Chapter 24 New Nightmare
new nightmare
BELL
The piece of paper with Dennis’s handwriting stared back at me:
My blood ran cold because I knew Dennis didn’t “believe” in legal insurance.
After Noelle’s birth, he’d let me go without, rather than pay extra to continue to put me on his mayoral policy.
Further deterrent to me seeking medical care after he hit me.
I’d learned to tend to all manner of wounds on my own with the help of the internet.
The handwritten note felt like a coded message. From the grave.
But for what?
Maybe it was nothing. I grasped around for hope. Maybe BVI stood for something innocent—a business name, a safety deposit box for legitimate documents.
But Dennis had never done anything legitimate in his life.
A memory suddenly hit me, like a stab of lightning.
Dennis muttering under his breath after Boone started insistently pounding on my apartment door: “Dammit. The whole point of staying in this crappy apartment was so they wouldn’t know where I lived.”
Then a few minutes later, when Boone barged in, Dennis had yelled, “Who the hell are you?! If the Del Gottis sent you—”
Why had Dennis wanted to hide his location from the Del Gottis, and why would he have thought they might send someone to hurt him if he was their trusted launderer?
A possible answer to those questions dropped my stomach.
My ex wasn’t just laundering for the Del Gottis, he was using his “trusted” status to embezzle again—this time from the mafia family he was washing money for. A mafia family who would definitely figure out what happened after Dennis stopped reporting to work.
Boone had probably gotten rid of the laptop along with Dennis’s body. That meant I was in possession of the only other link to what had to be a secret bank account.
“Crap... Crap! Crap! Crap!” I whispered.
So many days…
So many days of not thinking about him, but that familiar tension returned in an instant. My muscles tightened, bracing the way they always did around Dennis.
Had to get rid of it. Bury it out of sight.
On instinct, I picked up the piece of paper with shaking hands and put it right back where I’d found it, zipping it into the liner of the gift from Noelle.
The gift he’d managed to take from me yet again.
I hung the orange coat in the closet and grabbed my old leather jacket, knowing I’d be using it from now on for the evening walks. Then I shut the door on the possibly deadly secret I’d just discovered.
But even closed away in the dark closet, it felt like a ticking time bomb.
Hidden, but not forgotten.
“Are you quite alright, Bell?”
That night on the evening walk, I blinked, pulling myself back from thoughts of whether or not the Del Gottis could track me down, given that I’d been offline since May.
I looked up to find Zion frowning down at me with concern in his brown eyes. We were almost back to the cottage, and I knew Zion had been talking the whole way, but I couldn’t remember a single thing he’d said.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
My answer only made Zion’s frown deepen. “I’ve just told you the stage manager quit after catching her girlfriend—the actor playing Mother Ursa—kissing Jacobi Baerlow, and you’ve nothing to say on that?”
To my left, Ravik was also looking at me with that intense, knowing stare. I remembered the sugar cookies still sitting on my counter—the ones I’d never given him.
“I...” My stomach rolled at just the thought of bothering them with what I was worried about. It was probably nothing anyway. The Del Gottis wouldn’t be able to find me. Other than flashing my passport at the border, I hadn’t left a single footprint between here and Minnesota.
And they didn’t know that Dennis had holed up in my apartment... maybe.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how my perfect, nearly two-week-long streak of not thinking about Dennis had come to an end, casting a shadow over the peace I’d found here in Canada.
“I have a headache,” I blurted, instead of making a weird confession about finding a handwritten slip of paper that may or may not lead to a bank account containing embezzled funds from a Minnesota mafia family. “I’m just going to go home.”
I jogged forward on the gravel path to flip around to face them instead of walking between them. “Sorry, Zion, no movie tonight. I’ll just turn off the lights when I’m ready to sleep, like I do for Boone.”
He and Ravik had gone completely still.
I could practically hear them talking over their maul bond.
“Of course, Bell,” Zion said carefully in the end. “Let me know if you require anything before then.”
It was all I could do not to run back to the cottage.
After my nightly shower, I turned off the lights before it was even nine. Climbed into the loft and lay there, staring at the ceiling.
It’s fine, I told myself. He’s dead. He can’t hurt me. The paper doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a piece of paper.
Sometime later, I heard Zion enter below and move around quietly until the scraping footsteps of his socked feet turned into heavy paw thuds after he shifted. And then one quiet plop as he settled onto the floor in bear form.
I didn’t need an overnight sentry. But my thoughts didn’t stop racing until Zion took up his post.
Only then did exhaustion finally pull me under.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
I woke up in the hazy night and climbed down the loft stairs to find the ink-black and silver bear sitting outside the window door.
Again.
Ravik’s bear. I knew it like I knew my own reflection by now.
He’d been bothering me off and on all summer. Always tapping. Always waiting to be let in. Persistent to a fault, his golden eyes glowing in the night of what was always a full moon.
My hand went to the latch.
Hovered there.
“I won’t let you in,” I whispered, bracing myself for another round of even louder tapping.
But this time, instead of resuming his tapping, like he always did, Ravik the Bear simply turned and lumbered away into the darkness.
Finally!
But there was no relief to be had as I watched him leave. Instead, a strange regret welled in my chest, like I’d lost something.
Oh, well. Everyone gave up on me eventually. Even bears who’d been tapping at my window all summer.
With a sigh, I turned back toward the loft.
And froze.
Dennis stood in the middle of the cottage’s front room. With the black gun in his hand.
“Hello, Belly.” He spat out the two words like a curse while pointing the lethal weapon at my chest.
The room thinned to a tunnel.
“No,” I cried out. “No, no, no!”
Dennis was back. He’d invaded the safe space I’d found, and he was going to kill me!
I was so scared. I wanted to run. But for some reason, I stood there paralyzed. Frozen in place and unable to breathe.
“You’re poison, not some kind of damn sugar cookie,” he said. “All I had to do was follow the smell of rot.”
He was right. I was poison. Everything I touched turned to rot. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to keep trying to be better.
“Go away!” I pleaded. Tears sprang to my eyes. “Leave me alone!”
Dennis just laughed. “You think you’ll ever be happy? That I won’t always come back and take everything you have? I’m going to kill you, kill those bears you’ve been lusting after, then I’m going to find Holly and Noelle—”
“No!” I screamed, tears running down my face. “Don’t you dare!”
“Oh, Belly.” Dennis’s voice filled with faux pity. “You actually think you have any power here? You think a vacant, broken thing like you can protect anybody from me?”
No, I didn’t think that. I knew I was weak and broken. “Please, don’t!” I cried. “Leave them alone. They didn’t do anything.”
Except try to help me.
This was why. This was why I couldn’t surrender. Why I couldn’t let myself consider the romance the three bears had offered me.
It wasn’t safe. It would never be safe.
I sobbed with the knowledge that Dennis’s return was all my fault.
“Okay, enough of your pitiful whining. Time to go bye-bye.”
Dennis raised the gun—and a mostly gray claw appeared from nowhere, slashing right through him.
To my shock, Dennis dissipated like smoke.
And a sudden feeling of familiarity washed over me.
I’d been here before.
“Calm... calm now, sweetheart,” a distant voice echoed. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get up here.”
Suddenly, I was back in my bed, being pulled into the bear’s warm gray fur. Safe. Protected.
“You’re safe,” the disembodied voice told me. I recognized it as Zion’s. “You’re safe.”
Yes, safe... and protected. They hadn’t left me to fight Dennis on my own.
My chest unknotted, and a warm feeling washed over me as the black of sleep welcomed me back into its peaceful cradle.
Everything went dark.
Until my eyes popped open the next morning to a direct hit of bright light.
The sun was shining directly into my eyes, letting me know that I’d overslept.
But at least it wasn’t dark, like when I woke up wrapped around Boone. I let out a huge breath of relief as I turned over because it had just been a dream. Just my mind trying to process—
I froze when I found Zion lying on the other side of the bed.
In his human form, on top of the covers, one arm thrown over his eyes. And so, so naked.
His body was long and dark—all smooth skin and lean muscle. His chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths. And his length...
Oh, my God.
It lay fully erect against his stomach, long and uncut. The head glistened, a bead of moisture trailing down onto his abs.
Everything inside me squiggled and sparked like a power line dipped into water as I did that thing where I knew I needed to look away, but couldn’t stop staring.
Until his nose flared. And I realized he was awake.
“I extended a great deal of willpower to extricate myself from our hold last night without waking you,” he said, arm still covering his eyes. “However, that arousal scent issue Ravik discussed with you back in May has returned. With a vengeance.”
Okay, now I could look away.
I groaned and covered my face with both hands.
After everything—the anxiety from yesterday, that awful nightmare—this was how my body decided to respond to waking up next to a man I’d said I didn’t want in my bed… lying naked in my bed?
I heard him shifting to face me with a warm laugh, low in his throat. “Do not be embarrassed, sweetheart.”
This only made me cringe harder. I wanted to sink through the mattress and disappear.
But Zion just commanded, “Look at me. Look at me, Bell Winters.”
This must be the director’s voice he’d used to get his entire pageant cast off book—even Jacobi Baerlow.
I found myself reluctantly lowering my hands.
To find him closer than expected, regarding me with his head propped up on one hand, eyes glowing gold.
“Bell,” he said, drawing out my name. “You smell so very delicious.”
“I...” My voice came out breathy, uncertain. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”
But this was no longer what Ravik had accused me of back in May.
I was definitely aware of my arousal now. Could feel myself clenching below as Zion held me in that golden gaze.
His eyes scanned my face. He didn’t have fangs, but it felt like he was licking them.
“May I help you with that?”
My brain short-circuited. “What, like... finger me?”
“Oh, I am sure both Boone and Ravik would enjoy that.” He smiled—slow, knowing, devastating. “However, as I explained before, I’m much more adept with my mouth.”
I didn’t understand at first.
And then, oh... Oh!
Understanding crashed over me like a wave.
“You want to...” I swallowed hard.
Then found myself admitting, “I’ve never... had that done to me before.”
Zion arched an eyebrow over one glowing eye. “Never?”
“Yeah, never.” Somehow, it was still so easy to talk to Zion. Even with the air fully charged between us, he felt like a friend I could gossip with—even if the gossip was about me. “At my big old age of fifty-six.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out shaky. “I hear it’s... nice.”
“Tell me, Bell…” His tone was careful, almost gentlemanly. Offering, not demanding. “Would you be amenable to finding out what all the fuss is about?”