Ready to Bear (18 page)

“What happened, Billy?” Thea’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

Billy couldn’t meet her eyes. “All of the signs were there, of course. I was fifteen. I was agitated and angry all the time. I was more aggressive than many of my friends, but my parents attributed it to just being a kid. That was even after I started breaking stuff in the house on the regular basis. I guess you could say that I had quite a temper. There was a lot of stuff inside of me that I didn’t talk to anyone about. It was all normal teenager bullshit looking back on it now, but I was angry at the world. I didn’t fit in, and I didn’t like being different. This was just before Markus Kasper brought us all out into the mainstream. You still had to hide your true nature from the world.”

Thea reached across the table and took his hands in hers. He looked at their joined fists. He still couldn’t look at her.

“I came home from school one afternoon with a pounding headache. I had gotten into a fight and was given detention. I knew that since it was like the third time something like that happened, I might get expelled. I was so mad. When I got home, my mother told me she had to run out to the store to get a few things for dinner. She asked me to watch my little brother. The store was ten minutes away. She was going to be gone thirty minutes, tops.”

Billy felt a small choke in the back of his throat. He could see the scene clearly in his head. His mother walking out the door and his younger brother, Pete, sitting at the kitchen table coloring in his coloring book.

“Pete was ten. He and I barely spoke because I thought he was boring and obnoxious. He followed me around everywhere. I was frustrated that day because I was supposed to meet a few guys to hang out, and then I was stuck there in my house babysitting my little brother. I just remember thinking how unfair everything felt. Then it was like something else took hold of me. I stared at Pete, and I got angrier and angrier. Then it was like I blacked out.”

“Oh, Billy,” There was a throb of emotion in Thea’s voice.

“When I came to, I heard my mother wailing and the screech of the ambulance sirens. I don’t remember much else. I think they gave me a sedative, but then they carted me off to a place that I’m sure is nothing like the camp that your brother mentioned. After I had phased, apparently I overturned the kitchen table, and Pete got caught underneath. He had two fractured ribs from that, and when I jumped onto the table and across the room in my bear form, I broke his pelvis and femur. They did everything they could, but he still walks with a cane.”

Billy met Thea’s eyes then. “It was an accident. I know that. That’s what the rational part of my brain told me every night when I went to sleep. But I saw the way my parents looked at me after that. Pete wouldn’t even stay in the same room as me. He was always afraid that I would shift and hurt him again. No matter how many times I said I was sorry, no one in my family was able to forgive me. When I graduated, it was a mutual decision that I find somewhere else to live.”

“You were just a kid,” Thea said.

Billy shook his head. “When you are a shifter, that’s no excuse. You have to be vigilant and on guard all the time. I hadn’t listened to my parents when they told me that. I thought I’d be able to control it when the time came. I was wrong, but I think that’s because there was always a part of me that was angry. That was the thing that tipped the balance in the bear’s favor, and that’s a lesson I will never forget.”

He stood up. He felt emotionally drained, and the night hadn’t even started yet. “I think I should go back to the club. Kyle’s suggestion to train wasn’t a bad one. I’m rusty, and I’d like to scope the place out before everyone gets there.”

“I’ll come with you,” Thea said.

“Alex has to finish his homework,” Billy said. “Why don’t you call Eric and ask him to send Cal around? I’ll wait until he gets here. Then I’ll see you at the club later.”

“Billy, I…” Thea started.

Billy touched the side of her cheek with a sad smile. “Things aren’t always what they seemed, are they?”

“No,” she replied. “They aren’t.”

Thea moved through the rest of the afternoon in a state of fogginess. Billy kissed her forehead softly and was gone before she had a chance to fully process everything that he had told her. She sensed he wanted to give her space to do that and didn’t want to rush her. She understood more about the complexity of his character and the warnings he had offered about Alex. She also could see why he felt it was important for all of them to make sure that Alex was well-informed about the implications of his first phase if and when it happened.

Her heart bled for the young, misunderstood youth that Billy had been. She still wasn’t sure how to reconcile that with the fact that he had gone on to participate in such a brutal sport to blow off his feelings of anger, betrayal, and guilt. She was sure that she would have done something differently in his situation. But how could she judge him? It was a situation she would never be in herself.

Then she challenged that thought. As she moved around the kitchen making dinner for her and Alex, she thought about what she would consider saying if Billy ever asked her if she’d like to become a shifter. If their relationship progressed, it was something that would be on the table. It wasn’t something she had ever thought about before, and she wasn’t sure if it was something she would want to consider.

The obvious benefit was that shifters tended to have longer lifetimes than humans, and if she did have a future with Billy, she thought that she’d want to spend as much time as possible with him. But was that what she wanted? After what she had seen the last couple of days, Billy still had issues that he needed to deal with when it came to his bear. It rode there below the surface, ever present and accounted for.

These were all things that she hadn’t imagined confronting just the day before. But now she was in it up to her chin. Not only had she slept with Billy, but she had feelings for him as well, as crazy as that sounded. Thea didn’t believe in soul mates or instalove, but her attraction to Billy was there no matter how she tried to argue with herself.

When Alex appeared just as she finished grilling the fish fillets for dinner, she found that he was watching her thoughtfully.

“What?” she asked as she made their plates. She always tried to cook plenty of fresh vegetables for both of them, and they made a perfect accompaniment to the fish.

“You like him,” he said. He spooned a forkful of fish into his mouth. “Billy. You like him a lot.”

“I’m not really interested in dating advice from a fifteen-year-old if that’s what you’re offering,” Thea said. She sat down at the counter next to him. “But yes, I like him.” She didn’t see any reason to hide what she felt for Billy from Alex. The mere fact that he had been in their apartment twice in the last two days would have been enough of an indication.

“Do you think he’ll win tonight?”

It was the question of the day. “I hope so,” Thea said. “It’s important that he does. I think if anyone can do it, he can do it.” She didn’t say that her confidence came from a search of Eric’s confidential files on shifter matches over the last decade. She had access to all of that kind of information, which she hadn’t ever had a need to look at until now.

She had cross-referenced known shifter matches in the towns near Billy’s second clan and searched fighters who would have fit his age at the time. It had made her feel a little bit ill to see all the names that had been listed on her screen. After that, it was simply a matter of drilling down into each record and looking for any identifying pictures or descriptions. After trolling through about twenty profiles, she’d found his picture.

Billy hadn’t used his real name for those fights, which she thought was smart since he was also a policeman at the time, and shifter fighting was illegal. Travis Fenton was the name he used back then. Travis Fenton had an astonishing record when it came to shifter matches. In bear matches, so those against his own species, he was 11-1. In fights against every other species, he was undefeated. No wonder his alpha hadn’t been so keen on Billy’s desire to retire from the circuit.

Thea was reasonably confident that this was the big secret that Eric said Billy was hiding from her. She had to admit, between that and what happened to Billy’s brother, she had two doozies whammed on her in the span of a little more than ten minutes.

“He seems tough,” Alex agreed, drawing Thea back to the present conversation. “I mean, he’s a sheriff and all. They get training for how to take down criminals. Plus, he’s a shifter. This has got to be like a piece of cake, right?”

“Right,” Thea said. She didn’t want Alex to see how badly her nerves were affecting her. What she had said to Billy earlier was still true. It all felt too easy. If she could dig up the shifter match info on Billy, surely Joshua had been able to do that too. It all looked and felt like a trap that Billy had walked right into. Of course, after being poisoned, he hadn’t had much of a choice.

Suddenly, the food in Thea’s mouth tasted like ash. She got up from the counter after taking a few more bites and started to clean up the kitchen. “I want to leave by seven, so go get cleaned up,” she said when she saw that Alex had already polished off the food on his plate.

Thirty minutes later, they walked in the front door of Urban Dwellers. The music was loud enough that it should have encouraged dancing, but the crowd was still sparse.

“Eric said that you should meet him in the offices. Why don’t you head up that way?” she said to Alex. There were several private suites that overlooked the ring, and Eric had assured her that Alex would be safely ensconced in one of those with them. Thea hadn’t told Eric yet that she intended to watch the fight ringside.

Alex gave her a thumb’s up signal, and he crossed the dance floor ogling the go-go dancers up on the stage. Thea wanted to roll her eyes, but she could hardly blame him. The dancers were lithe, beautiful and scantily clad. Several of them gave Alex little hand waves. That was something she was going to have to talk to Eric about.

She saw Sophie wiping off the bar top at the main bar, and she made a beeline for her friend.

“Need a drink?” Sophie asked when she looked up and saw Thea approaching.

“Yes, please.” Thea wasn’t even going to keep up any form of pretense. “Is Billy up in the offices with Eric?”

“He’s already downstairs in the arena prowling around the corners and muttering something about security, no doubt,” Sophie said. “He and Eric had a bit of a blow-up earlier right out in the middle of the dance floor. Those two really seem to like each other.”

Thea was happy that she had missed that. “They’re getting along better and better all the time.” She took the glass of wine that Sophie offered and started to turn away but then decided that she was going to ask her question. “When you shifted for the first time, did you know how you were going to react? Were you in control?”

Sophie blinked. Her face grew serious. “Christ, hon. That’s not a question that you should ask any shifter unless they bring it up first. It’s kind of like asking about the first time you had sex. My first phase was a complete shitshow. Scared me and my boyfriend at the time out of our gourds.”

“But nobody got hurt, right?”

“The first phase is tricky,” Sophie said. “Looking back, all the signs are there if you know what to look for. That’s why we talk about it so much with those that are coming up the ranks. If you know what to look for, and you’re prepared, and then it’s more likely that you won’t hurt anybody, other than maybe yourself.”

Thea wasn’t sure if that answer made her feel better or worse about what had happened to Billy.

“Most of the time, when things get close, shifters will send those on the cusp away to stay with relatives in some remote part of the country. It’s just better for everyone that way,” Sophie continued.

“Thanks,” Thea said. She took another sip of her wine and then handed the glass back to Sophie. “Hang onto this for me. I’m going to go find Billy.”

“Be sure to give him a big good luck smooch,” Sophie said.

Thea waved to her friend with a smirk and made her way to a small door that was painted to blend in with the wall. She knocked on the door three times. A small window slid open. Cal’s eyes stared back at her. She often wondered if there was anything Eric didn’t trust the huge bouncer to do.

“It’s me,” she said. The door opened. She patted Cal’s arm and gave him a nod as she made her way down the narrow staircase that led down to the main floor. The design itself of the shifter arena was rather ingenious. Eric, Tony, and Kyle had the whole building that existed there before demolished, and they built an identical new structure from the ground up. This time, though, it included the subterranean shifter arena that had enough room for several hundred in the audience, and it was usually packed to the rafters on fight night.

Thea waved to the woman behind the glass in the booth at the bottom of the stairs. The shifter matches were a wildly profitable venture for the Urban Dwellers, and all of it was income that was off the books and quickly filtered to offshore accounts. It was a part of Eric’s business that Thea wished she had no knowledge of. Any day she expected to hear that they had gotten into trouble with the police, but several well-documented donations had been made to various precincts around the club. It seemed as if everyone benefited from the matches. Everyone except the fighters themselves, when the fights didn’t go well. As far as Thea knew, there was at least one death every fight night. Eric shrugged it off and said it was just the way of the shifter world.

Thea entered the arena on the top level. She saw the man standing in the center of the ring. He had his back to her and seemed to be taking it all in. She stood there for several moments watching him, unsure of whether or not she should approach. Then Billy turned, and his hand motioned for her to come closer.

Thea made her way down the levels and onto the main floor. Chairs were set up on the floor in several rows around the ring. It looked just like a boxing ring, except above the ring hung four large slats of metal. When it was time for the match to begin, those metal grates were brought down and fixed to the ring forming a large cage. Inside, the opponents would fight until one surrendered or was knocked unconscious.

She desperately hoped that she wasn’t about to watch Billy die. He knelt down as she approached and offered his hand to her as she moved up the stairs. He sat on one of the ropes to move it so that she could join him inside the ring. Once inside, he put his arm around her waist and drew her close.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey,” she said weakly. It had only been a couple of hours since she’d last seen him, but she couldn’t help but feel as if it had been days. Being this close to him again made her head swim. Surely, these feelings were real?

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Still no ill side effects,” he said. “I didn’t do anything strenuous. Just hit a couple of bags and lifted some weights. Nothing that got my heart rate going as much as the cardio I did earlier.” He grinned at her, and Thea blushed as she remembered their interlude.

“I didn’t even think about that,” she said. “I should have.”

“Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t take it back for anything. If I was going to go out, that was pretty sweet in my opinion.”

Thea had to chuckle. She looked out at all the empty seats around them. She felt the oppressive weight of hundreds of invisible eyes. Something felt off. She wished she knew what it was, and she shivered.

“What’s wrong?” Billy asked. “Believe me, you don’t have to worry about me. I can handle this. As long as I take him down early, I should be fine.”

“And I suppose that confidence is coming from the ten first-round knockouts of your previous fights?”

Billy’s face turned into a frown. “I see you’ve been doing some checking on me.”

“Because I was worried,” Thea said. “This is all new for me, and I don’t want to find a boyfriend and watch him die on the same day.”

“I’m your boyfriend?” Billy asked. “You’d be okay with that after everything I told you?”

Thea wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about anything in the future until after the fight…but yeah. I’d say right now that’s what you are. What you told me was a surprise, but you can’t scare me away that easily.”

Billy took her face in his hands. He stared into her eyes, and Thea’s breath caught in her throat. It was crazy how when he looked at her like that, she reacted as if she couldn’t remember how to make her body function properly.

“Do you ever think that it could be more than that?” His words seemed deliberately chosen as if he was afraid that she was going to run in the other direction.

That’s exactly what she should do. But her feet were rooted in place. Billy had taken up residence in her life. She had no interest in changing that any time soon.

“I think there’s the possibility,” she replied.

His smile made her feel as if she had won some kind of romance lottery. It lit up his face, and she saw yet another side of him, a sweet, gentler side. “I’ll take it,” he said. He pulled her into a huge hug and then made her laugh as he spun her around in a circle.

“Dancing happens on the main floor.” Eric’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker, and Billy immediately set Thea back down on her feet. Thea turned and looked over her shoulder. She saw Eric and Alex in the announcer’s booth. Both stared down at them, but their expressions were very different. Alex smirked while Eric sulked. “The doors open in twenty minutes. I suggest you start getting your game face on.”