Cold Foot Komodo (Wreck’s Mountains Book 2)

“Hi!” Sasha called, waving to Beth.

Beth had been watching the door and waved back with a big old greeting grin on her face. Wreck’s mom was radiant in the natural light from the window by the table she was sitting at.

The 406 Saloon was dimly lit, and had three rooms. The center room, where Beth had chosen to sit, had an enormous stone fireplace with a roaring fire going. The room to the right was the bar. She could see an old pool table from here as she took the seat across from Beth.

“This place is awesome,” she exclaimed.

“Oh, you should see in there,” Beth said, pointing to the bar-side. “They have a jukebox in the back, and casino machines and everything. And cowboys.” She arched her eyebrows. “Some of those men look about my age.”

“Gasp! Are you looking?” Sasha murmured low. “I can be your wing-woman.”

Beth snorted. “If a man is meant to enter my life, he’ll enter it. Doesn’t hurt to have a bunch of tough-as-leather cowboys around for lookin’ at though. They wear those Wranglers just right.”

Sasha was already feeling better, just within a minute of being in Beth’s presence.

A waitress asked what they wanted to order, and they got a pair of cosmopolitans and burger baskets before they settled back into conversation.

“Did you hear about the meeting tonight?” Beth asked.

“What meeting?” Sasha asked as she shimmied out of her winter coat.

“Reed called it. I was going to head there to see Wreck and Timber after this, but Wreck asked me to hang back tonight.”

Sasha frowned. “I wonder what it’s about.”

Beth shrugged. “Has Reed mentioned it?”

“Umm, no. Not to me.”

Beth canted her head and studied her. Sasha dropped her gaze and busied herself with bending the edge of a cardboard coaster.

“I thought you and Reed were getting close.”

Sasha shrugged. “He decided it was too much.”

“What? When did he say that?”

“Last night.”

“Oooh, honey. Was that when you messaged me?”

Sasha quirked up her lips into a forced smile. “Yep, but you know what? I’m feeling better about everything today, and I have been so excited to meet up with you.”

A smile graced Beth’s lips, crinkling up the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Men are complicated creatures. They pretend they aren’t, but they truly are.”

Sasha huffed a laugh, relieved to be moving the conversation forward. “Was Wreck’s dad complicated?”

“Very.” Beth clenched her hands together and rested her chin on them as a faraway look took over her face. “When I first met him, I couldn’t see anything else. He was the air, you know? He was everything and everywhere, and I couldn’t see outside of him. I think sometimes when it’s like that, you can’t see the bad parts. It took me a really long time to see the bad parts. I don’t get that feeling from Reed. He’s a peacemaker. He’s steady.”

“Were you married to Wreck’s dad?”

“Yes. For many years. It was happy until it wasn’t happy. That part was a gradual thing, and I wrestle with whose fault it was. He used to say I was the reason he stayed good. I was the reason the world was safe. But then his animal was growing, and I was…shrinking. I tried to keep him grounded, but that kind of power does something awful to a man who isn’t strong enough. Sometimes it breaks the moral compass. I think he tried to be good. I could see it in moments when he would come back to himself, and he would be destroyed over the destruction he caused.” She shook her head. “He just couldn’t make the good in himself big enough to save him at the end. He was too comfortable with destruction, and when he died, a part of my heart broke, and a part of it was relieved in the knowledge that the world was a safer place for his absence.”

“You never got remarried?”

“Oh no. I dated some, but I focused on teaching Wreck to be different than his father. I wanted to make sure he was stronger. I wanted to make sure that when he found a woman, when he found Timber, he could keep her bigger than the fire inside of him.”

“From what I can see, you did good. I see how Wreck talks to you and treats you. You’re a queen. Your son adores you, and appreciates you. No one acts that way toward a parent who doesn’t deserve it.”

“I learned from my grandma,” she admitted. “She was five-foot-nothin’ of spicy, funny goodness. She loved the dickens out of the people who deserved it, and didn’t let anyone mess with her family, and that was who I looked up to when I was young. Who do you look up to?”

Sasha let out a long breath and shook her head. “There’s a dozen messages in my phone from my mom right now calling me a bitch. That’s not the relationship I would want with my kids, if I ever have them. I would raise them the opposite of how Timber and I were raised.”

“That’s hard.”

Sasha nodded. “I would have no tools, and will have to make up the parenting thing as I go.”

“Oh you have tools enough, honey.” Beth’s eyes were so earnest as she told her, “Timber will be a great sounding board. You’ll know what those babies will deserve. You’ll be just fine.”

“My mother doesn’t like the loss of control. I’m afraid she will show up here.”

Beth nodded thoughtfully. “Do you respond to the messages?”

“Some of them. When it gets to be too much, sometimes I’ll message back. Lately it’s just to ask for space.”

“Well, there is your problem.”

“What?”

“You haven’t learned to set boundaries yet. You’re getting closer, but you aren’t there yet. Consistency is key. If she knows you will respond every fifteen texts, what do you think she will keep doing?”

“Texting.” She leaned back to let the server set their cosmopolitans on the table between them. Sasha waited for her to leave before she spoke again. “What do you think I should do?”

“Talk to her.”

“That doesn’t work.”

“Set the ground rules. Be open with your feelings, tell her the ways she needs to improve, and then ask for a few months of space while she improves or does not improve. Leave it up to her to love you like you deserve, or not. And in those months of space, you spend time working on you, so the man who holds your heart someday doesn’t have to pay for what others made you feel.”

Oh, Beth was smart. She was very emotionally intelligent.

Sasha leaned back, just searching Beth’s face. Her eyes were soft and understanding. A feeling of relief washed through Sasha, because there was now a logical game plan. “Reed was a beautiful distraction,” she admitted. “I miss it. I miss him.” She pursed her lips. “I know that makes no sense, because I’ve only just met him—”

“Timing is different in a shifter’s world. You can take a year if you want to fall for a human man, but with shifters, they have something extra. You will know if you’re compatible or not quickly. They will choose quickly too. It’ll feel too fast in the moments when you are alone and wondering how a man could get to your heart so quickly, but when you are with them, it will feel just right.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’ve been confused about.”

“Give Reed time. If he doesn’t come back quickly, you aren’t his mate, and you’ll have to redirect your attention. If you are his, he won’t be able to stay away. I don’t know if it’s magic or science that gives them that drive. It’s just how they work.”

They talked for two more hours, she and Beth. It was easy conversation, and turned from serious stuff to funny stories and joking. She was an easy laugher, and funny. The way she saw the world was inspiring. Beth could see the good in anything.

That’s what she wanted to be like when she was older. She didn’t want to be jaded from life experience, or hate the world, or think that everyone was always out to insult her.

She wanted to see the world like Beth did. She wanted to see the promise in each day.

Sasha had felt such a strange instinct to uproot her entire life and start over here in Darby, and this whole time, she’d thought it was just to be closer to her sister. But there was good here. If she had three months of working on herself, she couldn’t even imagine how proud she would be of the changes in her, and especially if she had space to look up to good women like Beth.

The love she had for her son was admirable, and Sasha had no doubt that she would make a wonderful grandmother for Timber and Wreck’s children someday. Timber was lucky to have a mother figure, and mother-in-law, like Beth.

Wreck was going to be fine. He wasn’t going to end up like his father, because he had the love of not only Timber, but of his mother too. He had his Crew pulling for him. Hell, even Sasha was cheering him on.

It felt like Wreck and the Cold Foot Crew were important, and she was a part of it, even if she was just on the outside of their story, or legend, or destiny, or whatever was happening here.