You’re my one regret, Nolan. If I could have one moment back in time, I’d pick that day with the eggs. I’d wrap myself around you so tight that you wouldn’t have even known what was happening. You would have just felt safe and warm and wanted.
I held the tablet so Nolan could read the screen. He nodded against my chest, but didn’t move. I could feel his tears starting up again.
I’m sorry, Nolan. I’m so very sorry. We all lost out by not hearing you, by not seeing you.
This time when Nolan read the message, he didn’t react at all, so I tucked the tablet into the gap between the cushions and then wrapped both my arms around him and just held onto him. At some point, I fell asleep because when Loki woke me up the next morning, Nolan was gone.
And I had no clue if he was coming back.
Chapter Eleven
Nolan
I didn’t go back to the center for two days.
And when I finally did, it wasn’t because I needed the job.
It was late afternoon when I arrived, and while Loki greeted me by my car like he usually did, Dallas didn’t appear, so I went in search of him.
An easy task considering Loki led me right to him.
He was sitting between the two fences surrounding Gentry’s enclosure, leaning his back against the outer fence. I’d noticed early on that he had a soft spot for the bear and often spent a few extra minutes with the big animal throughout the day. Gentry was standing inside the enclosure along the fence near Dallas, scraping at the snow, probably looking for lingering berries that Dallas would feed him every day in that same exact spot.
I’d been working around Gentry’s pen enough to know that I had to enter the small building that butted up against the enclosure to access the gap between the fences. Dallas had explained that bears in captivity didn’t hibernate, so the building provided Gentry a place to escape the cold. There was a large door leading from the pen into the building that could be closed to secure the bear in either the enclosure or in a smaller cage within the building. The door always remained open unless Dallas was bringing in a vet to treat the bear for something. In those cases, Dallas secured Gentry in the cage by closing the door, preventing him from returning to the enclosure. There was a small walkway surrounding the bars of the cage to allow easy access to dart Gentry from any angle so he could be sedated for when the vet needed to physically examine him.
I made my way past the cage and stepped back outside. Dallas didn’t notice me until Gentry did. Being around the bear, even with the heavy fence separating us, still made me nervous, but I was getting used to the way the huge animal liked to walk alongside visitors when they entered his area.
Despite seeing me, Dallas didn’t move. He looked terrible, and I knew that as hard as these past couple of days had been on me, he hadn’t escaped unscathed. I’d been angry at him at first for ruining what had been an amazing night.
But I knew why he’d done it.
And it hadn’t been just to assuage his own guilt.
Dallas’s expression was pained as he watched me approach. I wondered if he thought I was there to officially quit. It was certainly the first thing I’d thought about doing when I’d woken up in his arms two mornings earlier.
But then I’d remembered that kiss.
That amazing kiss on lips that hadn’t ever touched any other man’s but mine.
It couldn’t have been an easy thing for him to admit. And I had my suspicions about why he’d resorted to random hookups over the years – ones that didn’t include something as intimate as kissing.
Dallas started to get up, but I said, “No, stay.”
He swallowed hard and sat back down. His knees were raised and there was a little room between his legs, so I slowly dropped down until I was kneeling between them and facing him. I ignored the snow seeping into the fabric of my jeans. Dallas reached for his phone, but I stayed his hand. That had a whole new level of worry drifting across his features.
“Dallas, you don’t need to get your phone out because you don’t owe me anything. No explanations, no apologies. I know why you did what you did the other night.”
He shook his head slightly and dropped his eyes. I immediately pulled my glove off and used my fingers to tilt his chin up. His skin was really cold, leading me to wonder how long he’d been sitting there for.
“We’re not the same people we were back then. I’m scared to death that you think you somehow deserved what happened to you – like it was karma or some other shit.” When he lowered his eyes, I knew that was exactly what he’d been thinking.