The Alpha's Curvy Mate

chapter 9: Paid In Full

The call came while Scarlett was still nursing her second cup of Nora's coffee, trying to decide whether she'd actually slept or just closed her eyes for six hours out of exhaustion.

"Ms. Reeves? This is Marcus from the property office. I wanted to confirm we received your payment. The account's current, no further action needed on the eviction notice."

Scarlett sat up straight. "What payment?"

"The balance was paid in full yesterday afternoon. Cashier's check." A pause, papers shuffling on his end. "You didn't authorize that?"

"I didn't authorize anything. My account is frozen."

"Well, someone did. It's cleared. You're all set." He sounded like a man eager to end an awkward conversation about money that wasn't his problem. "Have a good day, Ms. Reeves."

He hung up before she could ask another question. Scarlett set the phone down slowly, a different kind of cold moving through her than the fear from the last two nights.

"What?" Nora asked, reading her face over the rim of her own mug.

"Someone paid my rent."

"That's... good?"

"It's not good, Nora. It's terrifying." Scarlett stood, pacing the small kitchen like the motion might help her think. "I didn't ask anyone to do that. I didn't want anyone to do that. Someone walked into my life and solved a problem I never gave them permission to touch."

"You think it was him."

"Who else would it be?"

She didn't wait to be talked out of it. She grabbed her jacket and left before Nora could finish her coffee, and she didn't stop moving until she was standing outside the building where she'd last seen him, the same brick wall he'd leaned against like he owned the sidewalk.

He wasn't there.

She called the only number she had for him, and he picked up on the second ring.

"Did you pay my rent?"

There was a beat of silence, the kind that told her everything before he said a word. "Yes."

"You don't get to do that."

"I already did."

"That's not an answer. That's you telling me you don't think you need my permission for anything." Her voice climbed, two days of fear and exhaustion finally boiling over into something sharper. "I told you I didn't want your help. I told you I was handling this myself."

"You were about to lose your home because your account was frozen." His voice stayed level, maddeningly calm against her rising temper. "I fixed the part of this I could fix without asking you to trust me for anything else."

"That's not how this works. You don't get to swoop in and rescue me every time it's convenient for you, and then disappear for two days like none of it counts unless there's danger involved."

"I haven't disappeared." His tone dropped, quieter now, edged with a patience that sounded close to running out. "I've been finding out exactly how far Malachi's reach extends into your life. That takes time, and it isn't something I can do standing in your kitchen."

"Then why show up at all? Why the rent, why the black car warning, why any of it, if you're just going to vanish the second I actually need answers?"

There was a pause long enough that she wondered if he'd hung up.

"Because something in me is drawn to you in a way I can't fully explain, even to myself." No apology in it, no softening. "I'm not going to chase you down every street in this city proving it. That's not who I am, and it wouldn't matter if I did. But don't mistake distance for indifference, Scarlett. I'm not disappearing. I'm working."

"That's not an answer. That's a feeling, and feelings don't give you the right to make decisions about my life."

"I know it doesn't make sense to you yet." He didn't softeen his words. "It doesn't fully make sense to me either. That doesn't change that it's there."

She stood on the sidewalk with the phone pressed hard against her ear, furious and unsteady and, underneath both of those things, aware of some traitorous warmth unfurling in her chest that she refused to examine too closely.

"I want to be able to make my own decisions," she said, quieter now. "Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. That's the only way any of this feels like my life again."

"Then I'll ask next time." A concession, offered without softness, like he was pricing out exactly how much ground he was willing to give and not an inch more. "But I won't apologize for the rent. You'd have been on the street by Friday, and I wasn't going to let that happen while I had the means to stop it."

"I don't need saving."

"No," he agreed. "You don't. That's not why I did it."

She wanted to ask why, then. She wanted to demand the honest answer underneath the deflection, the way she had every time since the bar. But some instinct told her he'd already given her more truth in that single sentence than he'd meant to, and pushing harder right now would only make him retreat behind another door marked not yet.

"I have to go," she said instead.

"Scarlett."

"What."

"Be careful today. I have a feeling Malachi isn't finished making his point."

The call ended before she could ask what that meant, and she stood there on the sidewalk turning his warning over in her mind, wondering how a man who claimed to be working from a distance always seemed to know exactly what was coming before she did.

Her phone buzzed again before she'd even put it back in her pocket. A different number this time. Familiar. Her lawyer's office.

She answered, expecting an update on the divorce filing.

"Ms. Reeves, I need you to come in as soon as possible," the paralegal said, her voice tight in a way that hadn't been there before. "Someone filed an emergency motion against you this morning. I think you should see this in person."

"A motion for what?"

"I'd rather not say over the phone. Just come in. Please."

Scarlett looked down at her own hand, still faintly trembling from the conversation with Draven, and felt the ground shift under her again, the way it kept shifting every single time she thought she'd found solid footing.