eyes. “I wasn’t talking about him.”
A branch snapped, and out stepped Kamp from the woods. The instant he saw Remi, his smile lit up the evening. God, it was good to see him. Something that had tightened up in her chest throughout the day now loosened, and she exhaled the tension she hadn’t even realized she was carrying. He strode right to her and lifted her up off the ground, hugged her so tightly the rest of the world disappeared. Suddenly, it was just her and Kamp, spinning slowly, her arms wrapped around his neck, his arms wrapped around her waist.
She loved this. This man made her feel safe with a touch, and it was a first-and-only for her. Cupping his cheeks, she searched his gold and green mismatched eyes. Special man, wiggling his way into a hardened heart.
“I like your hair like this.” His attention drifted down from the top of her hair to the ends curling near her breasts. “The dark suits you.”
“This is my natural color,” she whispered, her cheeks heating under his sweet attention.
“How does it make you feel?”
“Like my old self. The parts I liked.”
“Mmmm, good. Now, what am I cooking for you tonight, hotgirl?” he murmured.
“Steak and baked potatoes,” she hummed happily.
“Atta girl, good choice.”
“And I got Cornhole!”
“I saw.” He looked at the two angled pallets Grim had set up several yards apart. “Two important questions. Did you get bean bags to throw, and are we turning it into a drinking game?”
Remi laughed before she answered, “Hell yes and also hell yes.”
He chuckled and twitched his head back toward the darkening woods. “Rhett is almost done. He’s loading up the truck with the logs we cut today. We have to take it to the lumber yard in the morning. First load we’ve had ready in a week.”
Proud down to her marrow, she kissed him, let her lips linger there, and then pulled back. “How does it make you feel?” she asked, repeating his question.
“Really fuckin’ good, like my old self.” Leaning in, he nipped her neck. “Come on, I need to get the grill warmed up.”
Remi scanned the clearing to ask Grim how he liked his steak cooked, but the Alpha was gone. Just…vanished.
“He does that,” Kamp murmured, frowning at the woods. He settled her onto her feet, slid his big strong hand around hers, then led her toward the bags on his front porch, but she squeezed his hand and tugged him to a stop. His calloused palm was so warm.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Kamp, look,” she whispered holding up their hands. “You like touching me.”
Was that a blush on his chiseled cheeks? It was hard to tell because the sun was setting behind the mountains and casting everything in evening shadows. But…it looked like his cheeks were turning red.
“You’re special, Remi,” he said. “Before you came along, all I could think about was my son and what I lost. It was like an endless loop in my head, and with my animal, that made it impossible to cope. But from the second you showed up, I didn’t feel alone. You came charging at me, this big beautiful silver grizzly bear, and my animal just stopped the loop. He’s been staring at you ever since. My son will always be in my head, but you give me rest. You are a fixer. Has anyone told you that?”
“No.”
“You’re this light, and you come into a dark room and change the makeup of everything in it. Whether it wants to be changed or not.”
“Do you want to be changed?”
“Only by you.”
She ducked her head to hide her mushy smile. “I have an admission.”
“I’m ready,” he murmured, tucking a flyaway lock of her newly darkened hair behind her ear.
“You scare me more than anyone has ever scared me.”
Kamp hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “Why?”
“Because you feel important, and I have this feeling that when you get tired of me and throw me away, I won’t be able to recover. Everything keeps pointing to me staying here with you. All these little signs. It feels like all my life, every decision I’ve made, has been a puzzle piece. And before now, I couldn’t figure out how to put them all together. And when I’m around you, all the pieces seem to match up.”
“You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop?”
Remi bit her bottom lip to punish her emotions and nodded.
“What did he do to you?”
“Who?”
“The asshole who threw you away?”
“He just got bored.” Remi shrugged. “I think that’s the part that bothers me the most. That I’m so leave-able. That I’m so expendable. Unlovable. He stopped saying he loved me six months before he left. He stopped touching me, stopped sleeping with me, stopped telling me anything kind. So I worked harder to make him happy, to get us back to where we were, to make him love me again. But the more of myself I sacrificed, the less he cared. And by the end, I didn’t even know myself anymore.”
“It’s not a man’s job to make you work for his love. It’s his job to care for you as you are and never make you question your place in his life. Your ex wasn’t a man. He was an unworthy boy, and he wasn’t your mate.”
“But what if you aren’t either?” she whispered before she could change her mind.