Page 21 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)
21 /
the dream was over
holly
T he dream was over.
After waiting around in the den for hours, I checked at the bar and RCMP station in the hopes I’d gotten it wrong. But the Bear Mountain detachment was dark with a “Closed” sign hung in the window, and the copper-haired bartender told me he hadn’t seen any of the males who’d promised to be there when I woke up. Over six hours ago.
Eventually, I gave up and drove back to Vancouver. The sun would set in a few hours, and no offense to my little sister, but I knew better than to drive on mountain roads at night.
Plus, I had a real life to get back to: a couple of expectant mothers, a phone to replace, an alimony check to write and send to Corey—that was ironically due in two days, on February 14th. Happy Valentine’s Day .
A just-above freezing apartment to rewarm…
I sighed when I walked into my frigid studio. Before I left, I’d turned the thermostat to vacation mode, thinking I’d be back in a couple of days at most. Not a week. My breath visible, I turned the thermostat back up, then made the extremely short trip from the door to the quilted armchair I’d opted for since the studio I’d barely been able to afford after my divorce wasn’t big enough to fit a couch.
Somehow, the space felt even smaller than I remembered. It certainly wasn’t as big as a two-story den, with two of three large guys keeping me warm—and hot—whenever my bear demanded it.
My stomach grumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since yesterday when Hawk served us a nest dinner of perfectly seasoned pork chops, spiced applesauce, and a creamy Parmesan risotto, which was, according to him, “subtly infused with thyme.” As usual, the whole meal had been a masterpiece of simple ingredients transformed into something extraordinary.
Leif had complimented him profusely. And Koda had suspected out loud, “I believe you might be an even better cook than that outsider grizzly Holly’s sister mated.”
A bubble of laughter rose, remembering how Leif had immediately come to the defense of outsider grizzlies—before conceding, “But yeah, you totally lapped him, bro.”
My bear whimpered inside of me, wanting the den, wanting them . But I cut off the memory, shoving it way down where it belonged.
That fever dream was over, I reminded the both of us. It was time to attend to my real life.
By myself.
Estrus was over.
And so was my so-called maul.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I grabbed the laptop I’d left sitting on top of an end table to put in an online grocery order from the nearest Barrington’s.
But guilt and dread twisted in my chest when the screen lit up with pop-ups of all the calls and emails I’d missed while deluding myself into thinking I was the main character in my own Bear Mountain romance.
My stomach twisted at the many missed call alerts from my best friend, Lark. Then it sank further when I saw the subject line of the latest email from my partner hospital, Vancouver Pacific Health Center: Re: Re: Re: URGENT: Midwife License Concerns .
Oh no… In British Columbia, midwife licenses had to be renewed annually between February 1st and March 31st. I’d been waiting to resolve my permanent residency application status before renewing it since I no longer had Corey as my anchor. I knew I was cutting it close, but I didn’t think the hospital would start sending me emails about it before the renewal period was even done.
Crap! Crap! Crap!
The shrill bloop-bloop-bloop of a Facetime call interrupted my bureaucracy spiral. And I answered it when I saw it was Lark, trying to get through.
Lark was my best friend in Vancouver. We’d met in an online support group for Women Dealing with Infertility. We’d become instant friends as soon as we’d discovered we were both Black Americans living in Vancouver—though Lark hadn’t moved here on the political whim of her half-Canadian fiancé like I had, but because she and her fraternal twin sister had snagged jobs as teachers at Barrington Prep, one of Canada’s most exclusive boarding schools.
Despite having a busy schedule herself, she’d really been there for me over the years, offering emotional support through not only my last miscarriage but also my divorce from Corey. And I knew she’d been feeling some conflicted emotions around her twin sister falling pregnant with her fiancé so easily, while Lark was still dealing with the emotional fallout of being diagnosed with Primary Ovarian Insufficiency, a condition that would most likely prevent her from carrying a child.
“Hey, you,” I said, accepting the call.
Lark’s familiar face filled the screen, framed by the dorm room she lived in at Barrington Prep to earn extra money for the complicated set of steps she’d need to go through to achieve her baby dreams—most of which weren’t covered by British Columbia’s public health system.
She’d done a great job of keeping a positive attitude through her private pain, but today her usually sunny expression was pinched and wary.
“What’s going on?” I asked, immediately sensing something wrong.
“I just got off the phone with my sister,” she began, skipping pleasantries.
My heart sank for her, but I kept my face neutral as I prepared to validate her conflicted feelings around her twin’s pregnancy.
But then Lark said, “She told me Vancouver Health Center called, asking her to pick another midwife because you no longer had privileges there.”
“What?” I immediately pulled up the mail screen on my laptop. “Why?”
Lark winced on the other side of the screen. “Something about an issue with your midwife license?”
My heart plummeted. “No, no, that’s impossible. It’s only February 12th, not the end of March yet. They wouldn’t just yank my?—”
I stopped talking when I opened an end-of-day email that started with, “Since you haven’t answered any of our calls or emails over the past several days, we’re afraid we’ll need to revoke…”
“No! No! No!” I whispered as I read the email, informing me that yanking my privileges was exactly what the VHC had done for all my scheduled births—until I presented them with proof that my midwife license was in good standing and had been renewed for the year.
The words blurred as panic set in, and the apartment closed in around me.
My career, the one thing that had kept me grounded through miscarriages and divorce, was slipping through my fingers, too. If my license was gone, how would I pay rent? Support this incoming baby?
Not having enough money or stability was exactly why I’d delayed trying to get pregnant with Corey for so long.
What was this? All Your Worst Fears Come True Day?
If so, I had an extremely strong protest email to write to whoever came up with that crap.
“Is there anything I can do?” Lark asked, looking even more worried on my phone screen.
“Put me in a time machine and stop me from making the biggest mistake of my life while my career was going up in flames,” I muttered.
“What?” Lark asked, her forehead crinkling.
A knock sounded on my door before I could explain. Probably my landlady, letting me know I’d also have to pay more rent on my crappy apartment in honor of All Your Worst Fears Come True Day.
But I couldn’t fall apart. This baby only had me now. I had to keep it together.
“I’ll figure this out and call you back,” I told Lark before hanging up to answer the door.
But when I opened it, it wasn’t my 4’9” Asian-Canadian landlady standing there.
It was Corey, my 5’9”, half-French-Canadian ex-husband.