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She started eating. Slowly this time. Her stomach was still tender, but every bite felt like forgiveness—the pancake soaked in real maple syrup, the bacon perfectly crisp, and the eggs light and buttery. The broth she completely ignored.
She watched him from under her lashes.
"So… your name is Bear?" she said.
"Cal." He drank from the mug. "Everyone calls me Bear." A pause.
He looked at the window. "No idea why."
Sage froze.
She looked at him—really looked. He was at least seven feet plus of quiet mountain man. Shoulders that could block out the sun. Hands big enough to palm her entire head. Salt-and-pepper scruff, steady pewter eyes, the sheer scale of him sitting there in his own kitchen with a ridiculous mug of hot chocolate like it was the most normal thing in the world.
She laughed.
Another real laugh—bright, startled, loud enough to bounce off the high beams and stone fireplace. The second one in an hour, more than she’d managed in a whole year. She clapped both hands over her mouth, robe sleeves slipping down to her elbows.
He turned to look at her then.
Not smiling, exactly. But those steady gray eyes had gone warm in a way that softened his whole face. Something small and private flickered in them, and it made her glance away fast so her stupid eyes wouldn’t start leaking again.
She looked back down at her plate. Felt her cheeks do something she couldn’t quite control.
She ate another piece of bacon. Then, staring into her orange juice like it might give her courage, she said quietly,
“You took care of me. Last night. At the diner and… here.” She swallowed. “I remember some of it. I’m sorry if I… freaked out. Or anything.”
The last words came out lame. She knew it.
Bravo Sage…slow clap. He probably thinks you're a fucking basket case. Whatever…
Most of what she actually remembered was fragmented, fever-bright flashes: the knife in her shaking hand, the desperate things she’d offered, the broken sounds she’d made in the dark. “Freaked out” was a rowboat trying to cross a fucking ocean.
He stayed quiet for a long moment. She kept her eyes on her plate, fork tracing idle patterns through the last smear of syrup, almost flinching as she waited for whatever came next—the gentle correction, the careful questions, the moment he reminded her exactly how much she’d broken in front of him.
“I don’t remember anything like that,” he said.
She quickly looked up.
His pewter eyes were steady and kind. Like the bear from her dream—the quiet golden heart, the impossible gentleness of something easily big enough to destroy her, and choosing very deliberately, not to.
“You were tired,” he said simply. “You had a fever. I helped you with some medicine and you slept. That’s all.”
Liar.
The word floated through her head, soft and certain. But she looked back down at her plate and let the lie settle over her like the heavy borrowed robe—warm, protective, kinder than the truth had any right to be. That thing deep in her chest loosened some more. Another knot. One more small, frozen knot in a lifetime of them. It didn’t unravel completely. It just… eased.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah. Okay.”
She took another bite of pancake. He drank his hot chocolate. Outside the tall windows the snow lay deep and perfectly still, the world hushed under a thick white blanket. From deeper in the great room, the fire crackled softly, sending faint waves of pine-scented warmth drifting through the air.
Somewhere under all of it—the rasp still lingering in her throat, the plush weight of the robe against her skin, the bright tang of fresh orange juice on her tongue, and the memory of her own real laugh still echoing off the high beams—something shifted.
Something small.
Something that had been frozen solid for six years and wasn’t ready to call itself thawed yet.
But it was starting to feel the sun.
