Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

ZANE

Bears don’t take betrayal lightly. While they’re usually calm and solitary, trust is huge for them, whether between mama bears and their cubs or during mating partnerships. If a bear feels threatened or deceived, their reaction is swift, and they’ll avoid whoever caused the distress. For a bear, a second chance isn’t given easily… so whenever possible, try not to piss them off.

—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 86

I was walking on air. The show had been a success, Bear had fucked me up against a wall at the arena, and now, we had the whole night ahead of us in the hotel suite.

“Baby.”

“Hm?” I asked, reaching for the knob to turn the water on in the shower.

Bear hesitated, but I could see he wasn’t playing or flirting anymore. He looked serious.

“Bear. What is it?”

His hands were so gentle on me. He reached for my hips and turned me back around, then traced his fingertips over my lower back.

It took me a moment to catch on, but when I did, my stomach plummeted. “No,” I whispered.

I swiveled side to side as if I’d be able to somehow see my own lower back. Finally, Bear moved out of the way so I could see it in the mirror.

Last time it happened, I’d been scared.

This time for some reason, I was pissed as fuck .

“No!” I ground out. “No, they don’t get to fucking touch me. They don’t get to fucking toy with me! Who the fuck does this? Who the fuck comes into someone’s personal space…” The reality of the situation slammed into me. “They got under my clothes this time,” I breathed.

And then my breaths started coming too quickly. “I want them gone, Bear. I want them to stay away. I want to find out who’s doing this. How could they do this? Who does this?” My voice sounded hysterical, which I hated.

I didn’t want to sound hysterical. I was angry. Betrayed. Confused. And enraged.

Bear tried to reach for me, to pull me into his arms and comfort me, but I shoved him away and stepped in the shower. I was going to wash as much of it off as I could. And then I was going to figure out who the fuck had done this.

“Z.”

“I’m not upset,” I snapped. Bear furrowed his brows in confusion, so I corrected myself. “Okay, obviously I’m upset. But I don’t need comfort right now. I’m pissed. How dare they? How fucking dare they.”

I scrubbed my skin like it had betrayed me because I felt like it had. Did I not have enough situational awareness to notice when someone lifted up my shirt and inked my fucking bare skin ?

Jesus fuck. Who was so oblivious that?—

“Stop.”

Bear’s deep grumble was so calm it made tears smart in my eyes. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t talk to him about this, really, because I knew he felt responsible. The worst part about all of this was the guilt he would feel for failing me.

“This isn’t your fault, Bear,” I said desperately. “You probably weren’t even there.” Fuck! That wasn’t what I’d meant. “They’re obviously slick. They obviously created chaos sufficient enough to do this without me noticing.”

I could hear the panic in my voice, so I quickly closed my mouth and concentrated on scrubbing.

Bear yanked the soap out of my hand. It slipped from his grip and went shooting loudly across the tiles, banging like a tossed marble ball on its way toward the drain.

“Honey, take a breath.”

I inhaled quickly, accidentally sucking in shower water. I coughed and snorted. I couldn’t even breathe right.

Bear gathered me quickly into his arms and lifted me up to press my back against the frigid walls. I winced before sinking into him, curling around him and letting him hold me tightly.

I cried angry tears. For the asshole who had ruined my perfect night. For the motherfucker who had dared to violate me. For the actual mother whose abandonment all those years ago had finally begun to sleep peacefully in the grave I’d made for her in my mind.

“I had a song for you,” I finally admitted in a small voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t sing it.”

Bear pulled back and cupped my face, keeping my back and ass pressed against the tile. “For me? I assumed I was the grizzly in your song.”

I smiled through my snotty, swollen face. “You were. You are. But that one wasn’t written for you. I wrote one for you.”

“Yeah?” He asked, the edges of his lips quirking up. “Why didn’t you sing it? ”

“Chickened out.”

He leaned in and kissed me, tender at first but then more hungrily. I let myself enjoy it. Let myself float away on the fantasy he offered. Let myself feel every caress and stroke of his big hands on my body.

Until I realized he was rubbing a hole into the skin of my lower back with his thumb.

“Let me go,” I said, wriggling out of his grip.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was trying to get it off.”

“Fine, try to wash it off, but then you can Sharpie over it again. Draw me another angry saw blade or whatever. But then we’re getting to work. I want the video footage and the time stamps from my watch. Not that many people managed to touch me, Bear. And I think they were all people we know.”

I retrieved the soap and handed it to him while I washed and rinsed my hair. He scrubbed the stamp but gave up quickly. We both knew it wasn’t coming off with soap.

By the time I hopped out and dried off, I was a man on a mission. “Call Violet. She should still be awake in LA.”

Bear watched me cautiously as I moved to the other room to root out his laptop and hand it to him. “Pull up the footage. I’m going to get Lou in here.”

“Do not open that door.” His deep voice would have made my dick hard if I wasn’t so distracted. “Text her.”

I pulled out my phone. “Fine.”

Another stamp. Come to the suite for strategy sesh.

Then I went back to Bear’s bag and pulled out the Sharpie before smacking it in his palm and turning around.

I hadn’t put on a shirt yet, had only yanked on some baggy pajama pants, so he had full access to cover the mark.

The tip of the marker was cold, and it prickled my skin with goose bumps. This time, he took a little longer, and when I insisted he take a photo again, he looked a little sheepish.

“I told you. I suck at drawing.”

I stared at the… “Mitten that’s missing a thumb?” I asked. He narrowed his eyes and looked at the phone screen. “Santa’s pack?” He made a little growly noise in his throat. “Upside-down chef’s hat?”

“It’s a honey pot! How can you not see it’s…” He tilted his head and pointed at the black, shapeless blob. “It’s a honey pot. Like in Winnie the Pooh.”

I blinked at him. Fuck , he was adorable. Emotion welled up and filled my eyes. Had anyone ever cared for me like Bear did?

“It’s a honey pot,” he insisted again, firming his jaw.

I opened my mouth to tell him I loved him—that he was the kindest, sweetest, biggest-hearted man I knew—when the squealer alarm went off from the security wedge and Lou’s muffled curses filled the space where she’d tried to open the door.

Bear quickly tossed his hoodie at me, and I yanked it on. He pulled the wedge out and turned it off, saving our ears from complete annihilation.

We spent the next hour scrolling through grainy surveillance video. Violet provided occasional updates from the speaker of Lou’s phone, while members of the team in California moved in and out of the conference room she was in.

“How did you let people near him?” she kept asking. “There was a no-touching policy. Do you people need retraining?”

She’d already apologized profusely to me on behalf of the team and explained she would be notifying the label and letting them know every update. It was excruciating to watch Bear and Lou have to sit there and take the reprimands when I knew it hadn’t been that easy in person. How did you tell the king of a country they weren’t allowed to shake hands with a lowly guitar player?

According to the video, at least five people had touched my lower back. One of them had clearly done it over my clothes, but the rest were impossible to see because of the crowd.

Alana Vasa, the violinist, had hugged me around the waist when we’d greeted each other.

Little Carina had thrown herself at me.

Gisella, the queen, had steadied herself on my back when she’d teetered in her heels.

Bodhi had put his hand on my shoulder, neck, and back. But the one on my back was clearly seen as being over my clothes. After realizing just how many places Bodhi had touched me, I glanced at Bear.

His jaw was clenched, and his nostrils flared. Thankfully, I knew he’d examined the rest of my naked body in the shower to make sure the stamp we’d seen was the only one.

Noelle had put her hand on my lower back. I remembered that.

“That royal guard touched him,” Lou said, nodding at the video while she scribbled a note.

“Kasper can’t be our Stamper,” Bear said, reaching to speed up the feed. “Besides, he was way too busy stressing about the king’s security. Apparently, there’ve been some threats recently. Kasper didn’t want them leaving Ventdestine at all.”

“Lou touched me,” I said, pointing to the screen. Lou’s eyes widened in surprise before she realized I was joking.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “All I need is for them to fire Ryan so I have to do double duty.”

Her words took me by surprise. “Fire Ryan?” I glanced at Ryan, who was pretending to ignore our conversation. Thankfully, Violet was busy talking to someone in the conference room with her.

Lou shrugged. “What else could their motive be? All their emails seem to point out Ryan’s inability to keep you protected.”

I was confused. “ All their emails? I thought there was only one?”

Bear glared at Lou, and her eyes went wide. Violet came back on, oblivious to what had just happened. “So, Alana Vasa was in Paris when the LA stamping happened. She’s clear. But we need to talk about canceling Berlin. I’m not sure the label is going to be comfortable with the exposure, considering…”

I didn’t listen to her words. All I could see was the truth in Bear’s expression. There’d been more emails. Emails no one had bothered to tell me about. I turned away from Bear and focused on Lou’s phone. “Violet, I want you to send me every email I’ve received, right fucking now.”

There was a pause. “Uh… Zee, you’re the one with the emails. They came to your account, and you and Ryan forwarded them to me. Remember?”

Embarrassment heated my face at the confirmation. I took a deep breath and tried to stay professional… something I was wildly unfamiliar with lately. “Yes, sorry. My bad. They must still be in my email account. Well, I’ll leave you and the team to sort this out. I’m going to bed. Thank you for your help tonight.”

And with that, I stood up, avoided Bear’s face like the fucking plague, and escaped to my room.

Where I locked the door and spent the next half hour catching up on his many lies.