Bear No Malice | Paul Lahote

Twenty-Six

"That should be the last of them." I nodded wordlessly as Paul taped on the last of the gauze before bending over and handing me my jacket. I let him help me slip it back on before I zipped it up again, covering all traces of the bandages. After I'd finally managed to calm down, I let him check me over and place clean bandages on my arm, courtesy of the measly first-aid kit in the sink cupboard.

Warm hands held my face as they guided me to meet warm brown eyes, searching but not revealing. "We should talk." I nodded again. Not one part of me could agree more. Somehow in the twenty minutes we'd spent in the bathroom we'd had some kind of breakthrough that I couldn't explain. But it made my heart race and my stomach churn.

With his hand grasping mine, he led me out of the bathroom and down the stairs where everyone was gathered and eating. They didn't pay any mind to us, all except Jared who couldn't stop apologizing to me.

"Emma I'm so sorry, I didn't know-"

I stopped him with my hand. "You're already forgiven, you couldn't have known. Don't worry about it Jared."

He heaved a sigh of relief and his easy smile found its way back to his face. "Thank God, Kim would kill me if you never spoke to us again."

I smiled and waved him off as Paul kept an arm around my waist. He grabbed me a plate and filled it, albeit a bit too full, before placing it between himself and Kara. I glanced over at my best friend who was trying to ignore me.

"I'm sorry, Kara. I shouldn't have snapped at you, I just... I-"

"I shouldn't have pushed you." She turned to face me better. "My nursing instincts took over and my only concern was making sure you weren't seriously hurt. I didn't stop to think about how you'd feel about it."

"Still doesn't give me the right to snap at you the way I did." She gave me a squinted look.

"We've seen it countless times in the hospital before, I should have recognized your reaction."

"There were other things happening in the moment and like you said, your instincts as a nurse overtook anything else."

"Still, I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too, Kara." I turned back to my plate to take a bite of ravioli, pausing only once I realized the room was dead silent and everyone stared at us. My eyebrows creased and I looked around. "What?"

Leah snorted and broke the tension. "You two fight weird."

"We've always done this," Kara argued. "It happens all the time. When you're in a tense situation in the ER, half the time you don't actually mean the snappy shit coming out of your mouth. We've snapped at each other more times than I-"

"Or I-" I interjected with a raise of my good hand.

"Can count," Kara ended. "This is how we apologize, you should try it sometime."

Jake chuckled from his end of the table. "I don't see that going over so well."

An easy grin fell over my lips as all the unresolved tension was lifted and the air was light again. A part of me was still tense, on high alert, but I knew with a pack of wolves surrounding me I'd be just fine.

Dinner ended just as messily as it began and I assisted the ladies with clean up as best as I could. While Emily tried to shoo me to sit, Kara argued the case that I should be wearing a sling (which I definitely had stowed under the driver's seat with the intent of hiding it), Leah argued to Kara that she needed to stop being "such a nurse," and Paul lingered from the living room. Although I tried to ignore it I could feel his burning gaze waiting for me to submit to his request that we should finally talk. Once I was sure that most of what I could contribute was finished I finally acquiesced to the impatient shapeshifter.