Page 4 of Forget Me Not (The Shifters of Timberfall #1)

Bastien

“Snow is just a bunch of bullshit,” Bastien grumbled as he stomped back into the house, propping the window scraper against the wall before kicking his boots off.

“Oh, quit bitchin’ and get in here for breakfast,” his mother’s voice called from the kitchen. “And thank you for getting the car warmed up, Mijo .”

“If you would just let me take Del to school in the mornings, Mama, I wouldn’t even need to warm the car up for you.

” His tone gave away how exasperated he was, not that it mattered.

This was a conversation they had argued over a dozen times already—and he had never won.

Soriah just waved him off with a knobby hand while piling eggs, hash browns, and bacon onto his plate.

She wore her winter usual: an old, worn black apron over a chunky sweater, black slacks, and a pair of house slippers.

Her once-black hair—long since gone white—was neatly braided and hung well past the hem of her sweater.

Soriah had only just celebrated her sixty-fifth birthday, but the years had been unkind, their weight showing in the form of many wrinkles and her now-hunched frame.

“You know what I will let you do, is go wake up that lazy sister of yours.” She joked with a light pat to his shoulder. “She could sleep through the end of the world, I swear.”

“Honestly, Mama, you spoil her. You should make her get up and get to school herself! What’s going to happen next year when she goes off to college?

” Bas exhaled and hung his head as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

It had been two years and four months since his brother had been killed, but it might as well have been two days and four hours, as far as his mother was concerned.

“Forgive me, Mijo,” she bit back. “Forgive me for loving my child and wanting to give her everything I have while I still can.” She dropped his plate in front of him, the sharp clatter of the ceramic against wood causing him to flinch, then she stormed out of the room.

Dez had left the day after high school graduation and regardless of how much he did not want to leave his twin behind, he never wanted to stay in Montana.

Bastien entertained the idea of going with him to North Carolina, that was, until their mother found out.

Soriah had screamed, cried, screamed some more and then gone almost a month without so much as looking in Dez’s direction.

Bas stayed in hopes that it would smooth things out between the two.

It had not.

Senor Yerovi, Bastien’s father, had passed away when the boys were twenty-six.

Dez had still not been home to visit before it happened.

When he finally returned for the funeral, Soriah freaked out, accusing the stress of him choosing to stay so far from home as the reason why her husband had been so sick—as if moving away caused the cancer.

Soriah turned to Delanira, who was only eleven at the time, and promised to disown her like her brother if she even so much as mentioned going to college anywhere other than Montana State University.

So, when the time came, Del said nothing.

When college applications started coming in the mail, Soriah would throw them in the trash and Del would secretly dig them out.

“You talked about college again, didn’t you?” A soft voice interrupted his thoughts. Bas picked his head up, meeting his sister’s soft brown eyes. He was the only one of the three children to inherit their mother’s smokey gray eyes.

“Morning, Del.” He pushed his plate across the table toward her as he stood. “Eat. She’ll be back down in a few minutes.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked, tucking a strand of her short, dark hair behind her ear .

“Lost my appetite.”

Hal’s butcher shop looked like a hole in the wall from the outside, making it easy for someone to overlook.

The interior, however, extended through to the other side of the block, making the shop deceptively large.

An alley ran the length of the building, where several roll-up doors had been added for bringing shipments in.

All of their goods came from local ranches—the only exception being the seafood, which was shipped in from the coast.

Crisp, white walls and polished concrete floors made up the store front, except for one wall painted with black chalkboard paint.

That particular wall had been covered from ceiling to floor with all the services, cuts, and prices they offered, along with a few cartoon outlines of the corresponding animals.

Hal loved to brag that his granddaughter had spent an entire weekend on a ladder with a box of chalk to make it happen.

A large L-shaped, refrigerated display case spanned the entirety of the back and side wall, with a five-foot stretch of counter for the register nestled in between, directly across from the front door.

Bastien had been desperate when they first moved to Timberfall.

After his dad died, they couldn’t afford to stay in Billings and were forced south by cheaper housing.

Soriah was still getting social security checks, but if Bastien wanted to ensure that his mother could stay at home and out of the workforce, he needed a job.

The ‘Help Needed Immediately’ sign hanging in the window of the local butcher’s made it clear that whoever Hal was, he shared the same sense of urgency.

Thirty minutes after ringing the cowbell above the door, Bas was wearing an apron and carrying crates of packaged meat from one cooler to another.

At seventy-three years old, Hal had no business shuffling hundred-pound crates around, and Bas quickly realized he’d been hired on the spot because of his stature.

He wasn’t the type to spend hours at the gym, but he did have a quick body-weight routine he kept up at home.

Between that and the time he spent in wolf form, running through the woods, he managed to stay in slightly-better-than-good shape.

This morning was cold, as usual; winter was a rough season to work surrounded by freezers.

They had to be careful of how high they set the heat, lest they force the ice chests to work overtime to keep the meat chilled.

The worst case would be the meat warming and spoiling—Hal hated to waste anything.

Bas pulled the hood of his sweater over his head, a few wavy, black strands sticking out, as he continued topping off the stock in the display cases.

He had been thoroughly disappointed when he was younger to discover that while his wolf form kept him warm in winter, his human form had clearly inherited his climate tolerance from his father’s side of the family.

Ecuador was a far cry warmer on any given day than Montana ever would be.

His thoughts drifted back to that morning, then to his twin.

Thinking about Dez always left him drained—an internal roller coaster of feelings that had become synonymous with his brother’s name.

He gritted his teeth at the thought of the poacher who had taken Dez away, and at himself for not being able to stop it.

His chest threatened to split open over the thought of his mother, who should never have outlived any of her children.

The ceaseless urge to reach out and feel for the broken bond—one that had forged long before either boy had taken their first breath—made his skin itch.

Worst of all was the inability to understand why, when he had searched through his brother’s things—desperate for anything tangible to feel his brother’s presence again—he found a will. It was dated two days prior to the accident and tucked inside an envelope addressed to Bastien himself.

Desiderio had paid off and added Bastien onto the title of his Jeep.

He left instructions for how Bastien could help his roommate get out of their lease, and, most surprisingly, he had approved and provided all the information for Bastien to access all three of his bank accounts.

Apparently, Desiderio had been investing and saving the majority of his commissions as a real estate agent, and his net worth was rather impressive for a thirty-two-year-old bachelor.

It ate at Bastien’s insides to know he might never understand how or why his brother had kept that from him—or if the real reason for his visit had been more than just to see the family.