A Very Beastly Christmas (Gray Back Bears Book 7) Read Free Page A

thank you.”
    Jason huffed a surprised laugh. “Anytime.”

Chapter Three
     
    It was late when Aviana slid out from the passenger’s side of Willa’s silver pickup truck with her bags of presents in hand. Her legs were stiff from the long drive from Saratoga for last minute holiday shopping, but she was grateful she’d gotten it all done. Because she’d made a list of presents for everyone, the shopping was actually easier than she’d thought it would be this late in the season. The art supplies for Beaston’s present had been the hardest to find.
    Willa walked around the front of her truck, smacked Aviana stoutly on the ass, and said, “See you on the flip side,” before she rushed into her mate, Matt’s, waiting arms.
    Aviana’s cheeks heated as she watched them kiss as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. Ripping her gaze away from the adoring pair, she made her way past the semi-circle of singlewide trailers, around the sprawling porch the boys had built off the side of 1010, and through the woods toward home.
    Home. Aviana sighed. Home wasn’t a place. Home was Beaston.
    Her boots crunched with every step she took through the snow. The trailer was lit up from the inside, glowing and inviting. Beaston had been chopping a lot of wood lately, and that should’ve been her first clue that she wasn’t hiding her regret well enough. He’d sold most of the wood he’d chopped over spring and summer to the wood-burning cabins that dotted the wilderness around Damon’s mountains, but already, the entire front of the trailer was stacked high with cords of wood again. He chopped when his bear was unsettled.
    Aviana pulled a long steadying breath of cold mountain air into her lungs and exhaled slowly before she climbed the stairs and pushed the door open. She stomped her boots on the newly cleaned stairs and stepped into the house where she promptly froze.
    Beaston required a special sort of den. One that looked like the treehouse he’d built himself as a child. His bedroom was normal, but in the living room, he had lined the walls with tree bark and covered the single lamp with orange fabric to make it look like the glow of late evening sunlight. But Beaston had been doing some rearranging, and she was baffled by what she saw.
    He’d cut the top off a young birch tree, leaned it into the corner, and hung blue beer cans from the sparse branches. It took up half the room, and on the mantel, over a decorative fireplace, was hung at least ten of his socks.
    Beaston stood abruptly from the table and pulled his hands behind his back, but not before she saw what he held. It was the holly branch with the ornament she’d given him that first Christmas after his parents had passed.
    “I’ve been an asshole,” Beaston murmured, his blazing eyes on her snow boots.
    “I assure you, you have not.”
    “I have. You wanted to celebrate Christmas, and I said no.” He ghosted a glance to the tree and then back to her. “We can go to the party at Sammy’s, too.”
    “I don’t understand,” she whispered, closing the door with a quiet snick behind her. “I thought you didn’t want to celebrate because it hurt to think about.”
    “It was selfish.”
    “Why do you have the holly sprig, Beaston?” she asked low as something awful dawned on her.
    “I was trying to remember the before .”
    “Oh, Beaston,” Aviana sighed. She’d done this, pushed him to scratch at memories he’d buried for a reason. “The problem between us…it’s not because of you or the holiday. It’s because of me.”
    “No,” he said, canting his head. He still wouldn’t lift his eyes from her boots. “No, no, no, I decorated, and we’ll go to the Christmas Eve party, and everything will be okay.”
    “Ask me what I want for Christmas,” she whispered, hating herself.
    He lifted his eyes to hers, then dropped them again. “Whatever you want, you can have it. I’ll take care of you.”
    “Ask me.”
    “What do you