Chapter Twelve

There was a knocking on her house, but it wasn't the door.

Demi sat up in bed and froze, listening.

Another banging noise sounded, but up on the roof.

Someone was trying to break in!

She kicked out from under the tangled covers, shoved her feet into a pair of old, gray snow boots, grabbed the baseball bat by the front door, and yanked the door open—ready to murder!

There was a ladder in front of her door, resting against the eaves of her home. She ducked out from under the entryway to see Tyler, hanging a strand of orange lights.

"What are you doing?" she yelled.

He looked down at her with a pissed-off glare. "I'm doing what I said I would do. I'm decorating your home for you."

"Did you not hear anything I said yesterday?"

"Yeah, I heard it all. Every single word. And when it was my turn to talk, you ran, and then blocked my text messages."

"We're done, Tyler. Go home."

He stood at the top of that ladder, glaring at the roofline. Two seconds passed, and then he dropped the strand of lights and climbed down the ladder faster than she even realized a man could do.

"I absolutely listened to everything you said, Demi. It tortured me. I haven't fucking slept! You made me feel awful, and you know, normally I might deserve that, but I didn't do anything wrong this time. I was so confused on why Danielle was sending me pictures of her until I broke down and asked Rachel what the hell was going on, and she gave me the backstory on Danielle. A backstory I had no idea about!" He stepped closer. "She stopped me last week while I was working and asked to hire me out for the Christmas season. I was considering it on one condition, which I was upfront about!"

"What…" She swallowed hard. "What condition?"

"I won't ever work with anyone in that neighborhood but you. She was shit out of luck on that, even before I knew your history with her. I do have a business to run while my dad is down, and so I do have to build up a client list outside of just working with you. That's what I do. That is my job. Danielle got to you, and because sometimes you women are complete head-cases to each other, my guess is she probably saw you out there talking to me, and sent those pictures to get under your skin. It wasn't for me. She sure as hell isn't under my skin. Some hard-headed, stubborn, frustrating female has been so far in my fucking mind since I was eighteen years old, Demi. That's you. I wasn't messing with you, or playing with your head, or talking to other women in whatever romantic way you're imagining. I'm happy with you!" He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, opened up the text thread, and aimed the screen toward her face. "You don't trust me. You were real clear about that. My God, Demi, someday you're going to figure it out."

"I don't need to see it," she murmured, feeling sick. She'd been crying all night, and now she felt like there was a possibility that she had overreacted.

"I need you to look at both the text threads that you had concerns about. Listen to the truth in my voice as I tell you I haven't deleted or altered a single thing. Here's Danielle's. You can look at Erin's too. Read every word. I don't fuckin' care. I'm back in town and so there is some attention, but that won't last forever. Especially not with you flying circles around me, taking shots at every woman who looks my way."

"Oh, so it's my fault that I feel disrespected?"

"No! I'm listening! Woman! I'm so fucking pissed off, and I feel like I'm going to pay for mistakes I made when I was a kid for the rest of my life with you! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, okay? I regretted kissing anyone else after you. I regretted every one. I wasn't ready for you. You felt huge, and scary, and I knew if I let myself dig in with you, I would never be able to leave this town." He inhaled sharply, muttered a curse, and looked down at the ground, hands on his hips. "I wasn't going to be able to leave. And now I'm back here, and everything is all messed up, and you feel even bigger now, and I still can't seem to get it right." He rolled his head back and shook his head at the sky. "I'm not going to get it all right."

"I think I'm…" She felt so bad, now that she knew how it really was. "I think I'm scared too, and waiting for you to mess up. I expect you to hurt me. I get defensive when a hurt feels familiar. I really liked you back then, and then I functioned for a long time on my pretend-dislike for you."

"I did research on shifters. On crow shifters in particular. The second I found out you were one, so many things clicked into place. I wanted to message you and just be supportive. I saw your family on the news, and I knew it had to be heavy, living in a small town where everyone had learned what you are. I typed out messages a dozen times, and deleted them every time. I couldn't talk to you, so I researched. I wanted to learn everything I could about you. You crows mate for life, right? You form a bond to one person, and that's it. You don't see anyone else."

Heat flooded her cheeks, and she clenched her hands at her sides. "I don't want to talk about this—"

"Tough. I want to talk about it. I want to talk about everything. We are both shit at communication, but we're going to learn together. You didn't see anyone else after I kissed you, did you?"

"That's not true."

"Then what's the truth?"

She crossed her arms over her chest like a shield, baseball bat still clutched tightly in her hand, and dared a glance up at him, chickened out, and looked at the ground again. He stepped closer and hooked a finger under her chin. "You've already shown me the animal. You've shown me the nest. I would die before I hurt you with that stuff. Let me in on the rest."

"The bond happened before you even kissed me," she whispered in shame. "The kiss just made the bond deeper."

He gently pulled the bat out of her hand, set it on the ground and pulled her in, hugged her against his chest, and sighed. He rested his cheek against the top of her head as she clutched the fabric of his sweater and wished so badly that she could be normal.

"Do you remember the moment it happened?" he asked.

"I was staying the night with Rachel, a few months before you kissed me, and I'd had a bad dream. I didn't want to wake her up, so I left her room and sat in the kitchen, trying to steady out so I wouldn't Change. I heard a sound at the door, and it was you, sneaking back in the house."

"I remember this. You were sitting at the kitchen island, pale as a sheet, looking like you had seen a ghost."

"You just stood there for a minute, like you were afraid I was going to call out for your dad and tell on you, and then you moved toward the stairs. You stumbled on the way, and I knew you had been drinking. You held onto the banister and waited to see if your dad would wake up at the noise, then you looked back at me and asked, ‘Are you okay?'"

"I was drunk that night," he said. "I was working through a lot back then. You got up from your chair, and you pulled a bottled water from the fridge. You walked over and handed it to me, and said, ‘It's going to be all right.' And at first, I thought you were talking about you. Whatever had you looking haunted. But you weren't. I figured that out later. You were telling me everything was going to be okay for me."

"You hugged me. You had been drinking and probably didn't know what you were doing, but you thanked me for being nice to you, and I could tell you meant it. It was the first time I had seen you be kind; vulnerable. After that, my crow couldn't stop paying attention to you. It was that little glimpse of the real you, not the abrasive, combative, middle-finger-to-the-world boy you pretended to be around your friends and your dad. That night changed it all for me."

"That's why you've been so angry with me. I kissed you, and then you felt betrayed, and then left behind."

"Yes," she whispered.

"You're scared I'm going to do that again?"

"Yes."

"Okay." He cupped the back of her head and hugged her closer. "Then I don't mind."

"Don't mind what?"

"The times when you feel you need to panic and punish me. I ask that you try to work on that over time and go easier on me, but I don't mind if you have questions about other women. You gotta build trust. If you have questions or feel that panic, you can light me up, but you can't block me and shut me out before I have a chance to figure things out with you. We can't do that."

She sniffed and looked up at him. "Are you…are you being the mature one right now?"

"Yeah, and it's awful. I'm gonna need you to step up and carry some of the load."

She laughed thickly and dropped her forehead down onto his chest. "Can you block Danielle and Erin?"

"Already did it. Right after I told them both to leave me alone, and that I'm in a committed relationship. Mostly because it really bothered me that you said that yesterday. I'm not afraid of commitment, Demi. Take it back."

"I take it back. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I understand better now."

"You're not freaking out over the shifter-bond stuff?"

"Woman, I have two acorns in my pocket right now."

"What?" she asked, easing back so she could look him in the eye.

"I picked up two damn acorns this morning because they reminded me of the trinkets your crow likes. I was hella mad when I put them in my pocket. Mad or no, I still collected them because I knew I was going to want to give them to you later. No, your bond doesn't scare me. You feel big to me, too."

"You like me," she accused.

He arched his eyebrow.

"Tell me you want it," she teased in a deep voice.

He laughed a wicked sound and angled his face slightly away, shook his head. "You get to me, Darke. You're in my head."

She grinned. "Good. That makes two of us. Now you know how it feels." She held her hand out. "Can I hold the acorns?"

He chuckled and dug them out of his pocket, along with a shiny gum wrapper. He tried to flick the gum wrapper away from the acorns, and muttered that it was just trash, but she snatched up the gum wrapper too.

"I like that and I want that, shiny paper is one of my favorite things, and these are very fine acorns," she murmured, studying them.

"I'll save my gum wrappers for you too, ya little weirdo."

"Thank you," she said, clutching his presents tight in her hand.

"I have three more acorns in the cupholder of my truck. I'm saving them for the next time you're mad at me."

He leaned down and lifted her up in a hug, wrapped her legs around himself, and grabbed her ass with both hands as he kissed her. His kiss turned gentle, and he swayed her side to side as she hugged his neck.

Demi disengaged from his lips and asked, "What size are the acorns in your truck?"

"One is round and big, and one is lean and half the size, and one is more green than brown."

She didn't mind him seeing how pink her cheeks were probably turning. It was from pleasure, not embarrassment. "I really like those."

"And paperclips and safety pins and coins. I'm constantly looking on the ground for that stuff."

"You get me," she said. "Even when I'm semi-mean, you understand how to put the fire out."

"You mispronounced ‘all-the-way mean.' I also brought you an iced coffee and one of those breakfast sandwiches from Marty's, because Rachel said you were going to stab me the next time you saw me on account of the Danielle pics. I really missed your tits last night, and hated sleeping alone."

"Yeah?" she asked, certain she loved this man now.

"Hated it. If we're fighting, you gotta let me stay in it so I can remind you who you belong to before your fire is all the way out."

"Oooh, you're one of those boys who needs an occasional fight."

He leaned in and nipped her neck. "I know what I have, and I'm not going to try to cause problems with my woman…but if we argue, I want the fun parts too."

"Noted, and I'll work on staying in the fight."

God, he was putting her heart at ease.

He could handle her—all the unsteady parts of her that would chase away lesser men.

Her crow had known what she was doing all those years ago when she saw the potential in Tyler.

For the first time in as long as she could remember, she was glad she wasn't normal.

She was proud of her animal. Proud of what she was building. Proud that she had a man who wanted to stick with her even in the hard times.

He was going to teach her how to have a relationship, and she was going to teach him the same. Their messes matched. Here in this moment, legs wrapped around him, looking down at his face as he described this oak tree he'd found in town, she knew she'd stumbled upon something special. Something people looked their whole lives for. Oh, she was going to mess it up. He was also going to have moments where he messed it up too, because they were not perfect people.

But thankfully, neither of them had ever pretended to be, and there was something beautiful about their chaos.

She respected a man who could manage her spitfire tendencies and run-away tactics—and still show up, and still hold himself accountable, and still try to understand her. He was dominant but not domineering, and that balance was exactly what she needed.

She'd told him once that everything would be okay, and she'd been right.

Everything had turned out okay.