“Damon?”
He turned at the door, but hesitated to meet her eyes. She wanted to tell him how much being with him here had meant to her. She wanted to tell him how hard she was falling for him, and how much she appreciated him letting her in, even if it was just for a little while. His dead gaze made her cowardly though, so instead, she murmured, “You have a file on me. Can I see it?”
“Why?” he asked, not even bothering to deny it.
She gathered the pillow more securely under her head and admitted, “I’m curious about what made Mason decide to bring me here.”
Seconds of silence ticked on between them before Damon dipped his chin once. “As you wish.”
After he left, Clara debated getting dressed, but decided against it. She’d been comfortable in her own skin with him and wanted that feeling back. He’d seemed completely content to lie with her for hours until she’d asked him about his past. About his scars. He might have let her in a little, but Damon was far from an open book and would likely always be that way. Something about that made her chest ache.
He wasn’t gone more than ten minutes and returned with a tray stacked high with food and a beige file dangling from his hand. He kicked the door closed behind him and set his wares on the bed.
“Will you undress again?” she asked, as he hesitated by the bedside.
He shook his head slowly and sat on the edge of the mattress, his now dark gaze on her.
“Is it because I asked about your scars?”
A single nod, and then he stared off at the door as if he wanted to escape her. “It’s best not to scratch at me, Dangerous Clara. Those ghosts you are able to see so easily are better left alone.”
Clara looked around the room at the mention of them, but it was only her and Damon here now. “I’m sorry.”
Damon looked troubled, but rewarded her with unbuttoning his shirt and yanking the material off his shoulders. The pants stayed in place, but at least she had access to his warm torso again as he settled against the headboard beside her. Tray between them, they ate in silence, and when she’d had her fill, she pulled the file into her lap.
Damon picked up a remote from the end table near the bed and pushed a button that lifted one of the blackout panels. She gasped at the view. His room was overlooking the beautiful evergreen forest. Blinking hard at what a turn her life had taken in the last few days, she squinted against the saturated sunlight filtering through the wall-to-ceiling window.
She read her file out loud. “Clara Emory Sutterfield. Birthdate, ten twenty of nineteen eighty five. Grizzly lineage…” her voice trailed off.
“Read on.”
“Grizzly lineage began six generations ago.” She hadn’t even known when her family had gone bear shifter. “Green eyes, red hair, five-foot-five, curvy figure.” Here someone had scribbled, this one feels important. She looked at Damon and quirked her eyebrows.
He shook his head and muttered, “That is Mason’s writing.”
Huh. She continued. “One red-headed female born to each generation. Dominant grizzly shifter. Alpha of the Red Claws. Lost…” Her voice faded to nothing. She shouldn’t have asked to see this. It was nothing she didn’t already know. She’d lived it. Barely survived this part, in fact. Her voice shook as she read on. “Lost her crew, Charles Redding and Daniel Myer, to an explosion on an offshore drilling rig. Didn’t recover.” She huffed a sad and humorless laugh. Didn’t recover. Her or her crew? Didn’t matter. It was true on both accounts.
“Why didn’t you find another crew?” Damon asked low. He wouldn’t look at her anymore. His attention was on a loose thread on the comforter that he wrapped around and around his finger.
Clara lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. “I just couldn’t love anyone like that again.”
“Because you were afraid to lose them?”
Her lip trembled, and her vision blurred with tears. Blinking hard, she nodded her head. She couldn’t trust her words right now. She couldn’t trust her words about her crew ever. Burying them had broken all the good things she’d liked about herself. She’d lived a half-life ever since. Her choice.
“Is the hole they left why you want a child?”
“No,” she rasped through a tightening throat. “I wanted a baby before Charles and Daniel died. We had all these plans. We didn’t even want to know who the father was between the two of them because we would all be a family, raising our cub, and it wouldn’t matter. And then when I…” Her voice broke, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “When I got the call about the accident, all of our dreams of having a family were gone. Just,”—she snapped her fingers—“gone like that. Everything was gone. And after a few years of living this empty, lonely life, I wanted to feel again. I wanted to love someone, but in a safe way, you know? I wanted to be a mother as badly as I ever had, but I’d missed out on bonding to another male after I lost Charles and Daniel. So I tried the doctor’s way until my savings ran out. Pretty pathetic, huh?”