After everything Kara said and explained, my brain overloaded with questions. I’d been cursed with a curious mind, according to my parents, and the constant ‘why’s’ of my childhood had driven them to madness. Or so they claimed. Seeking additional information had almost been beaten out of me, but I reverted to asking it in my head and then researching to figure out what I needed to know.
But I suspected there was not a library book on werewolves or were bears or whatever they called themselves. Kara hadn’t been in good enough shape to tolerate a litany of ‘but what if” and ‘why’s’, so I had to leave that for later. It was a good thing I had Jameson, even though his grin usually made me think whatever came out of his mouth was a prank or joke or just a wild guess. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who said “I don’t know” rather than just making up some cockamamie explanation to amuse himself.
I wasn’t really a fan of the whiskey sours he made, but I didn’t feel like mixing anything else, so I sipped on one until he infuriated me and I had to gulp the rest to keep from yelling so shrilly the neighborhood dogs would have howled. The second one tasted better than the first, so there was that.
I got him hanging garlands around the gym. It turned out the weight racks and lifting machines and other random ladder type devices were all great for supporting ivy and pine boughs and all that stuff. I tied big red bows, making sure the ribbons were the same length and had identical curl, and told him where to add them.
And a strange thing happened. I started to enjoy myself. Jameson cracked jokes and whistled Christmas songs until I begged him to stop, then he started singing the songs with ridiculously off-color lyrics. I couldn’t help laughing and groaning, throwing things at him when it got too bad. It felt so… nice. Normal. Like a relationship should have been, easy and comfortable and safe. It was the first time I’d felt that way in… forever. Maybe completely ever, like in my entire life. He felt like family, in the real sense of a family that supported and loved you and wanted you to succeed.
He was more dangerous than I’d feared.
There wasn’t much I could do about it, not with Christmas looming and occasional distress texts from upstairs asking for more soup and hydration and paper towels. Jameson waved it away, apparently confident he’d be able to find a grocery store open a few days before Christmas and in the middle of a serious, once-in-a-century blizzard. His lack of concern drove me crazy, but he did give me a convenient scapegoat for when things didn’t get done. Normally I would have been defensive and miserable, knowing how much I’d failed the girls and Kara and everyone, but Jameson shrugged it off and carried on with what he wanted to do no matter what.
Which included several whiskey sours and then other mixed drinks as he tried to find something I liked. I eventually claimed to dislike all of it, just so he’d have to keep trying. From the look on his face, he knew it and loved every second of the game. He made a big production of measuring and pouring and mixing, shaking some with ice and other ones without, and providing the glass back to me with a flourish. Then it was on me to sip and make a face and compare it to something disgusting, then he’d roll his eyes dramatically and we’d wrap more presents.
We’d almost gotten all the way through the mountain in the room when we took a break to make dinner and haul more soup upstairs. Jameson took down a list of things to obtain from the store, making a joke with the giant thug called Sasha – the gentlest giant with Mischka – about ‘after hours shopping.’ It made me wonder if they were part of some kind of criminal enterprise. When I looked at Kara, frowning, she just shook he head and mouthed that she would explain later. It didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, frankly.
But I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t my business. I wasn’t going to be there long enough to be arrested for any crimes committed, which was something. Unless I stayed, of course. I listened to the banter — mostly exhausted and slightly nauseated from the other adults — and tried to imagine myself as part of their world. Knowing that all of them, or at least most of them, could turn into animals just made it even weirder to consider. Jameson lost control in the forest when he was afraid; what happened if they all got startled at the same time? Would there be a bear melee in the middle of someone’s apartment? Did they ever fight?
They weren’t comforting thoughts as Jameson finished up the list and offered a mock salute to the Russian behind the door. “All right, comrade. I’ll do my best to get it all. Make sure your friends aren’t jumpy this time, okay?”
“Da,” the other man said, but he didn’t sound particularly concerned or motivated to do anything about it. I didn’t know what happened when his friends got jumpy, but I assumed I didn’t want to be around when it happened.
I watched the closed door dubiously, then followed when Jameson tilted his head at the stairs and made his way down a couple of flights. He checked the fridge in Kara’s apartment, checking our own supplies, then added a few more things to the list. I retrieved my coat and stood by the door, ready to go and tipsy enough it still sounded like a good idea.
Jameson caught sight of me and started smiling. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I pulled on my mittens. “Shopping with you.”
“You should stay here,” he said. Jameson yawned and rubbed his jaw. “Put together dinner or something. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe two depending on the weather and how many windows I have to break.”
I really hoped he was joking. I couldn’t tell. That was a bad sign, right?
Jameson chuckled and sauntered toward me, his eyes gleaming with sudden interest. “Besides, I like the idea of you here, all safe and warm. Waiting for me to come home.”
I snorted and ignored the spark of hope and longing in my heart. He might like it, but that didn’t’ mean anything except he wanted to get laid after surviving the blizzard. “Uh huh. We’ll see about that. Make sure you don’t get frostbite. Bundle up, maybe take two pairs of socks. It’s cold out there and if your car breaks down, you’ll have to…”
“I’ll push it home,” he said with a shrug. Jameson stopped in front of me so he could hold my shoulders, absently rubbing my upper arms. “Or I’ll turn into a polar bear and shove it home, or just carry it home in my paws.” And he smiled, like it was perfectly normal thing to do and plan.
“And what if there’s a bunch of people around? You’re just going to expose your polar bear-ness to everyone?”
“Definitely not,” he said. Jameson leaned down to kiss my forehead, making my knees weaken at the same time, but went on talking like he’d forgotten everything about the last few days. “I don’t need the headache of dealing with normal humans hearing about this. There’s all kinds of cleanup, and Kaiser is already up my ass about…”
I could see the exact moment he remembered who he talked to by the look on his face as he turned around.
“Uh… I mean…”
“Don’t worry about it.” Even if my heart cracked at his words. Cleanup. That was all I was to him, maybe. A problem to solve and a mess to clean up. It seemed about right. But I definitely wasn’t going out with him, if that was how he felt. I hung my coat back up and kicked off my boots. “Have fun, then. Be careful.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. Jameson stood near the door. “No, I wouldn’t have shifted in front of you if those circumstances hadn’t caused it, but I don’t regret it. At all.”
I wished I could have believed him. I wished I trusted anyone enough to believe it. “Sure.”
Annoyance flashed across his face. “I’ll prove it to you.”
“Oh? How?”
Which left him stumped. “I don’t know yet.”
“Let me know when you do.” I watched him frown and search for an answer, then he huffed and disappeared out the door. I shook my head and started to chop veggies for soup. I tried to forget about him and the polar bear, to forget about what Kara asked, forget about Christmas and the rest of December and the long drive still waiting for me if we went west as planned. I focused on the veggies and stirring the stock and not burning anything.
I’d almost found my groove when my phone rang. I opened it up to a face call, expecting to see the girls, and instead found Owen, pale and shaky, staring at me. “There’s something wrong.”
*** Break?
My heart dropped. “The girls?”
“They’re fine,” he said. The man glanced over his shoulder and tried to look calm, though I could see the panic in his eyes and hear it in every syllable. “Completely running the show now. It’s Kara.”
Fear clenched my stomach. “What do you mean?”
“She’s been having contractions,” he said. Owen moved quickly through an apartment I didn’t recognize, gathering things up in an efficient, business-like way that reminded me he’d been a medic. At least he was good in emergencies, although when his wife and child were in trouble, it changed things. “Thought they were just Braxton-Hicks but her blood pressure is up and the baby’s is dropping. She isn’t dilating enough and it doesn’t look like the labor is progressing.”
It was the one time in my life I wished I’d spent more time in labor and delivery. I was far more helpful with gunshot wounds than I was with infant blood pressure and pregnant mamas, but there wasn’t anything to do about it but dive in. “Okay. I’m coming up.”
He hesitated, like for a second he could have prevented me from reaching her, then caught sight of my face. He nodded. “Okay. But we’ll come down to you. Limit your exposure and keep the kids from freaking out. I haven’t had symptoms in a day, and Josie has been doing pretty well. We’ll get Kara down to our apartment. It’s the only place that’s probably clean enough to… have a baby. I guess we’re having a baby.”
He stared at me with sudden shock, like he hadn’t connected the dots before. I smacked my forehead and almost threw the phone across the room. “Yes, you’re having a baby. Jesus fuck, man, get moving. Is there a doctor we can call? A hospital where your kind of people go?”
“Sort of.” Owen glanced up as someone called for him, then he looked back at me. “We’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”
I turned off the burner under the soup, since chances were I wouldn’t have a whole lot of spare attention to make sure it didn’t boil over, and looked around for Jameson. He’d know what to do.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. Since when did I want him to help with anything? Since when was he the safety blanket I needed and wanted when facing a shitty situation? I swallowed the knot in my throat. I couldn’t change the way I felt. I couldn’t get rid of that brief flash of hope that Jameson would magically know how to fix the problem, and instead started boiling fresh water. He was gone, regardless of whether I wanted him there or not. It was time I rolled up my sleeves and figured out how to deliver a baby that didn’t seem particularly interested in being born. It was obviously Kara’s kid, being a pain in the ass from the beginning.
It took just a few minutes for me to know I was in over my head. As awkward as it was to look at my friend’s hoo-ha, we got through it with a few jokes and real fear as I tried to figure out why that little peanut didn’t want to be born. Kara’s blood pressure remained high and an ultrasound showed the baby struggling. I shook my head. “I don’t know how to fix this, Kara. We need to get you to the hospital, or get the hospital to you.”
“Doc Rossi,” Kara said, panting as another set of contractions left her weak and leaning against Owen. “She works at the hospital, she helped when the lions had their babies.”
“The lions?” I asked weakly. Of course there were lions. Why wouldn’t there be?
“She had triplets,” Kara said. She squeezed Owen’s hand until the big guy flinched just a little, though he hid it well. Kara fixed me with a bright gold gaze that reminded me of staring down a wolf. “Lots of problems with the birth, I heard. Rossi knows how to fix things.”
“Great,” I said. “Get her here.”
“There’s a blizzard.” Owen took one look at his wife, then cleared his throat. “I’ll call her. We’ll bring her here, or… I don’t know.”
I hated seeing them both so helpless. It just reinforced that December sucked and Christmas existed to kick people in the teeth when they were down. The only bright spot was that Christmas was still a few days away.
“I can make it to the hospital,” Kara said through gritted teeth, but when she tried to sit up, she fell back with a groan. Sweat covered her pale forehead.
Before she could try again, I caught her hand. “No, babe, just relax for a second. Just wait one minute and Owen will call the doctor and we’ll come up with the best plan.”
I just wished I believed myself.