Chapter 1: The Phone Call that Shatters
It was mid-April, and Bear was torturing himself. Again.
The song ‘In Case You Missed It’ by Jordan Davis played on their CD player. On repeat. He sat shirtless on the edge of the unmade bed, his head in his hands, the lyrics about regret and a love left behind carving fresh furrows into his soul. His phone rang, shattering the cycle of grief. It was his Rosebud. His wife.
Her voice was a shredded whisper, a sound that clawed at his ribs. “Bear.”
He was already moving, car keys in hand, feet bare on the cold hardwood. “Where?”
“Billings. The cabin. David’s cabin.” The words were brittle. “He’s… he’s gone, Bear.”
“Don’t move. I’m coming.” He drove shirtless and breathless, the Montana spring air cold through the open window, his blue eyes fixed on the endless highway.
He found her just outside the cabin’s front door, slumped on the wooden steps, clutching the sonogram pictures in her hand like a grenade. His eyes widened, locking onto the fresh bear paw tattoo on her hip—the one that matched the exact size of his fist clutching a rosebud. A savage claim she’d etched into her own skin while he’d been lost without her.
Her turquoise Scout still sat in their driveway, waiting. Here, her belly had a slight swell, a barely noticeable bump unless you knew her body as well as Bear did. She was twelve weeks now. David had fed her, made sure she rested. He’d stopped hitting her when the doctor confirmed it five weeks ago. He’d brought the doctor back every three weeks, a sick parody of care, bringing the prenatal vitamins she needed but never letting her go.
Bear dropped to his knees in the gravel, his hands hovering, afraid to touch. “Rosebud.”
She leaned into him then, her forehead pressing against his sternum, the sonogram crinkling between them. He tasted salt and iron when he growled, “Show me where he touched you.” His knuckles whitened around the grainy image of two little beans, conceived the night before she disappeared. His children. His voice broke. “All of it.”
She didn’t speak. Instead, she lifted a trembling hand and touched two fingers first to the faded yellow bruise along her jawline, then to a spot just below her ribs on the left side.
“Here,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “And here. That’s all. After… after he knew.” Her hand drifted protectively over the small curve of her stomach.
Bear’s entire body vibrated with a rage so cold it crystallized the air between them. He lowered his head until their foreheads touched again, his breath mingling with hers. “Did he…”
“No,” she cut him off, her green eyes fierce through the sheen of tears. “He wanted a wife for show. He had… other arrangements for that.” A shudder ran through her. “He made me watch, once. To show me what I was missing.” A broken, hollow laugh escaped her. “It was pathetic.”
The wail of sirens cut through the mountain silence, growing louder. Bear didn’t move from her. “The escort,” Rose said, nodding toward the cabin door behind her. “She’s the one who let me out. She found his phone, gave me mine back. She’s still inside, I think.”
Brody’s patrol truck skidded to a halt beside Bear’s, gravel flying. He was out of the cab in an instant, his sheriff’s badge glinting. He took in the scene—Rose on the steps, Bear knelt before her like a supplicant, the grim line of the cabin behind them.
“Christ, Rosie,” Brody breathed, his professional demeanor faltering for a second. His eyes dropped to the sonogram still clutched in Bear’s white-knuckled hand. A slow grin spread across his face, pure relief breaking through the tension. “Well, I’ll be damned. Twins?”
Bear finally moved, standing up and pulling Rose gently to her feet with him, tucking her securely under his arm. He didn’t let go of the sonogram. “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick. “Twins.”
Brody’s smile faded as he looked past them to the open cabin door. “And Sterling?”
“Dead upstairs,” Rose said flatly, the words tasting of ash. “Heart attack, maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t check.”
Brody gave a sharp nod, his hand resting on his holster. "Stay right here." He moved past them into the cabin's dim interior.
The smell hit him first—expensive cologne, stale sweat, and underneath it, the coppery hint of death. He found the escort first, a young woman wrapped in a blanket on the living room couch, her eyes vacant. She just pointed wordlessly up the stairs. David Sterling was in the master bedroom, sprawled on the floor beside the bed. Brody checked for a pulse he knew wasn’t there, his gaze catching on a heavy crystal ashtray lying a few feet away, a dark smear along one facet.
Down the hall, a study. The desk was a chaos of papers. Brody’s gloved fingers sifted through bank statements, his breath catching. Wire transfers. Multiple, structured to avoid reporting thresholds. All to an account for Bernice LaRue. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Back on the porch, the spring sun felt like a lie. Bear had wrapped Rose in his jacket, his massive frame curving around her as if he could absorb her shivers. Brody held up a printed sheet of the transactions. "He paid her, Rose. Your mother."
Rose’s face drained of the little color it had. "For introductions," she whispered, her voice hollow. "A finder's fee for a suitable bachelor."
"It was more than that," Brody said gently. He pulled out another document, a photocopy of a cover page from a local law firm. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage - Cooper vs. Cooper.
Bear went very still.
"He had divorce papers drawn up for you to sign," Brody said, watching her. "Months ago."
A sharp, bitter laugh escaped Rose. "He brought them here. Told me if I didn't sign, he’d have Bear served at the ranch, in front of his crew and everything." Her green eyes, fierce and clear, met Bear’s. "I ripped them to pieces. Told him I’d been yours since middle school. That I’d die your wife."
She looked back at the ashtray in Brody’s evidence bag. "He said he'd do it himself. So I threw that at his head." Her small hand found Bear's, gripping it like an anchor. "I missed. He laughed. Then he clutched his chest."
He took a wheezing breath, and was dead before he hit the rug." Rose shrugged, the motion a profound collapse. "I waited, listening. All night I just listened. The next day, I heard footsteps above me, the front door open. I knew she was there."
A paramedic approached, offering a blanket, but Bear’s glare sent them back. "And this?" he rumbled, his big thumb stroking the fresh ink of the tattoo. She leaned her whole weight into him, a full-body confession. "I did it six weeks ago, with a sewing needle and candle soot from the grate." Her fingers pressed over his heart. "He needed to see what was yours on me."
Down the porch steps, the clink of a chain dragging. Two covered stretchers. Watching them loaded, Rose felt nothing at all. Later, the fury would come. Disgust too. But right now, there was Bear’s familiar scent, a wall blocking the memories.
From inside, the blank-eyed young woman finally spoke. Bernice had broken the same bottle David used on Rose earlier that week, clawing at her face when David laid there slack. The wound became infected in the days she'd left her jailed daughter forgotten below the floorboards — running from prison one final time, petals left rotting on her dead stem instead to save appearances alone.
The sting of antiseptic wipes pulled Rose back into her own skin. Bear was crouched before her, cleaning a scrape on her knee she didn’t remember getting, his touch impossibly gentle. Each pass of the cloth was a silent vow.
“The security system at the shop,” she said suddenly, her voice clearer now. “It records audio. Everything.”
Bear’s hands stilled. He looked up at her.
“The back room. The day she brought him by for a ‘consultation’.” Rose closed her eyes, replaying the digital memory in perfect, horrible clarity. “You can hear her selling me. You can hear him negotiating the price.”
A low sound rattled in Bear’s chest. It wasn’t just a growl; it was the foundation of a mountain shifting. Brody, leaning against his truck door, let out a slow whistle. “That’s not just motive. That’s conspiracy. That’s prison.”
Rose opened her eyes, fixing them on the distant, snow-capped peaks. “I want to press charges. For everything.” She finally looked at her husband, her green eyes blazing with a cold fire he’d never seen before. “I want her to know I sent her there.”
Bear stood, pulling her up with him, his frame blocking the sun. He cradled her face, his thumbs brushing her freckles. “Then we start at the police station. Right now.” He didn’t ask if she was sure. He saw the steel in her spine, the final shed of a skin she’d been trapped in. He kissed her forehead, a seal. “Let’s go bury the witch.”
The cruiser’s heater blasted, but Rose couldn’t stop shaking. It was a deep, cellular tremor, the aftermath of a quake. She stared out at the blurring pines, Bear’s hand a heavy, warm weight on her thigh. Brody drove in silence, the radio crackling with static-laced codes that meant nothing to her.
“You’re sure?” Bear’s voice was rough gravel beside her ear.
She nodded, not trusting her own voice yet. Her fingers traced the edge of the sonogram in her lap. Two heartbeats, fluttering against the silence of that basement. Her proof of life. Bear’s thumb stroked her leg, a slow, rhythmic pressure that said he was here, he was real, he was hers.
They pulled up to the stark, brick police station. The afternoon sun felt accusingly bright. Bear got out first, filling the space between her and the door before he opened it. He offered his hand. She took it, her small palm disappearing into his, her legs wobbly on the asphalt. “I can walk,” she muttered, more to herself than him.
“I know you can,” he said, but he didn’t let go, his body a solid bulwark against the world as they walked inside. The fluorescent lights hummed, bleaching the color from everything. A deputy looked up, his eyes widening at the sight of them—Bear, shirtless and fierce, Rose, draped in his too-big jacket, looking like she’d crawled out of a grave.
“Brody,” the deputy started, but Brody was already steering them past the front desk with a curt nod.
“Interview three,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. The room was small, dominated by a laminate table and the faint smell of stale coffee. Bear pulled a chair out for Rose, his hand lingering on her shoulder as she sat. She kept his jacket wrapped tightly around her, the scent of him—pine, leather, and home—the only thing holding her together.
“I want to press charges against Bernice LaRue,” Rose said, her voice surprisingly steady in the sterile room. “For conspiracy. For what she did.” Brody nodded, opening a folder. “We’ll need your formal statement. And we’ll need to retrieve the security footage from your shop.”
“Okay.” Rose’s hands, resting on her stomach, trembled. Bear saw it. He dragged his chair closer until their knees touched, the solid line of his heat a battery against her side.
The statement took an hour. She recited the facts like a recipe, detaching herself from the words: the meeting her mother arranged, David’s escalating offers, the eventual abduction from her own back room. She mentioned the money, the divorce papers, the ashtray. She did not describe the basement. Bear’s hand found hers under the table, his callused thumb tracing circles on her wrist.
When it was done, Brody leaned back. “It’s enough to bring her in for questioning. With the financial records and the audio, it’ll stick.” He looked at Rose, his gaze soft. “You should go home, Rosie. We’ve got this.”
Outside, the spring air was sharp. Rose stopped on the steps, leaning into Bear. “I don’t want anyone else to know I’m home yet,” she whispered into his chest. “Just you and me. For a little while.” He understood. He cupped the back of her head, his breath warm in her hair. “Tomorrow,” he promised. “Tomorrow we tell the world.” He led her to his truck, helping her in, and drove them toward the quiet sanctuary of their ranch, leaving the noise of the town and its questions behind.
The truck tires crunched on the long gravel driveway, a sound so profoundly familiar it finally unlocked the tightness in Rose’s chest. He didn’t pull up to the main house. Instead, he drove around back to their secluded cabin, the one he’d built for them before the wedding.
“Everyone’s at the big house,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “Gave ‘em the week off.” He came around, opened her door, and simply lifted her out, cradling her against his chest. She didn’t protest, just buried her face in the warm hollow of his neck.
Inside, the woodstove was already banked, casting a amber glow. It smelled of beeswax and fresh linen. He carried her straight to the oversized armchair by the fire, settling with her in his lap. For a long time, they just breathed.
Her fingers found the hem of his shirt, slipping beneath to trace the hard ridges of his stomach. He shuddered, a full-body tremor. “Your hands are cold, Rosebud.”
“Your abs are warm,” she murmured, her voice drowsy. She scratched lightly through his happy trail, a forgotten ritual. A broken sound escaped him.
He shifted her carefully, his big hands framing her face. “Look at me.” She did. “You are home. You are safe. He is dead. She is next.” Each statement was a stone laid on a path, solid and unwavering. “This is the only truth.”
A single tear tracked through the dust on her cheek. He kissed it away. Then he stood, still holding her, and walked them to the bathroom. He turned on the shower, steam billowing. “We’re washing all of it off,” he stated, his fingers already working the knots from her hair. “Every last speck.”
Under the hot spray, she watched the grime of that basement swirl at their feet and disappear down the drain. He washed her with a gentleness that felt sacred, his soap-slicked hands moving over the tattoo, over the slight swell of her belly, rinsing her clean. She returned the favor, her small hands smoothing over the tension in his shoulders, the memory of her touch erasing the phantom feel of his grip on the sonogram.
Wrapped in thick towels, he led her to bed. He pulled one of his old, soft t-shirts over her head, the hem brushing her thighs. “I want to see,” he said, his voice thick. He guided her hand to the waistband of his sweats, letting her push them down just enough. Three long, fresh scratch marks ran down his hip, angry and red. “Did that this morning,” he admitted, his blue eyes dark. “Dreamt I’d lost you for good.”
She knelt on the bed, leaning forward to press her lips to each mark. “Never.”
He pulled her down beside him, the quilt tucked around them, her back fitted against the furnace of his chest. His palm splayed possessively over her stomach. The wind picked up outside, rattling the panes. A coyote called in the distance.
In the dark, her whisper was barely audible. “What do we do now?”
She turned in his arms to face him, kissing him deeply. Her lips moved from his mouth to his jawline, tasting salt and skin, then over to the strong column of his neck. “I never stopped looking, baby. I dreamt of you every night,” he whispered into her hair, his voice raw. She nipped at his neck, sucking a dark mark there, a new claim over the old. He groaned, the sound vibrating through both of them.
He kissed her back, deep and desperate, his hands cupping her face. Then his mouth was everywhere: her eyelids, her temples, the pulse point in her throat. He pushed the soft cotton of the t-shirt up, his breath catching. Her breasts were already fuller, heavier in his palms. He took a peaked nipple into his mouth, sucking hard until she cried out, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He moved down her body, his kisses a fevered trail over her rounded stomach, a silent vow to their children. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of her panties and pulled them down, tossing them aside. He kissed the inside of each thigh, making her shiver. Then he pressed his mouth to her, eating her pussy like a starved man.
And he had been.
His tongue was rough and thorough, licking her swollen folds with a hunger that made her back arch off the mattress. He fucked her with his tongue, spearing deep, then sucking her clit into his mouth until she was sobbing, her hands fisted in the sheets. “Bear, please,” she choked out, the words ripped from some primal place. “I need you inside me. Now.”
He rose over her, his blue eyes black with need, his cock thick and straining against her thigh. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head pressing insistently against her. “Look at me,” he growled, and she forced her tear-blurred eyes open, locking onto his. He pushed in, one brutal, claiming inch, stretching her gloriously, filling the hollow ache that had been her prison for three months. “You’re mine,” he snarled, sinking deeper, his breath hot on her lips.
“Yours,” she gasped, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him in further. He bottomed out with a groan that sounded like agony, buried to the hilt inside her. He was so big, so deep, rearranging everything, scorching away the memory of any other touch. He began to move, a slow, punishing rhythm that was all possession. Each thrust was a wordless promise, each retreat a torment.
“Scratch me,” he commanded against her mouth, and her nails dug into the hard muscle of his back, scoring red trails. “Harder, Rosebud. Let them know who I belong to.” She did, her body clenching around him, milking his cock as he pounded into her. The slap of skin, their ragged breaths, her broken moans—it was a symphony of reclamation. “Come for me,” he ordered, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing rough, desperate circles.
The command shattered her, her body seizing around his cock as a sharp cry tore from her throat. Her orgasm was a violent tide, pulling him deeper with each convulsive clench. "That's it, baby, fuck, take it all," he grunted, his thrusts turning erratic, chasing his own release. He pistoned into her, the bedframe slamming against the log wall in a frantic rhythm. "Mine," he snarled once more, a final, guttural pronouncement as he spilled into her, heat flooding her core. He collapsed atop her, his sweat-slicked chest heaving against hers, his face buried in her neck. They stayed fused like that, hearts hammering a frantic, shared cadence, until the room settled back into silence. "I can feel you," she whispered, her hand sliding between them where they were still joined. A soft, exhausted laugh shook his shoulders. "You always could, Rosebud." He finally eased out of her, rolling to his side and pulling her back against him, his palm returning to the curve of her stomach. The wind whistled outside, a lonely sound against the solid warmth of their bed. "Brody will call tomorrow," she said into the dark, her fingers tracing the scratches on his arm. "He will," Bear agreed, his voice a low rumble of certainty. "And then we start burning it all down."
The deep quiet of the ranch just before dawn was a blanket Bear had grown to hate over the last three months. Today, it felt different. He woke with the first pale gray light bleeding through the windows, his body tuned to the warm weight against his side. Rose was a tight curl under the quilt, one hand tucked under her cheek, the other resting on the slight mound of her stomach. He watched the steady rise and fall of her shoulders, the faint flutter of her eyelashes against freckled skin. He counted her breaths, each one a quiet victory.
After a long while, he eased out of bed, moving with a rancher’s practiced silence. He pulled on his sweatpants, just in case someone stopped by, and padded out to the kitchen. The first coffee finished dripping just as the sun cracked over the eastern pasture. He was shirtless, drinking the bitter black brew straight from the pot, leaning against the counter, when the front door opened.
Maggie came in, as she’d done countless times over the last few months to check in on him. Her keys jangled in the bowl by the door. “Bear? You awake? I brought those bear claws from—” Her sentence died in her throat. Her eyes, sharp and assessing, scanned him—the bare chest, the sleep-tousled hair—and then locked onto the dark, possessive mark on the side of his neck. The mug she was holding clattered to the floor, shattering. “You son of a bitch.”
She launched herself across the room, her small fists pummeling his chest. “You fucking animal! She’s been gone ninety-four days! Ninety-four! And you’re out here getting laid? What is wrong with you?” Her voice shattered into a scream of pure, gutted betrayal. Tears streamed down her face, mascara bleeding into the tattoos on her temples. “I thought you loved her! I thought you were dying! We all did!”
He caught her wrists, gentle but immovable. “Maggie.”
“Don’t you ‘Maggie’ me, you bastard! Who was she? Some townie trash feeling sorry for the poor, heartbroken rancher?” She spat the words, struggling against his grip. “I’ll find her. I’ll carve her goddamn—”
“She’s here.” His voice, low and rough, cut through her rage. He didn’t let go, just held her wild, grieving eyes. “Rose is here. She’s in our bed. Sleeping.”
Maggie’s fight left her all at once. Her body went slack. Her face, so fierce a second before, crumpled. “What?”
“She’s home.” He released her wrists. “She’s safe. She’s pregnant. With mine.”
A ragged, broken sound escaped Maggie’s lips. She stumbled back, her hand flying to her mouth. Her eyes darted from the hickey on his neck to the hallway leading to the bedroom, understanding dawning in a painful, glorious wave. The anger drained, replaced by a hope so violent it looked like agony. She took a shaky step toward the hallway, then stopped, looking back at him, her whole world in his quiet, weary nod.