Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears #3)(15)

She checked her phone, but nope. Still no calls, no texts, no response to the voicemail she’d left Kirk yesterday. This was the part she’d forgotten about—the insecurity that came after sleeping with a man.

“Read this bullshit,” Finn said from his seat at the end of the desk. He shoved a newspaper across the clean surface as a tiny belch left him.

The article he pointed to was titled “My Five Hour Engagement to a Shifter” by Emerson Kane. It was a five paragraph article about how her wedding was beautiful, but it pointed out the unfairness of being rushed into it due to the shifters being stripped of their rights. Good for her.

When Alison had heard Emerson and Bash had been able to get their marriage in under the wire, she’d been so relieved. And now Emerson had her first article published in the Saratoga newspaper, front page and everything. She should send her congratulation flowers. Er…no. That wasn’t appropriate because of her job. Right?

Finn was glaring. “Why do you look mushy? Please don’t tell me you buy into all this pro-shifter crap.” He let off another burp, and now that she was paying attention to him, he looked terrible, all watery-eyed and red-faced to match his hair.

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you so sweaty?”

He wrapped his arms around his stomach and doubled over. “My stomach is eating itself. One of the shifters came by and brought those welcome cookies,” he said, jamming an accusatory finger at the foil-covered paper plate on the edge of the desk.

Alison lifted the corner of the shiny covering with the end of her pen to expose an array of brightly frosted bear-shaped cookies.

“I think she laced them with laxatives.” He groaned and winced as his stomach made an awful gurgling sound. “She also gave me a red plastic cup of worms and said they were her least favorite. Most of them were dead, and one of them was a roach. And she kept calling me Phlegm.”

Alison snorted and coughed to cover up her laugh.

“It’s Finn. I told her ten times.”

“If you shit your pants in here, I’m filing a formal complaint against you.”

“I hate this job,” Finn muttered as he stumbled out of her cabin.

A week ago, she would’ve agreed with him, but the longer she spent here, the better she felt. Her therapist had always encouraged her to get out into nature, take a break from the job, and work through some of her issues, and here, she could do that. She was doing it. She’d even slept well the last few nights. No nightmares or anything. The one downfall to being up here? She checked her phone again. Being way too close and not close enough to one sexy as hell, infinitely confusing Kirk Slater.

Alison dumped the plate of cookies in the trashcan and made her way into the bedroom. She turned up the volume of a country song on the old radio plugged into the wall and began unpacking her clothes into the empty dresser by the bed. It was a slow song, one of those that sang to the soul, and she swayed with the beat, twirled when she felt like it as she unpacked. It wasn’t until she put away the last of her bras into the top drawer that she looked up into the reflection in the mirror to see Kirk standing in the open doorway, arms crossed, chin lifted, and eyes dancing with amusement.

She gasped and spun. “What are you doing here? How long have you been here? Why the hell didn’t you knock? It’s rude just coming into someone’s house like this!”

“I’m here because I want to see you. I’ve been here long enough to watch that sexy dance of yours, and I didn’t knock because the sign on the door says Office-Come On In. I can rip that down for you if you want. Bash is good at painting signs. He can make one that says Fuck Off for you, free of charge.”

“It’s been two, Kirk.”

“One and a half, and I would’ve made it eternity if I was strong enough.”

“Wow.”

He twitched his head toward the front door. “Come on.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Kirk narrowed his eyes. “Why are you making this difficult?”

“I’m not! You f*cked me, and then you disappeared, and now you’re back making demands? I’m not that kind of girl, Kirk.” Kirk the Jerk—that’s what she was going to start calling him in her head. Maybe out loud if she was feeling saucy enough.

“First off, I didn’t f*ck you, and you know it. What we did was more than that. Fucking is casual. You bound my animal to you, so don’t pretend it’s less than what it was.”

Whatever that meant. “But you couldn’t call me back?”

Kirk let off a low, inhuman rumble and glared out the window. “I’m leaving soon.”

“Leaving where?”

“Saratoga. Logging season is almost over, and I’ll be going back to work at the sawmill down there.”

Slowly, Alison sank onto the edge of her bed. “You’re leaving here?” Leaving me?

“It’ll be best for you.”

She huffed an angry laugh. “Who’s running now?”

“Me,” he said, void of emotion. “I’m running for the both of us because we’re headed nowhere good, Alison. You don’t even know me, and from what I know of you, I’m not the match you need. I’m not careful. I can’t fix broken things. I break them worse.”

“I’m not broken!” She drew back, feeling slapped by her own words. Shocked and more than a little relieved by her admission, she repeated, “I’m not broken. I was just bent.”