8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
20 years old
T hird year was kicking my arse. For once, at Christmas, I didn’t have to lie about why I couldn’t make it home and not only because my secret was out with Cooper, but because I was knee deep in research for my dissertation.
It felt like, despite all my efforts over the last two years, it all came down to this one piece of work.
Luckily, I was in a shared house with Iqra and George again, so I didn’t have to deal with new housemates who would steal my last tin of baked beans from the cupboard or drink my cans of pop from the fridge.
There was a knock on my bedroom door, followed by Iqra walking right in.
“Coming to the pub with me and George?” she asked.
I looked at the clock. It was eight pm, and I’d already been studying for six hours. It seemed unlikely that I’d be especially productive if I carried on, so I relented. “Yeah, that sounds good, actually. Let me get changed quick.”
When we arrived at our local, a few more of our friends were already there and were clearly several drinks in. We said hello before heading for the bar to catch up.
George and I quickly made our way over to the pool tables to wait for a spot to become free.
“Ohhh alpha goodness, look at them,” George said, eyeing the corner where two alphas were in the middle of a game. He had a point; they were certainly easy on the eyes.
One of them could clearly feel George’s heated gaze on them and glanced up to look at us. He licked his lips in a way that wasn’t subtle.
When his friend only had a few more balls to sink, he came over and asked if we wanted to play a game against them next.
“Sure, we’d love that,” George said, no chill whatsoever as usual.
The alpha George kept batting his eyelashes at turned out to be called Ivan, and his friend, frankly a fucking Adonis, was called Remy.
Remy looked like he’d been sculpted by Michaelangelo himself. He had tight black ringlets styled flawlessly on top of his perfectly symmetrical face. He smiled with gleaming straight white teeth framed by plump full lips, and when he caught me gawking, he winked at me with sparkling dark brown eyes.
I wanted to lick him.
After losing the first game to them, George suggested it was only fair to play alpha/omega against alpha/omega, so he abandoned me without a second glance to join Ivan’s team.
Not that I was complaining. Playing with Remy was no hardship.
Remy and I won the second game, and I won Remy. He spent most of the game finding any excuse to press his hand to my back or brush his fingertips over my arm until, at the end of the night, he asked, “Fancy coming back to my place?”
I’d never had a one-night stand before. And I couldn’t help but think that if I began with a guy like Remy, I’d have peaked far too early. But when I really thought about it, I realised I didn’t have the capacity for anything more. I wanted to make the most of my final year and finish with a first-class honours degree to show for it, so getting distracted by love or even ‘like’, wasn’t on the cards for me right now.
“Sure, I’d love to,” I replied.
And so began my friends-with-benefits situation with Remy Adebisi. He never invited me to spend his rut with him and never expected me to spend my heat with him either. He was funny and sexy and scratched an itch without asking for more of me than I had to give.
By the time June had rolled around, however, it had mostly fizzled out. We both had final exams, and neither of us planned for it to extend beyond our heading home for the summer.
“Here,” Iqra said, handing me a margarita in a plastic cup. Our house was mostly packed up, and George had already left to return home yesterday.
I took a sip and glanced around the house we’d called home for the past two years. The tequila cocktail was somewhat helping with the absolute pit of dread in my stomach about moving home until I figured out my next steps in life.
It was a strange dichotomy to feel deeply homesick and total foreboding about returning to Foxwood Hollow. It had been home for the first eighteen years of my life, yet it was also the place where it felt as though I’d had my heart chipped away at every single day.
Three years. By the time I saw Axel again, that’s how long it would have been. Three whole years. Because there’s no way I’d be able to avoid him for the whole summer.
By silent agreement, after Cooper and I had our heart-to-heart over cups of tea in the middle of the night, he had stopped updating me on Axel. Left him out of his stories, and it was as if he’d vanished. Somehow, it was both a relief and a bereavement in one.
“Cheers to getting our degrees,” I said to Iqra, tapping my plastic cup against hers. “I’m really gonna miss you and George.”
“Well, I can’t speak for George because he’ll be off gallivanting around Europe with Ivan all summer, but I will definitely be visiting to escape my family at some point in the very near future,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll even get to meet the famous Axel King.” She winked at me, and I shoved her into a pile of stacked boxes.
“Dick.” I downed the last of my drink and began to mentally prepare myself for tomorrow.
No more running away. Tomorrow I’d face the music and return to Foxwood Hollow.
It was weird being home. Cooper had moved out last year after completing his apprenticeship and being taken on full-time. It made the house eerily quiet.
Made the place smell wrong, too.
For most of my life, this house had smelled of Mom, Cooper, me and Axel, and then eventually Abbie, too. Now, the scent of Cooper was faint and Axel barely a whisper in the air.
It was hypocritical of me to be so bent out of shape over the change when I’d disappeared for three years and was hardly the same eighteen-year-old love-sick kid that had left.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Adam
I’m in town for a few days. Pub tonight?
He didn’t need to say where. The town was small, so there was only one pub. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I replied telling him I’d be there, and he told me to meet him at seven-thirty.
It was warm and still light out when I left, so I walked there. I was excited to catch up with Adam. We hadn’t seen much of each other over the last few years, but we’d always stayed in touch. The last time he called, he said he had some exciting news for me, and if it wasn’t that he’d finally locked shit down with Lei, I might have to beat him over his alpha head to knock some sense into him.
When I turned the corner, I spotted Adam standing outside waiting for me. He had a smile on his face as he texted away on his phone. He looked older, with a hipster beard taking over his face, but he looked happier than I’d ever seen him.
Stuffing his phone back into his pocket, he looked up. “Hey, little omega.”
I skipped the final distance between us and wrapped my skinny arms around his bulky frame. “Fuck, I missed you.” I grinned up at him.
Adam led the way inside the pub. Only when I stepped inside, there was one scent that stood out among the rest.
I whipped my head around, searching.
Only to make eye contact with the man behind the bar, hands frozen in midair as he polished a glass with a cloth. Piercing brown eyes, wide with shock.
Axel.