“Hey,” I say, letting the door of Wilder HQ swing shut.
It’s Thursday night, and I’m not supposed to be in the office, but I knew I’d find Bear here. He’d mentioned that he wanted to pull some additional cooking supplies from our stash for the next trip, scheduled to start Friday afternoon.
He looks up from where he’s bent over a tub of lightweight pots and pans. “Oh, hey, Hanna!” He beams at me. “My viewers loved the date video, did you see?” He straightens and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. “Now we’ll definitely have to go out again. We can’t disappoint them, right?” His eyes dance, and his tone is teasing, but...
He means it—I can tell. He wants to go out again, or as much as Bear Warden wants anything aside from the limelight.
I bite my lip. “About that…”
The smile slides off Bear’s face. I have zero chill, and my face—and voice—broadcast my emotions, no matter how hard I try to keep them from doing so. It’s especially aggravating because I find it hard to read other people’s expressions. They’re often closed books to me… and I’m wide open.
“You’re an awesome guy,” I begin. “You’re good-looking and smart and ambitious—”
He slumps. “You don’t have to do that. Butter me up. I know the speech. And it ends with, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ right?”
He doesn’t sound angry or unkind, just… disappointed.
“Uh, yeah,” I admit.
I’m about to say that it’s not really him or me, it’s us, or the lack of us, but he tilts his head to one side. “Dang,” he says. “I had a good time.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” he says, holding up a hand. “That’s the worst.” His forehead wrinkles. “Oh, man! My viewers are going to be bummed.” His eyes meet mine. “Honestly, I’m pretty bummed.”
I feel bad, but… “You told me not to say I’m sorry,” I point out.
That makes him laugh, a little sadly. “I did, didn’t I?” He sighs.
“I hope it’s not going to be too weird, with us, you know, working together? I can ask Gabe if someone else could—”
He waves it off. “I’m a big boy,” he says. “Don’t worry about me. Assuming you’re OK with continuing to work with me.”
“Yeah. Not a problem.”
We stand there awkwardly for a moment. I indicate the storage tote in front of me. “Do you want my help with this?”
“Sure,” he says. “Just pull out anything from these tubs that you think might help. We were short on pans, but the real thing I think we needed more of was cooking utensils. Big spoons, spatulas, scrapers—anything you see.”
We work for a while in silence. After a while, he says, “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You and Easton are close, right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
Nerves sizzle in my stomach, because I can’t figure out where he’s going with this, and I really don’t want to be the one to break it to Bear that Easton and I are together.
“Do you think Easton will actually leave his brothers’ business and come to Colorado if I offer him this job?” he asks.
I have to run through his words an extra time to make sure they mean what I think they mean. My stomach knots. “I thought… Easton asked you if you’d be willing to consider someone working remotely, and you said you were.”
“Oh, yeah. I was, at first. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked that idea, so I made the position on-site. Didn’t Easton tell you?”
I shake my head, the stomach-knots turning to rocks.
“I told him I was doing it and asked him if he still wanted to be considered. He said definitely.”
I try to breathe around the heavy weight in my belly and the tightness in my chest.
Easton never said anything to me about going to Colorado.
And there’s no good reason he should have. Easton doesn’t owe me anything. I know who he is, and he knows I know. Whatever’s going on between Easton and me, as good as it feels, will be short-lived and neatly tied up with a bow afterwards. That’s the Easton Wilder way—and he and I both understand that.
Bear scans my face, and I wonder if I’ve given myself away. But if he thinks something’s weird, he doesn’t say it. He shrugs and says, “I was just wondering. Most guys don’t want to leave a family business.”
“I think Easton has his reasons to want a fresh start,” I say, the words short so they don’t invite more questions.
“Fair enough,” Bear says.
I bend down and dig in the tote in front of me as if it holds the secret to the universe, and for the rest of the time we’re working side by side, we talk about camping and food and other topics that don’t make my stomach hurt.