He swallowed hard. “Thanks for calling.”
“Bear—”
He ended the call. Stood there, the phone heavy in his hand. The surf rolled in, hissed around his boots, and slid back out, steady and merciless.
She’d called for him.
Unconscious, she’d wanted him there, and he hadn’t been. Not because he didn’t want her, but because she’d made him go.
The thought hit like a fist. The idea of losing her, of her gone from this world, nearly put him on his knees. She might have sent him out of her life, but that didn’t change the truth sitting like stone in his chest. He’d never stopped belonging to her.
He’d given her space because she’d needed it. He’d stayed away because she’d asked him to.
But fuck it.
Wolakota bound them in more ways than one, and there was no way he could stay away now.
Behind him, the rookies were still laughing, but the sound felt miles away.
Shamrock stiffened when he looked toward Bear. The laughter on his face disappeared. He jogged to him. “Something wrong?”
Bear forced a breath through his nose. “Yes.”
“What—”
“Get your gear and get in the truck. Now.”
He froze, then moved. He couldn’t leave them. They were his responsibility. But he couldn’t stay here another second.
“Damn,” Shamrock muttered, startled but taking control. He shouted, signaled to Fly and Than, who immediately left the surf, grabbing their packs.
Bear was moving before them, crossing the sand in long, fast strides. His pulse hammered against his ribs. He needed to see her. To know for himself she was still breathing.
The tide slid back, smooth and endless. He thought of Bailee, her voice, her stubborn strength, the way she hid pain behind control. He thought of how she had clutched him like she needed him, how much that had settled in a place no one else had ever touched. There was only one thought slamming over and over in his head. Get to her.
He climbed into the truck, started the engine. The boys piled in without a word.
He didn’t look at them. His hands were steady on the wheel, but only because they had to be.
Bailee stood in abject misery and surveyed the wreckage of her life, the utter chaos of her home, her yard, and the woman standing inside it. Two weeks on the op, and two weeks convalescing. How could everything have unraveled so fast?
Both arms hung uselessly in their slings, her right wrist locked in a brace that pulsed with its own heartbeat every time she so much as breathed too sharp. The last fourteen days had been a study in helplessness, a slow, grinding reminder of how much she relied on her hands to function, to fight, to control the world when her mind slipped. Now she couldn’t so much as button her own shirt.
She had tried, God help her. Tried to tap her phone screen, tried to angle it between forearms to order groceries, tried to open a can of soup with her teeth and stubbornness. Every attempt had ended the same way: dropped phone, spilled soup, pain vibrating up her injured arms.
She had finally eaten the last of the prepared meals Helen had stocked before she left, scraping them out with the edge of a wooden spoon clenched awkwardly in her brace. Now she was starving, aching, and—she winced—reeking. She hadn’t been able to shower properly in days. Only quick, miserable rinses she could barely manage one-handed.
Ancestors, her hair. A matted snarl that had once been sleek and black and unbothered by anything but humidity. Now it clung to her scalp in tangled ropes. She couldn’t hold a comb, couldn’t even lift her arms high enough to attempt it. She looked like she had crawled out of a jungle, which, technically, she had—but she’d hoped that particular aesthetic wouldn’t follow her home quite so literally.
The yard outside was a testament to how long she had been running from her life, even while standing still. One month of neglect had turned it wild. Grass had surged past her calves, dense and ungoverned, hiding the walkway in a riot of green. Weeds choked the flowerbeds she had once tended, climbing over the cracked stone edging like they were reclaiming territory she had abandoned. A drift of leaves had gathered at the porch steps, brittle, sun-faded things that whispered each time the wind moved through them. The fence sagged toward the earth, boards warping in the heat, as if even the wood had lost the will to hold its line. Nothing in the yard looked cared for. Nothing looked claimed. It mirrored her a little too perfectly.
She imagined Bear standing here, seeing this wild, unclaimed sprawl, and something in her chest tightened with shame.
Helen had given Bailee her number, but she didn’t want the competent woman to come back to this.
The doctor had told her she could take the slings off soon, start using her arm again. A couple more days. She could make it a couple more days.
The rumble of a truck in the drive made her freeze. She shuffled to the window, using her good hand to pull the curtain aside.
