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Then she planted her hands on her hips and glared at both of them.

"You," she said, pointing at Cal, who was still wiping tears of laughter from his eyes while Brutus sat beside him like an oversized, badly scolded dog. "You have a bear. As a pet."

"He's more of a⁠—"

"A BEAR. A fucking BEAR. As a pet. Are you out of your goddamn mind?"

"He's more of a friend, honestly."

"A friend?!" She was gesturing wildly now, hands slicing through the cold air. "You have a massive friend who tackles you in the snow and you didn't think to mention this? At any point today? Maybe between the doctor's office and the diner? A casual little 'oh by the way, there's a BIG FUCKING BEAR that lives in my yard' would've been nice!"

Cal sat up, brushing snow from his collar like this was all perfectly normal. "Sage, this is Brutus." He reached over and scratched behind the grizzly’s ear with casual affection. Brutus leaned into it immediately, eyes half-closing in bliss. "Brutus, this is Sage."

Brutus cracked one eye open, looked at her for half a second, then closed it again and leaned harder into Cal’s hand.

"He's ignoring me," Sage said flatly.

"He's warming up to you."

"That's warming up? He's ignoring me."

"For Brutus, that's basically a hug."

Sage just stared at them — the man sitting in a snowbank casually scratching a grizzly bear behind the ears like it was a golden retriever, and the actual grizzly leaning into it with pure contentment. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Then Brutus did something subtle.

Without opening his eyes or lifting his head from Cal’s hand, he extended one enormous paw and gave Cal a lazy, gentle push. Not a strike — more like a very large, very spoiled housecat asking for more attention.

Cal didn’t flinch. He just looked at Sage, trying (and failing) to keep a straight face, and pushed the bear back.

Brutus waited half a second, then did it again. Harder. The paw connected with Cal’s chest with enough force to knock him backward into the snow, laughter rumbling out of him.

“Sorry,” Cal said from the ground, still grinning. “He wants to play. He does this.”

“He… hits you? To play?”

Cal looked up at her, thoughtful. “Well… he nudges.”

Brutus nudged him again. Harder. Cal rocked sideways but kept scratching behind the grizzly’s ear with the calm patience of a man who had accepted getting shoved around by a large bear as a normal feature of his life, not a bug.

Sage watched this exchange — this grizzly swatting at Cal like an oversized toddler, Cal casually ignoring it while continuing to give ear scratches — and something broke loose in her chest. A laugh. Startled out of her, bright and sharp, before she could catch it.

Brutus's head came up.

His nose lifted. His nostrils flared — once, twice — and his massive head swung away from Bear entirely, toward the snow beside the truck.

The cookies.

The bag had landed upright, mostly intact, the brown paper dark with snow-melt but still closed. The smell of chocolate chip cookies was, apparently, carrying on the cold air with enough clarity to reach the olfactory system of a grizzly bear from twenty feet away.

Brutus stood. The motion was surprisingly fluid for something that weighed more than a horse. He padded toward the bag with his head low, his nose working, every ounce of his attention locked on the scent.

“Oh no you don’t.”

Sage moved like a woman possessed — faster than Cal expected, faster than anyone who’d just tried to fight a grizzly had any right to. She dove for the bag, scooped it out of the snow, and clutched it tight against her chest like it contained the last chocolate chip cookies on earth.

She backed up, eyes locked on Brutus with pure, unfiltered feminine territorial rage.