Melissa and Candace pulled back, and each of them grabbed her hands and helped her to stand. “Come on, this calls for a monster bowl of ice cream over at Freezy Breezy.”
Yes, that sounded like the perfect temporary solution to her permanent, horrifying situation.
11
“Charlie, what the hell is going on with you?” Bram cracked open another beer and planted his ass beside him on his couch. The football game was on, a leopard shifting team from New York playing against panther shifters from Chicago.
The teams were brutal as they tackled each other so hard against the ground that pieces of sod sprayed all around them. There was nothing better than shifter football. Humans playing the sport were entertaining, but they couldn’t take a hit like a shifter could. “Hello? You with us?”
“He’s been acting all kinds of fucked-up since he slept with that cat. What did she do, drag her teeth across your dick?” Ford asked, but his attention was on the game.
Charlie didn’t bother responding, just flipped his brother off and sank farther into the leather couch. He hadn’t talked about February with his brothers, the two people he cared about the most, because he thought if he didn’t talk about her and tried to block her out, he might be able to put her behind him.
Yeah, that hadn’t worked out as well as he would’ve liked, and when Bram and Ford brought her up, it only made things worse.
“It’s nothing. She just got under my skin, but nothing I can’t handle.” That was true… but also a lie. He wasn’t handling it well, because frankly he had never encountered feelings this strong before.
“Under your skin?” Bram was the one to ask, and Ford shouted out a string of curse words when a foul was called in the game.
“What’s going on?” Ford asked and brought his beer to his lips. He turned and looked at them, and one of his brows cocked up in question. Charlie scrubbed a hand over his face and exhaled. Did he really want to get into this with his brothers, tell them about this girl he only spent a few hours with one night in his bed?
They would surely think he was an insane asshole, because how many times had he told them he would never claim a female?
“Dude, why are you clamming up right now?” Bram sounded confused, and Charlie couldn’t blame him. He looked at his youngest brother and noticed the day-old cut above his right eye and the fading bruise that covered his cheek. Looked like Bram was at his bare-knuckle fighting again.
Taking a deep breath and deciding to just say it already, Charlie looked at his brothers. This was the first time he’d kept things from them.
“That ocelot female has been all I’ve been thinking about for weeks.” He looked between Bram and Ford. It seemed Ford now had his full attention on Charlie.
“What do you mean you’ve been thinking about her?” Ford turned the television off, and silence descended on the living room. Bram was already looking at him with interest on his face.
Charlie supposed he should just spit it out. Damn, why in the hell was this so hard? He was a grown-ass male, and this was his family.
“You got it bad for this girl?” Bram asked.
“It’s like my bear wants to take over and claim her.” He leaned forward and placed his forearms on his thighs. “I have never wanted to take a mate. You both know that better than anyone, but shit.” He exhaled and ran his hand through his hair. He gripped the short hair at the back of his neck and tugged on the strands. “I knew there was something different about her as soon as I saw her in the bar. The scent of her, the way she fucking looked. She drove me crazy, and I hadn’t even said one word to her. Then I had her under me, and my bear clawed to take control.” He looked between his brothers and saw their intense but shocked expressions. Yeah, he supposed this whole conversation was shocking, given the way he acted before.
“Then the fucking condom broke. I freaked, which in turn caused her to freak. So, I took her back to her car and haven’t seen her since, but dammit I’ve thought about her every fucking day, and it scares the shit out of me.”
For several long seconds, his brothers didn’t say anything. The silence was deafening, and for the first time in his life, he felt vulnerable for revealing how he felt. Charlie had always been the one to hide how he felt inside. He didn’t share all that shit and kept his hard, armor-like exterior firmly in place.
He liked his solitude, living alone, and didn’t want to have to worry about a female. But then there was February Felina, and all his preconceived notions on how he planned on living his life vanished.
“Well shit, man.” Ford chuckled, but there was no humor behind it. “The condom broke?” Charlie nodded. “She wasn’t fertile, right?” There was a bit of a strain in Ford’s voice.
“Nah, but I’ll be honest; I don’t know if I would have been able to stay away, even if she was.” That was the first time he had spoken those words out loud. It was hard not to when he knew he had come inside her, and if she had been fertile, she could be carrying his child. Yeah, that was a slap of reality right in his face.
“The human side of you wants to mate with this chick, and so does your bear. Charlie, dude, you’ve found ‘the one.’” Although this was how he felt and the conclusion he had come to, whether he wanted to embrace it or not, it was crazy hearing Ford say it.
“Damn, Charlie. It must be pretty serious for you to open up like this and for your bear to want to mark her.”
He looked over at Bram and could only nod. He didn’t feel like the oldest brother right now, not when Bram and Ford could so easily admit what the hell was going on when he had held it in for so long.
“You need to call her.” Ford sounded so sure and confident that it had him and Bram looking over at him.
“Just like that, huh?” Yeah, it sounded easy enough, but he got the impression that she was done with him, especially when he acted like an asshole during the whole condom breakage. He had given her his full name, and she hadn’t reached out to him.
He might have said she could run and he would go after her, but with each passing day, he felt himself going more inside himself and pushing her back. He could admit it: he was scared.
“What are you really afraid of? You’ve just admitted to us that it isn’t just you that wants her, but your bear too,” Ford said matter-of-factly. “How many years have we heard you talk about what you don’t want in your life, and how you don’t need the messy feelings that come with a relationship?”
“If this one female causes this type of reaction in you, why not just go for it?” Bram prompted.
“Bram, it isn’t that easy.”
“But it is, brother. And with that, I need a fresh beer.” And just like that, Ford was out of the room. His words were strong and honest, and despite Ford almost leaving nonchalantly after what he just said, it told Charlie that it really was that easy.
Bram stared at him but didn’t speak. Ford returned with three more beers and handed each of them a fresh one. For the rest of the night, no one said any more about it, but that was the way the three of them were. They said what needed to be said, and that was it.
Now it was up to Charlie if he was going to take his brothers’ advice and let his bear out to take what it really wanted, or keep his distance and continue living his solitary life.