“Okay, this will likely feel weird, but just keep breathing and tell me if you need breaks. We should be done in about an hour and a half.”
I nodded, took in a deep breath, and pursed my lips at him. He obliged and kissed me briefly, and then we got to work.
Luukas
It hadn’t been easy. Bear’s mood swings were getting to me a lot, but when they did, I found a way to decompress, because I didn’t have a choice.
I loved him, I wasin lovewith him and I know he was with me. That was enough for me to keep going, to keep believing when Bear himself didn’t.
Three months after the accident, he was still having issues with words. While Margo didn’t come around anymore, she’d suggested therapy which would combine the psychological side with the physical when it came to his brain. She’d kept saying repeatedly that brain was like a muscle. If you tore a muscle, you let it be and heal for a while, but then you had to exercise it consistently, over and over again. It might never be the same as it was, but close to that had to be enough.
There were no miracles.
Luckily his hip had healed even better than expected, and while he’d make metal detectors beep every time he went through them now—his joke, not mine—the only issue there was the occasional stumble that was brain-related. He didn’t fall over these days, just had to rebalance himself, which was good.
Meanwhile, I had been working a lot, but I’d cut back a little. I hadn’t told the reason to Bear yet, even though he’d started to notice.
He’d started to work slowly with clients who understood his new challenges, so he was at home one afternoon when I’d come home early.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked, frowning. Then he glanced the phone he was holding, likely to check the time on reflex, since he’d had to do that a lot for the first couple of months after the accident.
“Short day,” I replied, but I instantly knew my tone had been off.
“Okay, that’s not gonna fly.” He walked into the kitchen, and if he’d been in his little headspace, I would’ve called it stomping.
Wincing, I followed him. Before I had time to say anything, he banged closed the cabinet door where he’d taken out his tea.
“Something’s going on and I’ve known that for a while, Luke. I don’t know what it is, but you’re hiding something from me and that’s not what we agreed on.”
I winced again and sat down at the table. “I know.” Sighing, I tried to find the right words. “It’s… I mean, nothing bad, really.”
“’Really’? Do you have any idea how not at all reassuring that is?” he snapped as he whirled around, then balanced himself on the island.
“I need to go to a convention next month,” I blurted out.
He looked taken aback, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “That’s it?”
I grimaced. “Not really, no.” I knew the way he’d take this particular fuckup of mine and I hated it already. “A few days ago, a friend of mine, a friend of my mentor’s, called to ask me if I could come help him out. He has a few big celebrity clients coming in during a rock festival soon and he broke his wrist last week.”
Bear walked over the island and leaned his butt on it. If we both reached out, we could hold hands, but neither of us was going for that.
He nodded slowly. “And what’s the problem with these things?”
“Well the convention has been planned for ages, I go to at least one of them in Europe each year. This year I’m going to the Zurich one in Switzerland on the nineteenth of August.”
“So that’s over a month from now?”
I winced. “Yeah. But my friend needs my help next week for Glastonbury.”
“The rock festival is Glastonbury, in England?”
I nodded, watching him do whatever mental calculations he needed to.
“So you’re going to England for what, several days, and then you need to be back in Europe in three weeks?”
“A week in England, then a bit over three weeks before Zurich, yes.”
“I still fail to see why you’ve kept this from me?” He tilted his head, as if trying to read me.
