Gray Back Bad Bear(34)

“Hi, Harrison,” she called to the Boarlander alpha.

The dark bruin gave her one last look, then ambled off into the brush.

“Geez, I’m never going to get used to that,” she murmured as her heart rate settled. Or maybe she would if Matt would ever show her his bear. So far, he’d refused. In fact, she hadn’t seen any of the Gray Backs’ bears. Creed said it was a safety precaution around her, but Harrison never even bothered her when she was near the river. He just checked his territory line and moved on.

An hour passed like no time at all as she was lost in the imaginary world of Isla Homes, Bernard Duncan, and their romantic adventures through time.

“Do you regret not going to the beach now?” Matt asked.

With a grin and a bone-deep hum of relief, Willa twisted in her chair. Matt was leaning against a tree, arms crossed over his broad chest, white T-shirt streaked with dirt, and speckles of mud all over his arms. At least today he wasn’t bleeding, and after a week of him and Easton fighting, it felt like a victory.

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“Not long.”

“Hmm. No regrets. This week has been the best of my life. Besides, the beach has sharks, and I’m afraid of sharks, remember?”

“And deep water. And jellyfish, giant squids, hermit crabs, sea cucumbers—”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve established I’m afraid of everything.”

His bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile. “Everything except for bears.”

She sighed happily and pushed off her chair. When she was snuggled in his strong arms, she admitted, “I missed you.”

He rested his chin on top of her head. “I don’t want you to go.” It was the first time Matt had mentioned the looming end of her trip. He’d avoided it like the plague, probably because admitting she had to leave soon would make it real.

Willa squeezed him around the waist, then eased away and pulled his hand. “Come on.”

Matt pulled his shirt off slowly, a troubled look in his eyes as she sank down in the water and waited. He was acting strange and distant, and she hated it.

“Do you have regrets?” she asked softly. The answer mattered more than anything.

He gave her the ghost of a sad smile and shook his head. “No.” His abs flexed as he peeled off his jeans and kicked out of them. He was beautiful. A perfect Adonis. Perhaps other women wouldn’t think so because of his striped skin, but Willa barely noticed that anymore. His scars and flaws were just a part of him.

“I wish my mom could’ve met you.” Sadness washed through her at what couldn’t ever be. “She would’ve liked you.”

Matt dragged his legs through the waves until he reached her, then sank down until the water lapped at his chin. “You haven’t talked about her before. What happened to your mom?”

“She died three years ago, just a few weeks after my Grandma.”

“Jesus,” Matt murmured sympathetically. He encircled her waist and pulled her deeper into the water. “Is your dad still around?”

“Yeah, he still lives in Minden.” She scrunched up her face and swallowed the emotion that was clogging her throat. “If you can call it living. He’s filled his house with pictures of him and my mom together when they were younger, and sometimes he talks like she’s still around.”

“It must be hard on you to see him like that.”

“Yeah. She was sick for a long time, so I thought we were prepared, but when she went so close to Grandma passing, Dad just kind of shut down.”

“Who did you lean on then?”

She shrugged her shoulders up to her ears. “No one.”

The water babbled around them as Matt pulled her in closer and rested his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t remember my parents.”

This was it. Matt had kept his past carefully guarded since she’d met him, and this was the first time he’d even hinted at why he’d had to raise all those kids in the woods.

“I have this image in my head of them, but I think I’ve made it up. I imagine my mom as this tall, striking woman who talked in this powerful tone, and my dad as a quiet, silver-haired man with a straight back and strong shoulders, like mine. I really don’t know what they looked like, though.”

“Why not?”

“I was taken.” He said it like a question, and his voice broke on the last word.

“Taken, like kidnapped?”

“The International Exchange of Shifter Affairs had this place they called the Menagerie. They picked up kids and…well, that’s where I got my scars.”

Willa’s heart broke with his words, and she pulled him close so he wouldn’t see the tears building in her eyes. “They did experiments?”