Chapter 9 - Bigby

Shortly after everyone gets their food, I see storm clouds rolling in on the horizon. I dump the charcoal far away from little feet and start packing everything into the back of my Jeep.

I'll need help putting everything away in the garage, but when I look to Aris, he's got both little girls in his arms. They're fast asleep, having conked out the moment their heads hit the towels on the sand. Water play and good food will do that.

"Hey, Linnea," I say, glancing at her. "You gonna come help me put this stuff away?"

She glances between me and Rosa, then bends over slightly, puffing out her face.

"What are you—" I start, but she cuts me off.

"I'm not feeling so good," Linnea moans.

"Probably Bigby's cooking," Aris jokes quietly while trying to set Araya in the car without waking Kaila.

I shoot him a glare.

"What do you mean, you felt fine a second—"

"Rosa can go with you," Linnea offers. "I can take Araya and Kaila back to the compound."

"No," Rosa says, shaking her head and moving closer to her daughter. "I'll stay with Kaila."

"Rosa," Linnea says, taking Rosa's hands and lowering her face. "Trust me."

A long moment passes between the two women, but eventually, Rosa's face softens.

"She is my life," she whispers to Linnea, who puts her hand over her heart.

"I know, love," Linnea says, and just like that, Rosa is climbing into my Jeep with me. I stare as Aris, Linnea, and the two girls take off in front of us.

"Where's Olivia?" I ask, glancing over at Rosa, who has lost the soft look she had for Linnea and is sitting in the seat, arms crossed.

"Probably off with your boy," Rosa mutters, reaching up to grab the seatbelt right when I gesture for her to put it on. "Yeah, yeah," she says, and I grin.

It's a call back to when we dated. For some reason, Rosa's parents never had her wear a seatbelt growing up. Some bullshit about shifters surviving any car crash—I know firsthand that it's not true. Linnea's parents both died in a car crash, and they were healthy, active shifters.

We fought about it constantly when we first started dating. I wouldn't move the car until she buckled in. It got to the point where, occasionally, I'd reach over her to put her seatbelt on. She'd reach up, catching me in a kiss, and then before I knew what I was doing, I'd have my hands on her hips and her ass in my lap.

I feel a wave of lust rush over me, hard, and I have to grip the steering wheel to keep from looking at her. I don't know what I'll do if I look at her.

"I know what you're thinking about," Rosa says, her voice low. "And you'd better stop."

I swallow hard. Her telling me not to think about it only makes it harder to ignore how good she looks in my passenger seat, her arms crossed, her face fixed into a perfectly angry mask. Maybe she wasn't happy at the lake today—but she wasn't nearly as miserable as she has been. And Kaila was having a great time.

Kaila told me all about her love of the ocean, which didn't stop at surfing and extended to everything, including details about the chemical composition of the water and the creatures living there.

"There's such a thing as a flapjack octopus," Kaila had said, using her hands to scoop up water, dumping it back out again. "It's called that because flapjack is another word for pancake—and the flapjack octopus likes to smush itself against the ground in the ocean."

"Wow," I'd said, taking a deep breath and turning to float on my back next to her.

"And there's also sea angels—they're not real angels, they're more like slugs. And a sea pig!"

"Don't say that too loudly, Linnea might adopt one," Aris muttered. He had his hands under Araya's back and was trying to teach her how to do a backstroke, but she was mostly enjoying the support without focusing on floating. "You have to move your arms, love."

"There are interesting things about lakes, too," I'd said, "We're actually not far from one of the biggest lakes in the world."

"Exaggerating much?" Aris laughs.

"It's the fifth biggest," I defended, and he splashed me with water, which made the girls giggle.

"What other things?" Kaila asked, her eyes still focused on the water as she strained it through her fingers.

"Well, lakes can be open or closed," I said, thinking of the water sprites. "This lake is open, because water comes in and out from the Mississippi River, but some lakes are closed, which means they aren't connected to any other water."

"What about creatures?"

I thought immediately of leaches but decided not to share that little nugget of information with her. I didn't want her freaking out and running to tell Rosa that there were blood-sucking parasites in the lake.

"Well," I said, trying to think of something that wouldn't frighten her too badly. "There are fish called sturgeons, which can grow to be really, really big. Like me and Araya's daddy would both have to help to hold it up."

"Oh, no," Kaila said, glancing into the water like the fish might come to eat her.

"They don't like to come to the shore," I said, my heart pounding. I didn't want to do anything that would make Kaila hate the lake. For some reason, it was really important to me that she liked it.

"Oh," she said, visibly relaxing.

"Nice one," Aris had muttered, low enough that the girls couldn't hear him. I'd shot him a look, but he returned it with a sympathetic smile.

Now, Rosa stares resolutely through the windshield, refusing to look at me or even acknowledge my existence. Because I sometimes have no control of my mouth, I say the worst possible thing I can.

"Is Kaila mine?"

" What? " Rosa asks, turning to me, eyes wide.

"It's just," I say, forcing myself to relax when I see my knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. "The timeline matches up. And Kaila—she just seems so much like me."

"She's not yours," Rosa says, waving her hand, her jaw set. "I was with someone else."

"When?"

"Excuse me?"

"When? Because the timeline is so close. When is her birthday?"

Rosa works her jaw, not looking at me.

"I was with someone else, Bigby. She's not yours. I stopped taking my birth control and saw someone the week after you left."

I bite my tongue. I know she's lying, but it hurts, anyway. Not that I'll admit it to Rosa, but I haven't been with anyone else since the day I left her. It felt wrong. Plus, I was so busy with work for the agency that there was hardly any time to date.

"That's not true," I growl, finally looking at her. I'm surprised to see she's staring back at me, her eyes fierce and bright.

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not."

"How would you know?"

"I can tell you're lying!"

"How?"

I stare at her, and she snaps at me to look back at the road. We're nearing my house, and the lake has long since disappeared in the rearview mirror.

" Rosa ," I say, not wanting to mention the apparent mating bond that's developing between us. Even when we're talking, the back of my mind is acutely aware of how her legs sit, crossed on the seat, how her arms compress her breasts, how her hair falls over her shoulders.

I want to touch every part of her. I want to relearn her body, update my understanding of how to make her feel good.

Forcing myself to push it to the back of my mind again, I growl softly and glance at her, but she's looking out the window now, having completely turned her head from me.

"Rosa," I say, "we can't ignore this—"

"Ignore it? Why, Bigby? You're very good at ignoring things!"

"That's not—" I take a deep breath. "I can explain, Rosa—"

"I don't want to hear your excuses."

We pull up outside my house, and Rosa hops out, helping me get the stuff into the garage. Mostly, I just need someone to hold the door while carrying things in. The second it's finished, she hops in my Jeep, her arms crossed, staring out the window until I drop her off outside the old bar.

As I watch her go inside, something in my chest twists. I don't know how to get through to her.

***

"You need to apologize," Linnea says, popping a piece of celery into her mouth. We're sitting at her kitchen island, and she's trying to get me to try a new veggie dip. I eye my broccoli with disinterest. "That's how Aris and I were able to heal our relationship. He had to apologize for what happened, or we never would have moved on."

"But she won't let me get a word in edgewise."

"I'm sure she is—you're just not using that one word to say you're sorry, are you?"

I think about the conversation. Linnea is right—I wanted to explain myself and justify my decision, but from Rosa's position, there's no reason a man should leave his child. And she's right.

"I think it was Rosa's mother who reached out to me about them sheltering here," Linnea says, and I'm relieved that she's changed the topic. She can always tell when someone is ready to move on.

"I'm glad she's still alive," I say, to which Linnea raises her eyebrows. I sigh. "Amon is worse than Varun. It's hard to believe, but the guy is totally ruthless. For one, His territory is way bigger, so he just has more shifters under his thumb. But the stuff I've seen him do—and the worse things that Rosa witnessed when she was a kid—they'll make your insides curl."

"Yuck," Linnea says, holding her hands up. "I don't want to know. I believe you that it's that bad. So, what can we do about it?"

"I'm honestly not sure that if we track Amon down, we'll be able to take him. Rosecreek is small, for one, and still recovering. And I would never ask Aris to take on that threat. He very well could fall to Amon—and then you—and the kids…"

Linnea puts her hand on my shoulder, smiling kindly.

"We'll figure it out, Bigby. We always do."