The Alpha's Curvy Mate

Chapter 8: The Call

"So nothing," Nora said, sliding a mug of coffee across the counter. "Like, nothing nothing."

"Nothing." Scarlett wrapped both hands around the mug without drinking from it. "I searched everywhere. There's no Draven Ashcroft. No social media, no work history, no address on record. Nothing."

"That's not a guy. That's a ghost story."

"I know."

"So what does it mean?"

Scarlett stared into the coffee like it might answer for her. "I don't know. I just know that a man who apparently knows everything about my life doesn't seem to have a life of his own anywhere online."

Nora opened her mouth to say something else, but Scarlett's phone buzzed against the counter first, and the name on the screen killed whatever joke that Nora was about to make.

Ethan.

"Don't," Nora said immediately. "You don't owe him a callback."

"I want to know what he wants."

"He wants to make you feel small. That's what he always wants." Nora's voice had an edge Scarlett rarely heard from her. "You don't have to give him the chance."

But Scarlett was already sliding her thumb across the screen, some old habit of managing him still alive after two years of exhaustion.

"Ethan."

"Scarlett. Good, you picked up." He sounded rushed, businesslike, the tone he used when he wanted something and didn't want to admit he needed it. "I need the file with the insurance paperwork. It's probably still in the hallway closet."

"I'll have my lawyer send it to your lawyer."

"Scarlett, come on. It's paperwork, not a hostage negotiation."

"Everything's a negotiation with you, Ethan. I learned that a while ago."

A pause. She could hear him deciding whether to let that go.

"Where are you staying?" he asked instead. "Nora said you left the apartment."

"That's not your business anymore."

"It is when half our assets are still tied to that address."

"I'll have my lawyer send you whatever you need." She kept her voice flat, refusing to give him the reaction he was fishing for. "Is there anything else?"

"Scarlett." His tone shifted, softer now, the version of gentle he used right before he said something cruel. "I'm not trying to fight with you. I just think you should be realistic about your situation. Starting over isn't exactly easy. Not for someone like you."

She went very still.

"What's that supposed to mean."

"You know what it means?." A short, humorless laugh. "You really think some man out there is going to want you the way you want to wanted? At your age, in your situation, with your body? I'm being honest because nobody else will be."

Scarlett hung up without answering.

She set the phone down on the counter with exaggerated care, like the object itself might shatter if she moved too fast, and walked into Nora's bathroom before her face could betray anything to the one person who'd notice.

She locked the door and looked at herself in the mirror.

Curvy hips. Soft stomach. The body that had changed after she lost the baby, the body Ethan had stopped reaching for in the dark, the body he had spent two years quietly deciding wasn't worth wanting. She'd told herself she was past caring what he thought. Standing there, staring at her own reflection with his voice still ringing in her ears, she realized she'd never actually stopped believing him. She'd just gotten better at not saying it out loud.

Was he right? Was there some part of Draven's interest that was pity, or curiosity, or the kind of attention men sometimes paid to women they didn't actually want, just to see how far it could go?

She didn't hear Nora knock. She just heard the door open, because apparently a lock had never once stopped Nora in the history of their friendship.

"You don't have to talk about it," Nora said, leaning against the doorframe. "But I'm not leaving you in here alone with whatever he just said."

"He asked if I really thought a man would look at me the way I want."

Nora's jaw tightened. "Of course he did."

"Maybe he's not wrong."

"He's not wrong because he's insightful, Scarlett. He's not wrong because it's true." Nora crossed the small bathroom and turned Scarlett gently by the shoulders until they were both facing the mirror. "You know what I hate? That he still gets to decide how you see yourself even after you left him. You signed the papers. You walked out. And he's still in your head, telling you what you're allowed to believe about your own body."

Scarlett's eyes burned, but she didn't cry.

"I don't need you to tell me I'm beautiful," she said quietly.

"Good, because I wasn't going to. I was going to tell you that his opinion of you stopped being a fact the day he stopped choosing you." Nora held her gaze in the mirror, steady and unglamorous and completely sincere. "You don't have to feel amazing tonight. You just don't have to believe him anymore. Those are two different things, and only one of them is up to you tonight."

That distinction settled into Scarlett's chest. But she wasn't healed,for the first time she had something solid to hold onto. She wasn't going to walk out of this bathroom loving her reflection. But she could walk out refusing to let Ethan's voice be the one that got the final word on it.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. He doesn't get to decide that anymore."

Nora squeezed her shoulder once and stepped out ,leaving Scarlett to splash water on her face, and for a few minutes, Scarlett almost believed the night might end there.

Her phone buzzed on the counter when she came back out. Unknown number.

She almost didn't look. She looked anyway, the way she always did now, some reckless part of her needing to know.

He isn't the only man who heard what Ethan just said to you.

Scarlett's hand went cold around the phone.

Just. Not years ago. Not some old wound someone had dug up secondhand from a friend or a support group or a drunken confession she couldn't remember making.

Just now. On a call she had made from inside a locked bathroom, in an apartment nobody was supposed to know she was staying in.

Someone hadn't just found out what Ethan said to her.

Someone had been listening while he said it.