Sawman Werebear (Saw Bears #4) (3 page)

The smell of fresh, homemade rolls and butter woke Everly up. Her Sunday school teacher had once told her there was no hunger in heaven, so Everly knew she hadn’t keeled over just yet. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was exposed rafter beams above her. She was in a small cabin and stretched across the only couch in the living room. A stone fireplace nestled crackling flames, which seemed to be the only light in the place besides a lantern that sat on a small dining room table. It illuminated a plate of steaming food.

She sat up and pushed the green and blue plaid blanket Brighton must’ve covered her with off her lap. Movement in the shadows by the fireplace drew her gaze. Brighton stood from a crouching position. She could only make out his outline and his eyes, which were reflecting strangely in the soft glow from the hearth. Silently, he approached, then offered an oversize, calloused hand.

It felt dangerous to touch him with his eyes all bright like that. He kicked up something about her instincts she’d never felt before. Safe one moment, at risk the next. He waited, staring steadily at her, so she had no choice but to touch him. She slid her palm against his. Tendrils of numbing warmth traveled from her fingertips to her wrist, settling whatever hunch had told her to be wary.

He pulled her up surprisingly easily, as if her weight was no more than air. Then he placed his hand on her lower back and guided her to the kitchen table. She thought he would sit and eat with her, but instead, he backed away and leaned his hips against the woodgrain countertop in his small kitchen. He crossed an arm over his middle and bit his thumbnail as she placed a napkin in her lap.

“Did you cook all this?” she asked, staring at the steak, cubed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and a smaller plate with two rolls, sopping with melted butter.

He nodded once.

“Well, color me impressed.”

Shoving off the counter, he reached for a cabinet and pulled out a glass. When it was full of water, he set it in front of her and pulled the notepad out of his back pocket.

You’re too skinny.

She frowned in disapproval. “Rude.”

He sat in the chair next to her and scribbled away.
Something is wrong with you, but you don’t smell sick.

“Also rude to comment on people’s smells. And I know something is wrong with me. I lost my dad-gummed job waiting tables because of the stupid seizures. And now they come faster and faster, but when I took the medicine my doctor gave me, it only made me sicker.”

Brighton shook his head, then wrote something on the next line of the ruled paper. For emphasis, he jammed his finger at what he wrote.
You can’t take medicine. Of course you got sicker. Didn’t anyone explain this to you?

She had the uncomfortable feeling that whatever he was talking about was circling slowly back to who bit her, so she shoveled a forkful of buttery, cubed potatoes into her maw to avoid any more conversation, and oh good Lord! That was the best thing that had ever touched her tongue.

“Aw, hell, Brighton. You should be on one of those chef shows on television.” She tasted the mixed vegetables, which seemed to have been sautéed in some kind of sauce made of unicorn smiles and baby giggles. The steak was cooked at a perfect medium, and when she bit into the warm roll, she was second guessing her assumption that she hadn’t died and gone straight up into the clouds.

When she looked up to compliment him again, his lips were quirked in a smile. Brighton was quite fetching when he looked happy. The scowl had gone, and in its place, his deep green eyes danced as he watched her eat. His nose was straight, eyebrows dark and animated. His teeth were straight and white.

“I bet you look all right under that beard,” she said before she thought about her words.

The smile dropped from his lips, and he canted his head, as if he couldn’t figure her out.

“I mean, that is to say, you probably look like one of those magazine ads. You know, the ones with the underwear models with the pretty faces. Not that you’re pretty. You’re a burly, manly man if ever I’ve seen one. Beefy, too. And not that I’m imagining you in your underwear…” Her gaze dropped to the taut muscles in his neck and the perfect line between his pecs that she could see between the two undone buttons on the green thermal shirt he’d changed into. She cleared her throat and forced her attention back to her food. “I’ll shut up now.” That lasted about a second before she felt compelled to explain. “Sometimes I ramble when I’m talking to people who don’t really want to talk back to me. Like my momma. Not that you don’t want to talk. I’m sure you’d want to if you could.” She scrunched her nose apologetically. “Balls. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about you not being able to talk. Is it a choice? Are you doing it for artistic reasons? Or were you born this way with no voice? I read about religious members who choose not to talk for a year, sometimes more. You aren’t one of those fellows, are you?”

Brighton blinked once, slowly, and when he opened his eyes again, they looked dead and cold. She could see him shutting down on her, slamming down walls to protect whatever secrets he obviously didn’t feel like sharing with a stranger.

“Right. I probably shouldn’t have asked you that either. It’s none of my business.”

Uncomfortable, she slowly sawed her steak into bite-size pieces as he leaned back in his creaking chair to study her. Careful not to bring up anything else that would earn her an angry look from Brighton, she finished her meal in silence.

You had a job?
he wrote as she chewed on her last bite of vegetables.

“Yeah.” Shyness crept over her, and she lowered her gaze so she could hide the heat that was creeping into her cheekbones. “I’ve seen you in Boomer’s Grill before. You probably didn’t notice me, though. I waited on you a couple of times. You and a couple of big gruff-looking fellows.”

A slight frown took Brighton’s face as he leaned back in his chair again and dragged his gaze over every inch of her face. His eyes lit up, and he leaned forward and scribbled across the last line of the paper.
Your nametag said Ever. I remember you now.

“You probably don’t remember me by my face. It’s okay. I’m plain Jane boring vanilla. That’s what Momma always says. She says I need to grow some brains because no one’s gonna kiss me on looks alone. You probably remember the strange name on my tag. Momma thought I was gonna keep her and Daddy together forever. So…” She shrugged. “Everly, and my friends call me Ever for short. Well, not really friends so much as co-workers. I’m kind of shy around new people, and old people, and then when I get nervous I just talk and talk about nothing at all, and it puts people off.” She cleared her throat and gave him an apologetic smile. “So, you see, you not talking doesn’t make any difference right now because apparently I’m going to talk enough for the both of us. I don’t think I’ve strung so many words together since…” Since
him
. Everly gritted her teeth and wished she was a mute, too, right now, just to save herself the embarrassment of her flapping tongue that wouldn’t shut the hell up.

The job?
he wrote.

“Oh, yeah. I had about ten too many seizures at work, and I was scaring the customers away and spilling drinks all over everyone. I don’t know what set me off. I’ve been having them for six months now, but before that, I never had a one in my life. Can I tell you something?”

He looked amused and nodded.

“It’s really easy to talk to you.”

Because I can’t talk back?

“I guess so. But also, I don’t feel as awful around you. I feel…calmer.”

You’re having those seizures because you aren’t letting your bear out enough.

Everly read the words on the new piece of notepad paper three times, but they still didn’t make a lick of sense. “I don’t understand. Is bear short for some sort of disease?”

He drew a rough outline of a snarling bear with big teeth and claws and arched his eyebrows. Then he wrote,
I’m a grizzly, too. No use hiding what you are from me.

“Like a grizzly bear?” A chill rippled across her forearms, and she leaned back in her chair, eyeing the distance to the door.

Brighton might be a nice person, willing to help her through a couple of seizures and feed her after, but he was also showing signs that he was about three bubbles shy of a soda. She’d already dealt with crazy before, and she sure wasn’t doing a repeat of that.

Gig’s up
, he scribbled.
It’s in the eyes. You can’t hide what you are in the last seconds of your seizures. You need to let your animal out, or she’s going to kill you.

Kill her? Oh no, no, no. Everly was
not
stuck in the woods with a stranger in the middle of God knows where, and now he was turning out to be a serial killer? Fear clogged her throat, making it hard to draw a breath. “Thank you for the dinner, but I need to be going.”

She stood and walked backward to the door, then snatched her purse that was sitting in an old wooden rocking chair beside it and held it against her chest like a shield. “It was nice to meet you.” Nice and terrifying.

Brighton sat where he was, frozen as he watched her leave through narrowed eyes. With his dark lashes lowered like that, his eyes sure did look different. Feral.

Everly clutched her purse tighter and backed out the doorway, then stumbled on the trio of stairs on the other side of the porch. Catching herself on the railing, she gasped as she realized she didn’t have a car or any other means of escape. And even if Brighton had left the keys in his truck, he hadn’t parked it in the front yard, and she had no idea where it was. Heart pounding as she searched the empty field adjacent to the cabin for anything that would aid her, she jogged toward the dirt road that led to the woods beyond. If she could just find a main road and flag down a car, she’d be set.

A whimper wrenched from her throat as she began to sprint, her thick-soled boots clunking heavily against the gravel with each hurried step. Brighton didn’t seem to be chasing her, but that didn’t dissuade her rampant need to get out of here as soon as possible. She ran until her legs burned and her feet dragged the ground. She ran until she couldn’t see his house down the long road when she looked back over her shoulder. Until all she could hear were the crickets and the frogs and the wind through the branches above her.

The road curved, and when she looked back one last time, all she could see was wilderness. She turned and smashed into a wall of muscle. When Brighton gripped her arms, she screamed in terror. The man hunched in on himself, as if she’d decimated his eardrums, and damn it all, her ears were ringing, too, but it gave her a split second when his grip loosened to make a run for it.

Brighton grabbed her elbow and yanked her to face him, then reached over his head and pulled off his shirt.

“What are you doing?” she cried, flashbacks and horrid, painful memories flooding her. She couldn’t survive this. Not again.

The full moonlight bathed his face in shades of blue as he slowly mouthed,
I’ll pull her from you
.

“You’re insane!” she said, jerking hard to escape his grasp.

His fingers were like an iron vice on her arm.

“You’re hurting me.”

Brighton released her immediately, eyes wide.
I’ll pull her from you, and you’ll feel better.

“Stay away from me,” she said as she backed away from him.

He followed slowly, kicking out of his boots.

“I said stay back!”

He unbuttoned his pants and pushed them past his hipbones, past more stripes of scars. “Please,” she pleaded in a whisper. “Don’t do this.”

I won’t hurt you.

A smattering of pops echoed through the woods, like the snapping of bones, and Brighton grew larger. And as a scream lodged in her throat, an enormous beast burst from him.

Shocked into stillness by consuming fear, she gasped to release her terrified shriek, but couldn’t find the voice to do so. Who would hear her, anyway? This couldn’t be happening. Black, curved, dagger-like claws ripped from his fingers, and dark fur exploded from his body, covering him completely. His face morphed into something terrifying and wild as he stood to his full, towering height. Petrified, she stooped and covered her ears as moisture burned her eyes.

No, no, no. This wasn’t possible. Brighton wasn’t a bear. That wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities. Bear men didn’t exist!

As he fell forward on all fours, the earth shook with the force. Made of weapons for ripping and maiming, his paws were bigger than her head. He’d brought her all the way up here to kill and eat her.

She wasn’t Brighton’s friend.

She was his prey.

Horror locked her legs, and she fell backward into the dirt. She landed hard on her elbows, scraping one against a jagged stone. Pain zinged up her arm, and the scent of iron filled the air. She was sobbing now as tears streamed down her face. Brighton stood over her, one paw on either side of her shoulders, then he buried his nose against her neck.

Something was opening inside of her, hurting her, shredding her. She bowed against the pain, but it didn’t help. The hurt grew from her middle, increasing in intensity until she clenched her hands and cried out. Brighton pushed a giant paw under her, scratching her back through the thin material of her dress. He pulled her against his chest, and she knew the end was coming.