turned onto the main highway and really got his truck going now, arriving at Seven Sons only a few minutes later. Sure enough, Sammy’s rickety, old red and brown truck sat in Micah’s driveway.
Bear parked right behind it, his heart thumping out a strange rhythm in his chest. He sat in the cab of his truck—much nicer and newer than Sammy’s—for a few minutes, trying to convince himself to get out.
He didn’t want to be made the fool. At forty-five years old, he didn’t need to feel like such a spectacular failure.
Micah came out onto the front porch, and Bear couldn’t just leave now. So he got out of his truck too, trying to remember the scenarios Evelyn had created for him.
“Bear,” Micah said with a big grin. And why shouldn’t he be smiling? He had a beautiful wife now too. A baby boy born last month. In fact, Simone came outside too, that little infant in her arms with a shock of dark hair.
“He wants you,” she said, passing the baby to Micah. She gazed at her son for a moment, and Bear thought he was made of all head. Though he supposed all newborns were. “Afternoon, Bear.”
“Ma’am.” He touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Micah, I was wondering if you’d show me that wall of bookcases.” He met Simone’s eye, and she grinned widely at him. Micah simply looked confused.
“In Simone’s she-shed?”
“Yeah,” Bear said. “I want to get some pictures of them for my brother. He’s going to be doing some remodeling, and he’s got it in his head that his house needs a library.”
“All right,” Micah said. Of course the man wouldn’t suspect anything about Bear’s story was off. He did have a brother that definitely leaned toward the eccentric side. Simone certainly knew though, and Micah had been the one to suggest Evelyn’s services in the first place. Maybe he’d just forgotten, because it had been months since Bear had talked to Evelyn, and longer since Micah had mentioned the possibility of having Evelyn create a situation for Bear and Sammy that would get them out of the friend zone.
But Bear followed Micah through his house silently, grateful he’d hired the man to design and build his new homestead too. Yes, it had been outdated. No one could argue with that. No one in the family had protested when Bear had torn down the old homestead and put up another one. He lived there with one of his brothers and one of his cousins, and his place was as amazing as this one.
Micah went out the back door and down the steps to an expansive patio. “It’s just over here,” he said, as if Bear couldn’t see the huge shed to the left. The baby in Micah’s arms fussed, and Micah bounced the little boy, shushing him.
“What did you name him again?” Bear asked.
“Travis,” Micah said. “We call him Trap, though.”
“You’d fit right in my family,” Bear said with a chuckle. His real name wasn’t Bear, of course, but Bartholomew, after his father. Bear had never been called anything but Bear, at least in his memory. Once or twice, his mother had called him Teddy, but that went with Bear.
Just like Grizzly does, he thought as Micah stepped to the door. Bear’s heart throbbed against the back of his throat, filling his mouth and rendering him mute.
Trap continued to fuss, breaking into a wail that said he wasn’t more than a few weeks old, as Micah went into the she-shed. “I don’t know why she said he wanted me,” Micah said. “He’s clearly hungry.”
Bear just followed Micah inside, automatically looking around for Sammy. He didn’t see her immediately, and then she poked her head up from where she knelt next to the kiln in the far corner.
His heart thrashed now, part of it telling him to do something. Ask her something. The other half warned him against doing anything, saying anything, just in case his heart got broken again.
“I have to take him inside,” Micah said over his baby’s wails. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He looked at Sammy and back to Bear, and Bear saw all the dots connect in Micah’s mind. A slow smile crossed the man’s face, and Bear almost growled at him to get him to leave.
But he didn’t want Sammy to see him act like that, especially toward a friend. And if there was someone outside of Bear’s family he considered a friend, it was Micah Walker. All the