Bear Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #2)(37)

“So what? You change into a bear. You aren’t man-eaters. You all have good jobs and good lives. You’re all successful. She bailed, Jenner. From age two to when you tracked her down, she had no contact with you, and her excuse was sorry but I’m not sorry? I got the life I wanted and f*ck the rest of you?” Lena shook her head, baffled and trying to imagine leaving a child. She couldn’t even fathom the pain. Couldn’t. “I would never leave a kid.”

“And you won’t have to be put in the position to choose.”

Lena jerked back and frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”

Jenner looked sick right now. “You don’t know everything,” he whispered. “It’s not as simple as me just turning into a bear every once in a while.”

“Then tell me.”

Jenner gave his attention to the creek, so she shoved his arm. “Don’t close down again, Jenner. Tell me. Let me decide if it’s too much. Tell me!”

“What’s the point? Huh?” he barked, eyes sparking like blue flames. “I didn’t tell you that story about my mom to unload on you. I told you so you would understand why I’m doing this.”

Lena felt bear-slapped, and for a moment, she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. She could only look at the man she loved and realize what this discussion was really about. He wasn’t just distancing himself. He was pushing her away. For good. “Doing what?” she whispered. She needed to hear him say it.

“You don’t belong here, Lena,” he murmured, but his voice sounded strange. Half-truth. “You have this huge career that requires a lot of you. I can’t ask you to become stagnant for me.”

“Stagnant? Have you looked around, Jenner? There’s a f*cking porcupine over there.” She jammed her finger across the creek at the critter meandering down the bank. “There’s a picture. It’s not like I would be visiting some high-rise city with nothing but rats to photograph. And you’re wrong. I do belong here, or at least in a place like this. I feel at home out in the woods. I always have. I’m not saying I have to move in with you. I can visit or find a place nearby. I mean, I live out of a hotel! My belongings are what I brought with me. I had a pet plant, and it died on my last trip to Montana. I have no roots, and someday I’ll want some. This feels big between us, Jenner.” She clutched the sleeve of his sweater, desperate to banish his vacant expression. “Look at me! This is big. For you and for me, too, because I haven’t felt like this with anyone else.”

“You got a broken marriage with Adam, and now you’ll have a broken pairing—”

“Don’t you even finish that sentence.”

“I hibernate, Lena!”

“What?”

Jenner let off a long, shaky breath, and now the emotion in his eyes mirrored hers. “In a couple months, I’ll go to sleep, and I won’t wake up until April.”

Lena gritted her teeth and shook her head slowly back in forth in denial. “No.”

Jenner’s eyebrow’s lifted slightly. “Yes. Every year it happens. There’s no way to stop it. I’ve f*cking tried! I can’t stay awake. Every winter, I pick a different den somewhere around here and hope hunters don’t stumble onto it while I’m asleep. That’s the reality of this life.”

“But…your brother is married.”

“Yeah, and Elyse is different. She’s tough as leather and a homesteader, born and raised in Alaska and more adept at dealing with her mate sleeping half the f*cking year. And it’s hard on her, Lena. She’s scarred now from protecting Ian last winter. Do you want Elyse’s life? Really? When you imagine giving up your career for a man, do you imagine spending six snowy months trapped in a small house fighting cabin fever all alone? I don’t want that for you. Can’t you see?” Moisture rimmed his eyes, and through gritted teeth, he said, “I want better. I want you happy, and what I am will steal your happiness. I can’t do it.” Jenner stood and strode off toward the cabin. “I won’t.”

A sob left her lips as she watched him go. Hibernation? What a mess of a life. Half of his time was spent completely unconscious, and suddenly it made perfect sense why he wasn’t married with kids already. Because before, it didn’t. It didn’t make a damned lick of sense why he’d chosen her to give his attention to, but here was the rub. She could f*ck him for a few days, but Jenner, in reality, was untouchable. She hadn’t really ever stood a chance at keeping him because his secrets were too big, and too dark.

She doubled over the pain in her middle. How could something hurt so badly? She’d been right to avoid attachment to people all this time because this was agony.

“Lena?” Dalton said in a soft voice. “Are you okay?”

Tears streaming, she looked up at the dark-haired man who stood near her with worry in his charcoal black eyes. Behind him, Chance stood, holding the reins of two horses, shifting his weight from side to side, clearly uncomfortable with the tsunami of emotion washing through Lena right now.

Jenner had timed it just perfectly, hadn’t he? Break her heart right before the Dawsons showed up. Right before the long ride to the lodge so she could wrap her head around the fact that the man she adored wouldn’t be in her life any longer. Just like Adam all over again.

“I should’ve listened to you,” she said, clutching her stomach.