Promise Me

Whenever Ethan had not been home and out because of work or other errands, Victoria had made sure to entertain herself with Netflix or one of the books that Ethan kept on a small shelf in the living room. In the beginning, it gave her a reason to leave bed every once in a while and see how long the small trip took without his assistance. As a byproduct, she was growing to be an expert on the local flowers, trees, and herbs. But she also gained some more insight into the living inhabitants of the woods. She could have googled it, sure, but she preferred books. Brewing over them threw her back to her time in high school and the police academy, and she had enjoyed that time.

She was sitting in bed, flipping through a book about North America's predators, when the heard the front door opening. A minute later, Ethan appeared in the doorframe, leaning his shoulder against one side like he always did. 

"I brought you your weird pesto pizza."

A gleeful grin grew on Victoria's face. "You mean the best pizza?"

He gracefully ignored her question and instead shrugged his broad shoulders, smiling faintly. She had forced him to try the pizza a couple of nights ago. He told her she must be mad for liking it, but had happily devoured his extra large triple meat pizza like it was made of air just seconds later. He had called himself a man of simple taste. It had been the first laugh they had shared since he had retreated behind his wall.

"Someone has been studying," he then said, looking at the open books that were scattered over the blanket of the bed.

"Yes, indeed. And I have questions I want to be answered by a professional. And he happens to live in this house." 

There it was again, his signature one-sided smirk. "Over dinner. Let me get a shower first."

He vanished into the door next to the bedroom. When Victoria did not hear the water running anymore, she slipped off the bed and made her way to the living room. She could already smell the pizza. A smell that was answered by her growling stomach right away.

"You are getting faster," she suddenly heard Ethan's voice behind her in the hallway. Startled by the unexpected sound behind her, Victoria flinched and instantly felt his warm hand on her arm to steady her. 

"How in the world can a man your size be so stealthy?" she laughed as she turned around to him. Now that she thought about it he was indeed pretty quiet. Except for the few times when he was churned up and walked around with heavy steps.

When she laid her eyes on him she stopped laughing. He was standing in front of her with damp hair and nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips, his perfect abs tapering down to his waist in a well-defined V-shape.

To hide her flushing face, she turned back around. "Planning on eating dinner in your shower attire?" she quietly blurted out, trying to shake the picture her brain just burned into her memories.

"All my stuff is in your room, remember?" he answered nonchalantly, but Victoria could hear a faint scratch in his voice. They both stood still for a second, not saying anything before Ethan let go of her, turned around, and went to his drawers in the bedroom. 

Victoria onehandedly rubbed her face and shook her head. If he was trying to torture her, then he was on a good path to do it. Her eyes locked in on the pizza cartons on the couch table and the original purpose of her little walk out of the bedroom came back to her. She sat down, followed by Ethan just a minute later, who came out of the bedroom dressed in joggers and a shirt. 'Thank the lucky stars,' she thought.

"So, you had questions?" Ethan said once he had wolved down half of his pizza. Victoria, still chewing on her second piece, looked from the TV over to him. She had forgotten about the topic but was happy he brought it up. 

Eagerly swallowing, she nodded. "Oh, yes! It's about telling black and brown bears apart."

Ethan choked on his food and coughed, more surprised by the question than anticipated. "Why do you want to know that?"

"I don't know. The bear that I saw was huge, but I read that black bears are about human height when standing up on their back legs. The prints on the murder site were gigantic too. Could it have been a grizzly maybe, not a black bear?"

"Grizzlies live far up north. There used to be populations further south many many years ago but never east of the states in the Smokey's." He put his half-eaten slice back into the box and turned to her, pulling one of his legs onto the couch in front of him. His eyebrows drew together, creating a crease on his forehead. "I have seen some bigger-than-usual black bear males in my life. Probably never bigger than maybe six feet upright though."

"I don't know. It looked way bigger than that. I could be wrong though. It was dark after all." Victoria looked down at her pizza and chewed on her lower lip, trying to remember if she recognized any other details to fundament her thesis.

The dark forest, the still air, the rustling of the trees, the huff of the creature when she took her airpods out of her ears. She knew she had heard the deep huffing sound again, just not at that moment. She had heard it when everything smelled like wet dirt. When the beast dragged her through the mud. It was not only the memory of the feeling that had come back to her earlier, no, now the pictures of that moment came back to her too. The stars, the full moon, and the brown shimmering fur.

"It was brown I think," she rasped quietly. 

"Black bears can have brown or cinnamon-colored fur too."

Victoria looked over to Ethan with a pleading look on her face. She could see that his face darkened, but he looked back over to her after visibly brooding over something in his mind.

"Are there any other details you remember?"

"Size, fur color, teeth... pain. Who knows what my mind locked away? I was terrified. I thought that was it for me." Victoria looked down and blew out some air, holding her hand over her side. This was going to gnaw at her for longer than she had hoped for.

Ethan looked over to her and closed in on the distance between them. Victoria could feel how the couch pillow underneath her sank deeper when he sat down right next to her. He laid his arm around her and pulled her closer to his side. "You survived, that's all that matters." 

Victoria leaned her head against his shoulder and answered with a small nod. They sat in silence for a while until she could feel his arm tense as he pulled her in a little more.

"If you ever see that beast again at night, and you are sure it is a grizzly, shoot it. It does not matter how far away it is or if it notices you. Promise me...", a deep sigh made his chest rise, "aim straight for the head, and don't stop shooting until the magazine is empty and that thing is dead."

She inclined her head and looked up with a wondering expression on her face, her eyebrow raised. "You said there are no grizzlies here?"

He looked back down to her, something flickering in his eyes that she could not identify. "I hope so. But if one made its way down here it is probably... sick. And that makes it more dangerous than anything else." 

His arm let go of her and he got up, closed his box with half a pizza still in it, and threw it on the kitchen counter.

This was not how she had hoped this conversation to go, but for some reason, Ethan seemed dreary for the rest of the evening. They barely spoke after, so she went back to dive deeper into the books.