Page 22 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)
holly
“ A ll? , Holly Bell, how are you?”
Corey said hello and clipped his “you” in a vaguely French-Canadian way. Quebec was on the other side of the count, and he’d been mostly raised in Minnesota by his American mother, but he’d decided to lean into his paternal accent when we moved to Canada, thanks to his dual citizenship.
I hated that about him.
I also hated that he still referred to me by my first and middle name, even though I’d somehow managed to convince myself that it was cute that Corey insisted on calling me Holly Bell even after I told him I didn’t like it on our first date.
Truly wondering what I’d ever seen in him, I stared at the man whose smug, entitled expression hadn’t changed much since the last time I saw him in person. On the other side of a courtroom, pumping his fist because his conniving lawyer had gotten every undeserved thing he asked for.
I sighed and folded my arms. “What do you want, Corey?”
“I was hoping you hadn’t written that alimony check yet,” he answered.
He stopped. Probably expecting me to ask him why.
I just stared at him. Giving him nothing.
“The thing is,” he said with a mournful look, “it turns out that your years of making me wait were more detrimental than I initially thought. Despite her much younger age and health prognosis, Celeste and I still haven’t managed to get pregnant.”
Another pause. Corey and I met while he was completing his M.F.A. in Public Art, but he’d done a bachelor’s in Theatre before that, and unfortunately, the only thing he retained from that unnecessary four years of education was how to abuse the dramatic pause.
Again, I waited for him to get to the point.
Which, eventually, he did with a mulish look. “Celeste wisely suggested I get tested, and as it turns out, I suffer from a condition of age called male factor.”
“A condition?” I felt a little like Hawk when I lifted both eyebrows to ask, “You’re calling not having the swimmers to get your girlfriend pregnant a condition of age?”
His lips thinned. “The point is, it’s all your fault that Celeste and I will also have to undergo IVF, so I will be needing more money from you in the next alimony check.”
The sheer gall of this man. “So, let me get this straight,” I said, unfolding my arms. “You’re asking me to give you more money because of your issue with getting your girlfriend pregnant?”
Corey’s face dropped. “If I had started earlier?—”
“If you’d started earlier, what?” I demanded. “You’d be milking me for child support on top of alimony? What exactly do you think would have been different if you managed to baby-trap your sugar wife as opposed to getting everything you wanted in our divorce?”
Corey sputtered. His mouth opening and closing like a fish. But then he used that theatre degree to compose himself with a lift of his chin. “This is why you have gotten what you deserved. You’re always making jokes. Always dismissing my pain.”
I shrugged. “Hey, some people like my jokes. And laughing is way better than blaming others for everything that’s gone wrong in my life.”
Corey narrowed his eyes. “So you believe you carry no blame in this predicament I find myself in?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say zero blame. But I’m sure those three zeroes on all your alimony checks make up for anything you imagine I’ve done to you.”
Corey huffed. “There you go again. Quipping when you should be taking responsibility for?—”
“Okay, speaking of zeroes. I have zero time to get lectured about responsibility by a bottom-feeder like you. Sell the house you got in the divorce if you want kids so bad. But don’t ever come back here asking for more money again.”
I began to close the door in his face, but he wedged himself between it before I could.
“It is not asking. It is what you owe me,” he said coldly. All warmth and civility disappeared from his expression, and his Minnesota accent returned in full force. “Don’t make me drag you back to court and give the judge and even bigger sob story. Imagine what they’ll think when I tell them you used to hit me.”
My stomach twisted, but I held my ground. “You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” he asked, leaning in with a sneer. “It’s your word against mine, and the courts already believed me once. I can make them believe me again. Or you can figure out how to add one more zero to this month’s alimony check so that Celeste and I can?—”
One moment, Corey was standing wedged into my front door. And the next, he was gone.
Whooshed out of my sightline.
“What in the…?” I stepped forward and froze.
Hawk stood in my apartment floor’s hallway, holding Corey by the throat against the wall at a locked arm angle, with his feet dangling above the industrial carpet.
And Koda and Leif were standing on either side of him, flanking Hawk like soldiers.
The three bears who had left me behind… They were here.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, wondering if my mind had broken with Corey’s visit and this was some kind of hallucination.
Instead of answering, Koda held his badge directly in front of Corey’s choke-reddened face. “Sergeant Takoda of the RCMP. I just witnessed every word of that threat.”
“And I just recorded it!” On the other side of Hawk, Leif shoved his phone into Corey’s face the same way Koda presented his badge.
“And I’m here to break your fucking neck for daring to talk to our mate like that,” Hawk growled between them.
“RCMP? This—this is abuse!” Corey managed to choke out around Hawk’s squeezing hand. Then he said what any half-Canadian who’d grown up in America would under the circumstances. “I’ll sue! I’ll sue your entire department!”
“Sue us?” Koda shook his head, like he was honestly confused. “Sue us for what?”
“Him!” Corey scratched uselessly at Hawk’s hand. “You can’t let him do this!”
“Let me?” I couldn’t see Hawk’s face, but I could hear the razor-sharp smirk in his voice as he informed Corey, “I’m not a Dudley, bitch. I just got out of jail for manslaughter, and my knifin’ hand’s feeling itchy.”
Corey turned desperate eyes to Koda and Leif. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“Do something about what?” Leif shrugged. “I don’t see anyone doing anything wrong. Do you, sergeant?”
“Nope,” Koda answered, popping the p sound while looking straight at Hawk’s choking hand. “Only someone trying to blackmail our pregnant mate into giving him even more money he doesn’t deserve.”
“You’re pregnant!” Corey’s gaze darted to me, desperate now. “Like, legitimately? You don’t think you’ll lose it this?—”
Pain flared through me at the thought of losing this pregnancy, too. But that pain was quickly overcome with rage that Corey would dare to ask me that.
Actually, it might not have been all my rage.
“Don’t talk to her, you waste of a dick!” Hawk commanded on a growl, tightening his grip so Corey didn’t have enough air to possibly disobey that command. “Don’t look at her. Look at me!”
He squeezed even tighter. “The ex-con who’ll proudly cut your tongue out and feed it to a dog if you ever talk to her again. If you ever breathe the same air as her again.”
Corey released a whimper, his face turning a dangerous shade of blue. Then something else released. Corey’s cream-colored slacks darkened with the stream of piss that ran down his leg and dribbled onto the floor.
“Fucking piss pants.” Hawk wrinkled his nose in disgust and dropped him like a sack of garbage.
Hawk watched the smaller man gasp for air, wanting to do more than just drop him in his own puddle of piss. He wanted to kill my ex for what he’d done to me. But I could feel him tamp down that instinct. Not out of any moral code. But because he knew I wouldn’t allow it.
“Unless you would…” Hawk’s voice pushed into my head, and he peeped at me over his shoulder with a look that was half-coax, half-plea to end my ex-husband’s life.
But I answered out loud, “I think you made your point.”
Hawk turned back to Corey to growl, “Guess it’s your lucky day. Holly decided to let you live. But that alimony shit stops today. No more checks. Ever.”
Corey opened his mouth to protest.
“Please, say something shitastic like you deserve it or that she owes you anything.” Hawk crouched down to get eye level with him. “I am looking for even the tiniest excuse to break off the leash she’s got me on and snap your neck like a twig.”
Apparently, Corey wasn’t as stupid as I was beginning to believe when he showed up at my door to demand more money for his male fertility issues.
He scrambled to his feet and bolted for the stairs, leaving the smell of only his piss behind.
Silence hung heavy in the air as his footsteps receded down the metal stairs.
Then all three bears turned to me.
“Hi, Holly,” Koda said gently. Seemingly for all three of them. “May we come in?”