Chapter Twelve – Lucy

 

I sat there on the closed toilet seat, twiddling my thumbs, wondering just what in the damn hell Carter was planning on showing me. Some secret documents? A special badge he had hidden in his bag, and he couldn’t show me where he kept it?

A thought flashed through my mind, and I nearly jumped up from the toilet and rushed out the door. Oh, God, he was going to be naked and try to make a move on me!

Which, on its surface, wouldn’t have been too bad. I mean, he was a hunk.

But creepy much? So creepy. No matter how good-looking he was, he’d never be able to wipe that creep factor away after that kind of thing.

I settled back down, though, when I considered that Carter didn’t really seem the type to strip down to the buff and lay himself out on a hotel bed while a woman sat, unsuspecting, in the bathroom.

But, Jesus, what was I saying? He probably wasn’t even attracted to me! Or, if he was, he had a girlfriend or secret wife, or something. Because we were talking about me here, and about my luck. And my luck, especially with bearded men, wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider “best of” material.

I pulled out my phone, checked the time. As I was looking down at the screen, though, my eyes flashed back to the bathroom door.

Ever been in one room and had something tell you that things had changed in the next one over, something beyond just your sight or hearing? Like, I don’t know, a person had just walked in? Or the door had opened?

It was like that. Some aspect of the next room over had changed.

I frowned as I set my phone aside, placing it on the counter next to me. “Carter?” I called through the door.

No response.

“Carter, what’s going on? Talk to me!”

Still nothing, just a shifting of that new weight I’d somehow detected in the hotel room.

What the hell was he doing in there? I went to stand, saying, “Carter, this isn’t funny. If you don’t talk to me, I’m coming out.”

Nothing.

I clenched my jaw. “That’s it,” I said in a warning tone as I reached for the bathroom door. “I’m coming in there. Ready or not!”

The doorknob turned smoothly in my hand, and I yanked the door open and went charging through.

I only got two steps into the hotel room before my breath caught in my chest, and my mouth dropped open in shock.

There, sitting on its haunches, looking quizzically at me, was a bear. A giant bear.

A giant. Fucking. Bear.

Nearly the size of Carter’s Jeep, at least, with shaggy fur, a giant muzzle full of teeth that could strip the flesh from my bones in a heartbeat, and jaws powerful enough to crush them into powder. It filled the room like an unspoken addiction in a family, almost elephantine as it loomed there at the foot of the bed.

Its eyes bored into mine like a mining drill, delving into the core of my being. An intelligence was there that in any other animal would have been completely unsettling. But, in this one, it was almost comforting.

Almost.

“Oh,” I whispered in a squeaky voice, my breath barely coming to me, “my God.”

I stepped back into the bathroom, gasping for air. I hugged myself, turned around and around in the small room, still struggling just to breathe. “Oh my God, oh my God.” Where had Carter gone? How had the bear gotten in? Bears didn’t even live around Shamrock! And how did it get through the hotel door without opening it?

Okay, maybe I’d imagined it? Yeah, that’s what had happened. I turned to the vanity, to the mirror, and planted my hands firmly on the counter in front of me as I locked eyes with my own reflection.

“You’re imagining this,” I told myself firmly. “You’re imaging this, Lucy. This is fucking crazy, and you know it. You’re imagining this.”

I closed my eyes tightly, focused on my breathing, and remembered my training from the fire academy. What they had told me to do during stressful situations.

“Breathing is key,” my instructor had said. “When you panic, you lose control. And when you lose control, you breathe more. Oxygen is the key to surviving a stressful situation. Control your breathing, you control your circumstances, and when you can control your circumstances, you can think clearly. And when you think clearly, you increase your chances of making it out alive.”

I breathed in deeply through my nose, felt my lungs slowly filling in my chest as I mentally counted to three. I breathed out through pursed lips, allowed my face and cheeks and jaw to relax as the air passed through in a steady, purging stream.

Another deep breath through the nose. Another breath out through pursed lips.

“Okay,” I whispered after two more sets. “Okay, Lucy. Okay. You’re okay. He’s not real. You don’t have a picnic basket, or anything else, he wants, and he’s not coming through the door after you. You’re okay.”  

Movement on the other side of the door. Right outside the door.

Oh God, he was real! I squeaked again. “Shit.”

“Lucy?” Carter asked from the hotel room. “You okay?”

“Carter?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

Relief flooded my body. Relief at the fact that the bear wasn’t on the other side of the bathroom door. But then it hit me. I had just imagined the bear. What had caused that? Some kind of post-traumatic stress episode from the shootout earlier? Had my brain finally taken all the stress it could handle, and decided it was just going to snap on me?

Because Carter was outside, and sounding as calm as ever. Which meant the bear hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been.

I swallowed hard, trying to think of some other explanation. Any other explanation. I realized as I was standing there, hands still firmly pressed onto the bathroom counter and the sink hovering just below my face like a white hole, that I was still standing in the bathroom like a weirdo.

“Sorry about that,” Carter continued after a moment, still speaking through the door. “I didn’t know how else to show you, or tell you, without you thinking I was crazy. You ready to come out again?”

Unsure if I’d heard him right, I blinked at my reflection, my lips parted as I touched just the tip of my tongue to them, wetting the parched flesh. I turned to face the door. “What did you just say?” I asked the door.

“I said we needed to talk. And I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

I shook my head, confused. Clearly, the thoughts weren’t processing right in my mind. “Wait, hold on,” I said after a moment. “Did you just imply what I thought you implied?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I think so.”

“Tell me what it is, then, Carter. So I know I’m not going crazy.”

He sighed again, the sound deep, like it traveled all the way down to his core before coming back up again. “You’re not crazy,” he said. “I was the bear.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.

“It was me,” he continued as I nodded silently along, just listening to the words coming from his mouth, assuring me I wasn’t losing my shit. “I’m the bear.”

I didn’t know what to do. What to say. I was going crazy to the point where I’d even started imagining that Carter had just said he was the bear. That he was the one who’d turned into the giant beast in the next room.

“I know you don’t believe me,” Carter said. “And you think this is just somehow all in your head. But, I can show you again if you need me to. Because this is bigger than just me being a shifter. Much bigger, Lucy.”

Shifter? What the hell was that?

Wow…this was real.

I swallowed hard as the reality of what he was saying came crashing down on me like a mountain from the sky, a comet slamming into my world. I turned to the door, yanking it open again.

Carter stood there, a concerned look in his eyes as he gazed down at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know how else to tell you.”

I opened my mouth, went to respond.

But then, that mountainside of truth and reality seemed to descend on me again, this time with even more force than before. My knees wibbled and wobbled, locked together, and all the breathing exercises in the world couldn’t keep me from falling apart. I tumbled from my feet as the world began to darken around the edges.

“Lucy?” Carter nearly shouted as he caught me on the way to the floor, his strong arms entwining themselves around my waist, around my chest. “Lucy, are you okay?"

I couldn’t respond, though, from beyond the veil of darkness that descended over me as I lost consciousness.