Holly’s Grizzly (Monster Relations Bureau #4)

5

Holly

I really, really don’t need to trauma-dump all over the kind, handsome shifter who’s taken me in.

But Irving’s doing that thing again.

The thing where he’s quiet and patient and watching me like he’s really interested in what I have to say. And I must either still have my brains scrambled from falling in the river, or I’m so thrown off balance by having a guy seem genuinely tuned into a conversation, because I start speaking before I think better of it.

“It started with a breakup.”

His brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

For a second, I almost let it go, backtrack, give some excuse. There’s no reason at all I should share this with him. Not even when he looks like he’s more than willing to listen, and not when he’s been so damn nice to me since the moment he found me out in the woods.

“I… sorry. It’s just a long story, and it would probably bore you. Or bum you out. Or both.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” he says gently.

I hesitate… but there it is again, in those soft brown eyes of his. Something that makes me want to trust him.

Maybe it’s fine.

I’ll be gone in a couple of days. All of this is so far from the realm of normality that maybe it’s fine for me to just say the hell with it and confide in him. What happens when you’re snowed into a cabin in the middle of the woods stays in the cabin in the middle of the woods, right?

Maybe I’m also tempted because I’ve never talked about it, not really. Not even with Kenna and Nora. It’s always felt easier to pretend I wasn’t struggling so much. If I could convince them that all my talk about personal growth, all my hiking trips and meditation were really healing me, and not just the bandage I slapped over all my cracks so I could pretend I wasn’t hobbling around half-shattered, maybe eventually it would be true.

But I’m tired, so incredibly tired.

From everything that happened today and everything that brought me here. From the way it feels like all the walls I built around myself came crashing down the moment I hit the water and thought I was about to die.

So I tell him.

I tell Irving about Cody. I tell him about how we met while we were both interning for the same financial services company and how I was drawn to his drive and his intelligence and how, somewhere along the way, those things also became what I grew to resent him for.

I tell him how our relationship felt more like a competition than a partnership sometimes, and how I’m half-certain the emotional crumbs Cody dealt out like he was doing me a favor were all part of some deranged need to win that competition.

I tell him how, even with all of that, Cody was the one to leave me, and I was absolutely blindsided by it. I tell him about the months I spent reeling and my decision to take back my sense of self and my confidence, to strike out on my own and prove I was tough enough to get through it all.

Once the words start, there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do to stop them.

Trauma dumping, indeed.

“So,” I say when I get to the end, letting out a long breath. “I guess that’s what it all stacked up to, all my hiking and yoga and meditation and anything else I could think of to help me find some sort of center, because mine was just… gone.”

Irving hasn’t said a single word during my monologue, but now he frowns and lets out a short, disgruntled grunt.

“He sounds insecure as hell,” he says darkly. “A fucking child, if he had to make you feel lesser to feel better about himself.”

“He… you know what? You’re not wrong,” I say with an unexpected laugh, surprised by how good it feels to say it out loud. “He was insecure. And a child. And an asshole.”

Irving nods his agreement, still with that serious, disapproving look on his face that somehow lightens a bit of the heaviness I’ve been carrying around in my chest for who knows how long.

We lapse into silence for a few moments, but there’s nothing uncomfortable about it this time. It’s strangely… intimate, this quiet. Nothing demanded, nothing expected. Just two strangers in an absolutely bizarre situation, all the normal niceties and social boundaries buried under the still-falling snow.

“I guess I just got in a little over my head this time,” I say after a few moments, embarrassment creeping up my cheeks. “I didn’t expect the weather to be as bad as it was, and I was trying to get back to the trailhead when I went in the river. I lost my balance on the log bridge and fell, and then my pack came off, and then…”

I trail off with a groan, slump into the cushions, and throw an arm over my eyes. “And my keys are in my pack, so I don’t even know what I’m going to do when I get back to my car. And all of this is so—”

“Holly.”

When I look up, I find Irving leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and another one of those soft, kind expressions on his face.

“You couldn’t have known the weather would turn, and you did a hell of a job surviving an awful situation.”

Something in my chest catches at the reminder.

I did do a hell of a job surviving.

Even if I still can’t quite stop wanting to beat myself up about it, and even if it shouldn’t be on Irving to reaffirm it for me, I did as much as I could and held on until help arrived.

“And as far as the rest of it?” Irving continues. “We’ll figure it out.”

Just like all the other times he’s offered me his help, the immediate urge to either thank him profusely or refuse the offer sits on the tip of my tongue. But I know he doesn’t need me thanking him all the time, and I know it’s not going to do me any good to offer more protests.

So I don’t give them.

Maybe it’s alright to accept help when it’s offered, if only just this once.

I look back at Irving, who’s still waiting so patiently for me to work it out in my own time.

“Alright. We’ll figure it out.”

There’s a brief flash of surprise on his face before his expression melts into warm satisfaction. The slow smile on his lips and the approving sparkle in his eye do strange things to the bottom of my belly, but I make myself ignore it.

It would be so incredibly stupid to do anything but ignore it.

Because the alternative would mean facing the fact that there’s something incredibly attractive about this grizzly shifter, and I’m having a hard time denying it.

Not that it matters.

It doesn’t matter at all that I’m way too aware of Irving and his devastatingly handsome smile. It doesn’t matter that I’m tempted to shiver and pretend like I’m cold, so maybe he’ll come over here and give me some more of his incredible body heat. It doesn’t matter that every time he does or says something nice to me I’m torn between bursting into grateful tears, telling him to knock it the hell off, or wrapping my arms around him for what I’m sure would be the warmest, softest hug in the world.

Admitting to any of that would be certifiably pathetic, and just because I’m so damn broken that any little crumb of care feels like water in the desert doesn’t mean I need to make it his problem.

“And besides,” Irving says, drawing my attention out of that spiral, “there’s nothing we can do about it tonight, right? So we might as well just sit back, relax, and enjoy the blizzard.”

Despite myself, a small laugh slips out. “Yeah. I guess we can do that.”