“She didn’t know?”
Jenner huffed a breath and shook his head. “Some people can be trusted with this secret. Some can’t. Dad was right not to tell her. I can hear a lie, and she was full of half-truths. I thought for a minute she wasn’t capable of being genuine, but then she told me the reason she left, and it was the first truly honest thing she said to me. She hadn’t wanted the life Dad offered her. It wasn’t enough.” Jenner rested his cheek against her head. “She hadn’t wanted to be a mother, and when she found out she was having triplets, she felt this heaviness, like she couldn’t breathe because her life was over. She had big dreams, and living in some cabin out in the middle of nowhere, raising multiples, wasn’t what she wanted. She said she tried for the first two years, but every day she woke up feeling like she was drowning. And then she told me that she was sorry, but she didn’t regret her decision because she’d made something of herself.”
“Wow, what a horribly shitty mother.”
Jenner sighed. “Yeah, her mothering instincts weren’t awesome.”
“You know she could’ve chased those dreams and been a parent too, right?”
“Lena, she didn’t even know what she was into, though. She had triplets, and that was breaking her. Imagine when she learned we were all bear shifters.”
“So what? You change into a bear. You aren’t man-eaters. You all have good jobs and good lives. You’re all successful. She bailed, Jenner. From age two to when you tracked her down, she had no contact with you, and her excuse was sorry but I’m not sorry? I got the life I wanted and fuck the rest of you?” Lena shook her head, baffled and trying to imagine leaving a child. She couldn’t even fathom the pain. Couldn’t. “I would never leave a kid.”
“And you won’t have to be put in the position to choose.”
Lena jerked back and frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”
Jenner looked sick right now. “You don’t know everything,” he whispered. “It’s not as simple as me just turning into a bear every once in a while.”
“Then tell me.”
Jenner gave his attention to the creek, so she shoved his arm. “Don’t close down again, Jenner. Tell me. Let me decide if it’s too much. Tell me!”
“What’s the point? Huh?” he barked, eyes sparking like blue flames. “I didn’t tell you that story about my mom to unload on you. I told you so you would understand why I’m doing this.”
Lena felt bear-slapped, and for a moment, she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. She could only look at the man she loved and realize what this discussion was really about. He wasn’t just distancing himself. He was pushing her away. For good. “Doing what?” she whispered. She needed to hear him say it.
“You don’t belong here, Lena,” he murmured, but his voice sounded strange. Half-truth. “You have this huge career that requires a lot of you. I can’t ask you to become stagnant for me.”
“Stagnant? Have you looked around, Jenner? There’s a fucking porcupine over there.” She jammed her finger across the creek at the critter meandering down the bank. “There’s a picture. It’s not like I would be visiting some high-rise city with nothing but rats to photograph. And you’re wrong. I do belong here, or at least in a place like this. I feel at home out in the woods. I always have. I’m not saying I have to move in with you. I can visit or find a place nearby. I mean, I live out of a hotel! My belongings are what I brought with me. I had a pet plant, and it died on my last trip to Montana. I have no roots, and someday I’ll want some. This feels big between us, Jenner.” She clutched the sleeve of his sweater, desperate to banish his vacant expression. “Look at me! This is big. For you and for me, too, because I haven’t felt like this with anyone else.”
“You got a broken marriage with Adam, and now you’ll have a broken pairing—”
“Don’t you even finish that sentence.”
“I hibernate, Lena!”
“What?”
Jenner let off a long, shaky breath, and now the emotion in his eyes mirrored hers. “In a couple months, I’ll go to sleep, and I won’t wake up until April.”
Lena gritted her teeth and shook her head slowly back in forth in denial. “No.”
Jenner’s eyebrow’s lifted slightly. “Yes. Every year it happens. There’s no way to stop it. I’ve fucking tried! I can’t stay awake. Every winter, I pick a different den somewhere around here and hope hunters don’t stumble onto it while I’m asleep. That’s the reality of this life.”