Page 55 of Bear and Book

So I closed up early. Said the store was closed for the day, drew the blinds, flipped the sign, and walked Jason back here.

I told myself it was about privacy. That this way, I could end it cleanly, firmly, without an audience. Without questions.

But as soon as Jason stepped into my apartment and began looking around, I regretted it.

“Nice place,” Jason said, tone casual, assessing.

His eyes skimmed over the bookshelf-lined walls, the sturdy couch I’d saved for, the coffee table that still bore faint scratches from the last owner.

“Could use a few improvements, though. Maybe a vase over there? Or a rug, something to brighten it up,” Jason pointed out.

My jaw tightened.

Jason said it like he lived here. Like he had the right to rearrange my life again, the way he always used to.

Heat rose in my chest and it wasn’t the pleasant warmth I’d felt this morning when Leo kissed me good-bye, but a sharp, searing anger I had to swallow back.

I’d told myself I was past all this. That Jason no longer had any power over me.

But the way Jason walked through my apartment like it was just another stage he owned, another spotlight he demanded, well it clawed at old wounds I thought had healed.

I folded my arms across my chest and stayed standing while he sank into the couch, stretching out with practiced ease.

Jason looked like he’d rehearsed this moment, like he was already sure he’d win me back before he’d even stepped foot into Sugarpaw Springs.

“Relax, Elias,” Jason said with a little smirk. “You look like I’m here to rob the place.”

Maybe he wasn’t here for my furniture, but I knew better. Jason had never wanted me. Not really. Not wholly. He’d wanted what I gave him, attention, adoration, stability when his own world collapsed.

And when I couldn’t give him more, when I stopped feeding the black hole of his ego, he left. Now he was back, and I could already feel the weight of what he wanted pressing down on me.

I didn’t answer. My silence didn’t faze him. It never had. He leaned back, draping his arm across the back of the couch like he owned it, and launched into a monologue about his life.

Some new job. “Great opportunities,” “travel everywhere,” “meeting all kinds of people.”

He dropped names I didn’t recognize, laughed at his own jokes, painted himself in broad, golden strokes. The words barely landed.

My ears heard him, but my mind was elsewhere. My fox paced inside me, restless, agitated. I kept scanning for a way out of this conversation, a way to cut him off, a way to make him leave.

Because I didn’t want him here.

And finally, the words broke free.

“I don’t want you here,” I said, quiet but steady.

Jason’s head tilted, that smirk never faltering. “What was that?”

“I said,” I repeated, sharper now, “I don’t want you here.”

For the first time, the smooth act cracked. His brows knit slightly as he studied me, as if gauging how serious I was.

But then, as though Jason couldn’t bear the thought that I might mean it, he brushed it off with a chuckle.

“You don’t mean that,” Jason said.

I stayed where I was, arms still folded, nails biting into my skin. “I do.”

He stood then, slowly, the way a predator might when it realized the prey wasn’t running. His eyes were different now, sharper, calculating. He took a step closer.