Bearing the Frostbite (Ice Bear Shifters Book 6) by Sloane Meyers Page A

where he sat with her while she sobbed. She wasn’t sure how long she cried, but it must have been hours. When the tears finally gave way to exhaustion, Alexis felt herself slipping off into a fitful sleep. The last thing she remembered thinking before sleep claimed her was that she wasn’t alone in the world, after all.
    She still had James.

Chapter Seven
     
    The next days and weeks passed in a blur for Alexis. She resigned from her job at the airport, even though she could have used the money. But the grief she felt at losing her grandmother had drained her of all of her emotional energy. She had nothing left to give to people who wanted to complain about flight delays and lost Louis Vuitton luggage. The funeral came and went in a hazy mixture of smiling bravely at long-lost acquaintances and making decisions about casket design—decisions that seemed so silly and insignificant to Alexis. Her grandmother was dead. She was free from the worry of human concerns about how and where to lay to rest the shell of a body that had only been the house for the deeper part of her, the part of her that was now gone. Alexis imagined that deeper part of her grandmother floating in the wide open Alaskan sky, looking down on her and watching over her still. Imaginations like these were the only way Alexis could keep from breaking down into tears every moment.
    James became Alexis’ rock. He helped her sort through the confusing maze of things that needed to be done to take care of someone’s death, and he let her cry for hours when she needed to. He even offered to leave his job at the airport, so he could be with her without any restrictions on his schedule, but Alexis wouldn’t let him do that. She didn’t want him to completely lose his own life while taking care of her. Besides, she was sure he needed a space of his own, too. He would never admit it out loud, but Alexis suspected that getting a break from his crying girlfriend probably helped James keep his sanity. As it was, he barely went home to his own cabin. He showed up at Alexis’ townhome every night after work, usually with dinner of some sort. It was a good thing, because, these days, Alexis often forgot to eat when she was left by herself.
    Although there were moments Alexis thought life would never feel normal again, things did start to settle into a new normal as the weeks passed. Life took on a routine feeling, especially as the midnight sun slowly started losing its grip and dark nights began returning to Glacier Point. Having the structure of dark nights and light days somehow gave Alexis a sense of normalcy. The darkness would slowly take over more and more of every day, until the town fell under total darkness by the end of November. As the sun gradually lost its grip on Glacier Point, so did the tourists.
    One crisp evening near the beginning of September, James came home from work carrying an oversized bottle of wine and a frozen pizza box.
    “Tonight, we celebrate,” he said, proudly holding up the wine bottle. Wine in Glacier Point was very expensive, due to the high cost of importing it all the way up to northern Alaska. Because of this, unless you happened to be filthy rich, wine was usually reserved for very special occasions.
    Alexis couldn’t help but laugh. “So, you’re pairing a bottle of wine with a frozen pizza? How fancy.”
    “I know, I know. But it’s the supreme, stuffed crust, artisan flour version of frozen pizza. So, you know, sort of fancy.”
    Alexis rolled her eyes at him and stepped back from the box of her grandmother’s old clothes that she had been packing up to donate. Alexis had been slowly working through her grandmother’s things, trying to figure out what to donate, what to keep, and what to sell. She had made good progress, and was nearly done with the project. The lease on the townhome ended in a month, and, as much as Alexis hated to move and leave the last place she had lived with her grandmother, she knew she