Page 67 of Bear and Book

Beau stood by the grill, arguing with Sean about seasoning ratios while flipping burgers like his life depended on it.

“Hey, they’re finally here!” Cassian called when he spotted Elias. “You finally brought him out of hiding, Leo. Nice to see you again, Elias.”

Elias stiffened, but Cassian just grinned, patting the seat beside him. “Come on, sit. You look like you need a drink.”

“Don’t scare him off five minutes in,” I warned, grabbing a soda from the cooler and pressing it into Elias’s hand before he could protest.

Elias sat gingerly, like the chair might collapse, but when Cass launched into a dramatic retelling of how Rafael had once set a grill on fire by accident, I saw Elias’s lips twitch again.

Julian, of course, wasn’t done with me. He leaned over the picnic table, grinning like a cat.

“Leo, buddy, you realize you’re disgusting, right? The way you look at him? You’ve got it bad,” Julian said.

Heat crawled up my neck.

“Shut up,’ I mumbled.

“Don’t shut up,” Beau said without looking up from the grill. “I want to hear about how our golden boy is finally whipped.”

“Whipped?” I sputtered.

“Completely,” Julian confirmed. “You should’ve seen his face when he thought we weren’t looking at the bakery. Elias walks in, suddenly Leo’s dropping trays, burning croissants⁠—”

“I didn’t burn anything!”

“Uh, you did,” Sean chimed in. “Twice.”

I buried my face in my hands. Elias, meanwhile, was trying very hard not to laugh. And failing.

His shoulders shook, his lips parted, and then, to my complete shock, a laugh actually burst out of him.

It was quiet at first, but it grew, warm and unguarded, like sunlight breaking through clouds. My chest tightened.

God, I would’ve endured a thousand more rounds of teasing just to hear that sound again.

As the afternoon went on, Elias loosened bit by bit. Beau and Sean kept his plate piled high with food, fussing over him like a mother hen.

Cass and Dorian dragged him into their endless banter, arguing about movies until Elias actually rolled his eyes and told them they were both wrong.

Julian tried to get him into a game of cornhole, and though Elias refused to play, he stood nearby watching, shaking his head at all of us with something dangerously close to fondness.

As for me? I just watched.

I watched him tuck his hair behind his ear when Beau leaned too close with a new plate of ribs.

I didn’t miss Elias trying to hide a smile when Cass’s joke landed flat and Dorian groaned like he wanted to disown him.

I watched the way his shoulders slowly relaxed, like he was realizing nobody here wanted anything from him but his company.

My family, my crew. They’d accepted him without question. No tests, no hesitation. Just Elias, standing among us as if he’d always belonged.

* * *

The night had wound down into the kind of lazy comfort only bears knew how to manage.

Plates stacked on the patio table, the last embers glowing in the fire pit, Rafael scolding Julian for trying to eat “just one more sausage” even though he’d already had five.

Elias stayed close beside me, his body language still taut, but not brittle the way it had been earlier. Something had softened in him tonight.