Holly’s Grizzly (Monster Relations Bureau #4)

16

Irving

I can barely hear what Vic is saying over the roaring in my ears.

I’ve got no idea what my body’s doing, my thoughts too much of a tangle and my entire being thrumming with the wrongness of it, the idea of Holly leaving.

Dimly, I feel myself nodding.

Nodding?

No .

I can’t be agreeing to any of this.

“It would have to be today, though. I’m headed out of town for the next week, so I won’t be around to do it otherwise.”

Vic is my best friend, his offer is more than generous, and he’s still wearing that wide, friendly smile on his face, but even with all of that considered, I feel the immediate urge to slam the door in his face.

Holly can’t be leaving.

Somewhere in the deep, shadowed corners of my mind, my grizzly rumbles his agreement.

We’re not letting her go.

Not now.

Not so soon.

Only… it’s not soon, is it? We’ve been dancing around this ending ever since the snow started melting. Even if I haven’t been able to fully face it, I knew this was coming.

I knew she wasn’t going to stay forever.

Holly gives Vic a tentative smile. “Yeah, I guess… I guess that would work.”

She turns back to me, and the look in her eyes is just more confirmation of that fact. Hesitant, but also a little relieved, maybe, to have her pack returned to her and a ride back to her car and her life waiting for her in Seattle.

“Great,” Vic says cheerfully, and again, my hand twitches toward the door.

It’s not his fault. I know it’s not his fault, even if I have to stop the roaring, unwarranted instinct to tell him to get the hell out of here.

I’d had it in the back of my mind to call him, anyway, once the road cleared. Knowing my truck is going to be out of commission until I can get someone up here to look at it, or some way to tow it down to town, Vic was my best bet for getting Holly back to her car.

But I never called him. I never let myself make those plans, never let it in, the very real fact that Holly is leaving.

He catches my eye, and his smile fades at whatever it is he sees on my face.

“Give us a little time?” I ask, and he nods.

“You got it, I’ll come back with the truck,” he says with a mock-salute, before turning and stripping off my pajama pants. He saunters off into the clearing before shifting back into his wolf, giving a brief howl of farewell before dashing into the trees.

It leaves Holly and I alone, and the silence between us is thick enough to cut with a knife. We retreat into the cabin, and as I shut the door behind us, that silence grows even deeper, more all-encompassing and absolute.

Holly pauses in the middle of the room, and I meet her there, resting a hand lightly on her shoulder and turning her to face me.

I still can’t entirely read the look in her eyes, something conflicted and uncertain, though she tries to hide it with a smile.

“I could find someone else,” I murmur. “I’m sure there’s someone else around here who could come and give you a ride, or a way I could get my truck—”

“It’s alright,” Holly says brightly. Too brightly, with a smile that feels forced and false. “This is… this is a good solution. Right? And I should be getting back to… to…”

Her words trail off, her smile falters, and for one heartbreaking moment I almost lose my composure and pull her into my arms, bury my face in her hair, and beg her to stay.

Before I can, she turns and starts scanning the room. Her eyes land on her discarded clothes by the fire, and she walks over to grab them, still wrapped up in the blanket we’d been snuggling under just fifteen minutes ago.

She straightens, turns back to me, and there’s a new resolve on her face. It’s just as bright and shiny and forced as her smile, and I want to pull her close and kiss her until that look shatters, until she gives me a clue to what she’s really feeling.

But I don’t get a chance as she disappears into the bathroom to change.

It leaves me alone in the middle of the room, with no idea what to do with myself, what to say, how to fix this.

We haven’t talked about any of it.

What comes next, what we are to each other, if we’re going to be anything to each other, and the speed with which this reckoning has arrived makes my head spin. As a minute passes, then two, then five, and Holly still doesn’t reappear from the bathroom, I go up to the loft to change, all the while trying to sort my racing thoughts and figure out what to say to her.

If I’m estimating it right, we probably have less than a half-hour until Vic shows back up with his truck, and as I come back downstairs, each second of that time seems to slip away in fast-forward.

Only to pause into one endless, crystalline moment when Holly steps back out into the living room.

Gods above, but she’s beautiful.

The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

So beautiful it’s impossible to imagine her leaving, impossible to imagine what it will be like to be alone here again when she does.

But my tongue is tied and none of the words will come out right.

I want to say something like don’t go , or stay right here with me , or please, Holly, give me just a little more time.

But I can’t.

I can’t say a damn thing as I take in the way her face scrunches up with worry and she shifts nervously from one foot to the other, as her eyes cloud with hesitation and regret, and when I know I just might shatter if I hear her say it.

I can’t stand to hear her say it.

I can’t stand to hear the truth that this is over, not when I can see it written clear as day on her face.

It’s already enough of a gut punch without the words to make it permanent, so I swallow whatever it was I might have said to her.

I can’t ask for more than she wants to give.

Making her feel guilty or burdening her with my own heartache won’t help anything. Not when she’s always been used to putting others’ wants and needs over her own, not when I know she’s got a full, wonderful life waiting for her, and not when this thing between us was always meant to be a beautiful, temporary impossibility.

So I do the only other thing I can think of.

I walk over and pull her into my arms, savoring the warmth of her, the scent of her, the last few minutes we have together.