Page 17 of Befriending the Bear (Forestville Silver Foxes #6)

CALLOWAY

I woke slowly, consciousness returning in gentle waves.

The first thing I noticed was warmth—not just the ambient temperature, but the solid presence of another body against mine.

The second was the absence of fear. For the first time in seven years, I’d woken up in bed with someone, and my first emotion wasn’t guilt.

It was…gratitude. Fraser had shown up because he’d been worried about me, had stayed when I’d asked him to. He’d allowed me to lean on him without making me feel weak even once.

No, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt deeply grateful that somehow, despite myself, I’d managed to make a friend.

Fraser was still asleep, his arm heavy across my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck.

We’d shifted in the night, moving from a respectable separation to this tangle of limbs that felt both foreign and achingly familiar.

His chest rose and fell in steady rhythm against my back, and I let myself have this moment—one stolen moment—before reality crashed in.

Pale morning light filtered through the curtains.

The storm had passed, leaving behind that peculiar stillness that always followed violence.

Water dripped from the eaves, and in the distance, the sound of a chainsaw told me people were already at work on fallen limbs and trees.

The power was still out—no hum of appliances or electronics—but with light outside, it wasn’t so bad.

I should move. Should extract myself before Fraser woke and we had to acknowledge this shift, this crossing of carefully maintained boundaries. But his arm tightened slightly, and he made a soft sound that might have been contentment, and I was lost.

“Good morning,” he mumbled against my hair, voice rough with sleep.

Heat flooded my face. “G-good m-m-morning.”

“How are you feeling?” He didn’t move away, didn’t create distance.

How was I feeling? Warm. Safe. Hopeful. Terrified. “B-better,” I said, which was both true and wildly insufficient.

“Good.” His thumb moved in a small, absent circle against my ribs, probably unconscious but devastating in its tenderness. “Storm’s passed.”

“Y-yes.”

We lay there in the growing light, neither acknowledging the intimacy of our position nor moving to change it. It felt like a held breath, a moment suspended between what we’d been and what we might become.

“I should check the damage in your yard. Make sure your trees are okay.”

“In a m-minute,” I said, surprising myself with the request.

He hummed in agreement, settling back against me. His body was solid and warm, and I could feel the places where life had marked him—the tension in his right leg, the careful way he held his weight. We were both damaged goods, carrying our histories in flesh and bone.

“Calloway?” His voice was carefully neutral.

“Y-yes?”

“Do we need to talk about this?”

My heart rate spiked immediately. This. Such a small word to encompass the way we’d found each other in the dark, the way we fit together like puzzle pieces worn smooth by time. The way I wanted to turn in his arms and?—

No. I couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t want that.

“I know this is c-complicated. I’m s-s-sorry if I?—”

“Hey.” He shifted, encouraging me to turn so we were facing each other. His hair was mussed from sleep and there were pillow creases on his cheek. He looked soft, approachable, and dangerously dear. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I asked you to st-stay.”

“And I’m glad you did.” His green eyes were serious, searching mine. “But I don’t want this to change anything between us. I don’t want you to feel…embarrassed or guilty, maybe, and pull back again. Nothing happened that can’t be undone, and I don’t want to lose your friendship over this.”

I stared at Fraser, this man who’d broken into my house in a storm because he was worried about me. Who’d held me through a panic attack without judgment. Who was now offering me honesty wrapped in such care that it made me ache, but in the best way.

“I d-don’t know what I’m d-doing.” The words scraped raw in my throat. “I haven’t…since M-Marcus… I don’t know how to do this anym-m-more. Friendship or…”

I didn’t even dare to say that part aloud.

“We don’t have to do anything. We can get up right now, pretend this didn’t happen, go back to coffee and book discussions.”

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to pretend. For the first time in seven years, I’d woken up feeling safe instead of empty. I’d woken up happy rather than alone and sad. The thought of going backward, of reinstating all those careful boundaries, made my lungs clench painfully.

“What if—” I stopped, gathered courage. “What if I d-don’t want to pretend?”

Something flickered in Fraser’s eyes. Hope, maybe, though carefully controlled. “Then we take it slow. Day by day. No pressure, no expectations.”

“I’m s-scared.”

“Me too. Terrified. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe being scared together is better than being scared alone.”

A laugh bubbled up, surprising me. “That’s either the most r-r-romantic or most d-depressing thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Fraser grinned, and my heart did something complicated. “I’ll work on my pillow talk.”

Pillow talk. Like this might happen again. Like we might have mornings and conversations and the slow negotiation of two lives learning to intertwine. The possibility terrified and thrilled me in equal measure.

“We should g-get up,” I said, though I made no move to leave the warm circle of his arms. “Check the d-damage. Make coffee.”

“Coffee would be awesome, yes. Hate to admit it, but I can’t function without it.”

The practical concerns of post-storm life began to intrude on our bubble. There would be trees down, possible flooding, the whole town pulling together to clean up. Real life, waiting outside this bedroom door.

“Five more minutes?” I asked, feeling young and foolish and brave all at once.

Fraser’s smile was answer enough. He pulled me closer, and I let myself melt into him, storing up warmth against whatever came next. Five minutes to be two people who’d found each other in a storm. Five minutes before we had to figure out what that meant in the light of day.

The power came back on with a sudden hum of appliances returning to life, making us both jump. The spell broke, reality reasserting itself with electric insistence.

Fraser cleared his throat. “I should…”

“Y-yes,” I agreed, already missing his warmth as we carefully disentangled ourselves.

We moved around each other with exaggerated politeness.

Maybe he was as hyperaware of the shift in our relationship as I was.

Fraser borrowed my bathroom while I started coffee with shaking hands.

When he emerged, with droplets of water clinging to his bald head from washing his face, he looked more like the contained man I’d met in the parking lot and less like the soft, sleep-rumpled version I’d woken up next to.

The coffee maker gurgled to life, its familiar sound both comforting and strange in the post-storm quiet.

I focused on the ritual—measuring grounds, filling mugs—anything to avoid thinking too hard about the way Fraser’s presence had transformed my kitchen from a place of solitude to something that felt almost like home again.

“Smells good,” he said, accepting the mug I offered. Our fingers brushed, and I couldn’t even pretend it was accidental.

“We should ch-check outside,” I said, needing movement, needing to not stand here drowning in the domestic intimacy of sharing morning coffee with someone who’d held me through the night.

Fraser nodded. “I’ll fix your front door first, then check your roof and gutters while you assess the garden damage.”

The separation was both a relief and a loss.

I pulled on boots and a jacket, grateful for tasks that required action instead of words.

Outside, the world looked scrubbed clean and slightly broken.

Branches littered the yard, and my carefully tended garden beds were waterlogged and scattered with debris.

The old maple in the front had lost a major limb, but it had fallen away from the house, which was a small mercy.

“Calloway,” Fraser called out, and I walked around to find him studying the oak tree in my backyard.

“What’s w-wrong?”

He pointed. “See that limb? It needs to come down. It’s compromised, and if it breaks off, parts of it will hit your roof.”

I sighed. “I’ll c-c-contact a tree c-company.”

And by contact, I meant message. Calls were a terror I rarely subjected myself to.

“No need. I can do it.”

“You c-can t-take down that limb?”

Fraser nodded. “I’ve got the equipment in my shed. Chainsaw, ropes, all of it. Did plenty of tree work in my firefighting days.”

I wanted to protest—his leg, the danger, the way he’d already done so much—but the words tangled in my throat. He must’ve seen the concern on my face because he added, “I’ll be careful. Promise.”

“O-okay. But I’m h-helping.”

“Deal.” He smiled, that warm sunrise smile that lit up the room. “But maybe we can have breakfast first?”

I made pancakes for us, and he ate a massive stack, at least twice what I managed to put away. I loved it. Cooking for someone else seemed like such a simple thing, but it meant something to me, especially when he clearly appreciated what I had made for him.

He licked his lips as he finally pushed his plate back. “Those were perfect.”

“G-glad you liked them.”

I put the leftovers in the fridge, then loaded the dishwasher. Fraser sat there, watching me as he drank his second cup of coffee.

“I need to grab my gear from my house,” he said when he’d finished his coffee. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I watched him leave with a strange reluctance, even though I knew he was coming right back. To distract myself, I surveyed the rest of the damage. The herb garden was salvageable, though waterlogged, and several rose bushes had been beaten down but would likely recover. All in all, I’d been lucky.