10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
T he next day, I woke to my phone alarm blaring obnoxiously and a pounding headache rattling my brain painfully in my skull. Why had I even set an alarm?
Bollocks. It was for a delivery.
I’d never intended to become a pub landlord, and on early morning delivery days, I resented it. My grandparents had owned the place. Then, shortly after Dad had died, my omega grandfather had a fall, making mobility difficult. My alpha grandmother decided it was time to retire, and they moved to Spain, leaving me their pride and joy.
Yay for me. Not.
It was probably for the best that Dylan hadn’t spoken to me for the last two years. My life had been a trainwreck during that time, leading me to end up the begrudging owner of the town’s only pub, as well as my dad’s den-making company.
Loud banging on the door downstairs alerted me to the delivery man’s arrival. I dragged myself out of bed and chucked on some shorts and a T-shirt to go and answer.
The driver was a man down, so I stepped outside to help him bring the kegs over to the cellar drop. We’d unloaded the final one when I spotted a familiar mop of curly brown hair running past the car park entrance.
Without even thinking, I called out, “Dylan!”
Almost stumbling before righting himself, he caught sight of me, smiled, and then frowned.
He tugged a pair of earbuds out and trotted over. I quickly signed the truck driver’s delivery slip and said goodbye.
Dylan was a little sweaty from his run and it made his scent even more potent than usual. Thank god we were standing outside.
He squinted up at me, the sun behind me shining into his eyes. I stepped to the side slightly to block it for him.
“I feel like it’s illegal for them to have you working this early when you were on a late shift last night,” Dylan said, frowning.
I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, my boss is a real tyrant.”
Dylan huffed at that. “That’s outrageous. Are they inside? I’m gonna tell them.” He tried to get past me to reach the door, but I tugged him back by his sweaty t-shirt.
“Calm down, Scrappy-Doo. I’m kidding. I’m my boss. This is my pub,” I explained.
“Your pub?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t be; Cooper told me your grandparents had sold this place a year ago—oh.” It was like you could physically watch the cogs turning in Dylan’s mind as he pieced the information together.
“You own a pub, and your dad died. Fuck.” His eyes welled up, and I realised that in the warm sunlight of the next day, I wasn’t really all that angry with Dylan. I just missed him.
“Yep. My world didn’t stop turning after you left, Dyl. I’m sure yours didn’t either.”
“I know that. I… I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me something as huge as that.”
Dylan had never been one to hide from his own mistakes; had always offered his sincere apologies without a second thought. He was transparent in a way that most of us were too jaded to be, and I found relief in the fact that hadn’t changed about him.
“Honestly, I assumed Cooper told you at first.”
“God, that’s even worse! You thought I knew, and I hadn’t even bothered to call.” Dylan looked genuinely forlorn at that, his face a picture of regret.
He wasn’t wrong. I had thought that for a long time. Then, one night a few months later, I’d got really drunk with Coop and ended up crying that Dylan hadn’t even sent me a text, even Lauren had bothered to do that. Coop had finally broken and admitted that he never told Dylan. When I’d asked why, he kept saying, ‘I just couldn’t’ but refused to elaborate. After a while, I stopped asking.
“It’s fine. Eventually, I figured out you didn’t know.”
“Do you live here?” he asked, giving me whiplash with the abrupt change of subject. He was sniffing the air around me and eyeing the doorway to my flat with suspicion.
“Yes, I live in the flat above; why?”
“But… It… There’s no… I can’t smell… Never mind,” he muttered in the end. “What are you doing on Sunday?” It was getting hard to follow Dylan’s everchanging trains of thought.
“I’m not sure. How come?”
“Abbie is cooking a welcome home meal. There will probably be enough food to feed the whole town, knowing her. Come?” He sounded nervous, like it was a big deal to ask, even though I’d practically lived with his family on the weekends when we were kids.
“You know it’ll be hard to avoid me in your own home, right?”
He huffed and rolled his eyes. “I don’t recall you ever giving me such a hard time before.”
I laughed at that. “I’ll see you on Sunday. Tell Coop to text me what time.”
“It’s my invite. I’ll text you what time.“ And that’s the Dylan I remember. “Wait, you haven’t changed your number, have you?”
“No Dyl-p— Dylan. Same number.”
“Okay. Good. That’s good. I’ll text you then. About Sunday.” And with that, he nodded his head and returned to his jog, bobbing along the pavement and down the lane.
One thing had become abundantly clear: Dylan might have moved on. I, however, had not.
“Hey, Miss B,” I said when she answered the front door.
“Cooper’s in his room, love. Go on up.”
I smiled at her and jogged up the stairs; only at the top, Dylan appeared in his doorway. He’d been in heat all of last week so I’d not been allowed over.
“Hey Dyl, you okay?” I asked.
When I stood in front of him, he wrinkled his nose like he smelled something he didn’t like. It made me oddly self-conscious.
“Mhmm. Just about to break down my nest,” he said. Like that was a perfectly normal thing to bring up around an alpha. He was young, though, and he was probably still getting to grips with it all.
“Oh. That must suck. Only your second heat, though, so I’m sure your next nest will be even better,” I replied, trying to sound reassuring.
“Wanna see it?”
Jesus fucking Christ. I’d never seen any omega’s nest before, not even Lauren’s. She’d invited me to spend a heat with her, but since I’d said no, she certainly hadn’t shown me her nest afterwards.
He looked so happy, though. Maybe I was making something of nothing.
“Um. Sure. Okay.”
Dylan made a sort of ‘ta-da’ motion towards the carefully put-together soft furnishings piled on top of his bed.
It smelt like… it smelt like something I should not be smelling. He’s fifteen years old. He’s fifteen years old. He’s fifteen years old. Stop being creepy.
Almost sixteen, my brain unhelpfully interjected.
He’s my best friend’s underage little brother.
My eyes flew open, only to find Milly standing over me, splashing droplets of water onto my face from a pint glass.
“Oh goodie, you aren’t dead,” she said.
“You spawn of satan, what are you doing?”
“I was setting up downstairs, came up here to count the till, and you looked kind of dead. I thought it would reflect badly on me if you were, in fact, dead, and I’d just continued on by, counting money next to your slowly decaying corpse,” she replied, a little too cheerfully.
“Well, on that lovely note, we’ve established I’m alive. You can go and terrorise someone else.”
I got up off the sofa, where I must have accidentally dozed off, and headed to the bathroom for a piss.
I had actively avoided thinking about that day with Dylan. The thing was, Dylan had always smelled good.
At first, it was just in the same way that most omegas smelled good to me, an alpha. And then, as he matured and his scent developed, I found I preferred his smell to most omegas, but I didn’t view him through any sort of romantic lens, so I’d pushed it to the back of my mind.
Only, that day, that was the day that Dylan Bailey smelled like mine . And I was so ashamed that I didn’t tell a soul. Hardly had the courage to admit it to myself.
In fact, when Lauren had her next heat, and she invited me to join her, I said yes. Because I thought maybe if I could share that experience with her, scent her when it was at its strongest, I’d realise I was worrying over nothing.
That first heat with Lauren was undeniably incredible. I loved her. I loved her as much as my seventeen-year-old brain was capable of at the time. And she smelled good, amazing, even. But afterwards, when the pheromones faded, it became glaringly obvious that she didn’t smell like mate. Like fate. Like mine. Like… him.
Cooper and I arrived at his mum’s house at the same time, so we walked right in. His mum and Abbie were dancing and laughing in the kitchen together; Dylan must have been upstairs.
It was hard to imagine Miss B before Abbie these days. Miss B loved her sons with all her heart, but Abbie lit up a part of her that I don’t think even she had realised had dimmed.
“Hey, Miss B. Something smells delicious, Abbie,” I said.
“We’re having roast duck today. Only the best to celebrate finally having our Dyl back home.” Abbie grinned.
“Good luck, Miss B. With Cooper moved out, you’re outnumbered now. These omegas will be running rings around you.”
“Don’t I already know it.” Miss B laughed.
The sound of soft feet padding down the stairs was followed by a freshly showered Dylan appearing.
Droplets of water dripped from his damp curls, running down his neck and over his scent mark. His delicate collar bones and left shoulder were exposed in an oversized off-the-shoulder t-shirt. It was navy blue and complemented the pink shorts he had on underneath.
Shorts which showed off long, slim, and… totally smooth legs.
“Dude, stop that!” Cooper’s voice interrupted what must have been a much longer than socially acceptable perusal of Dylan’s body. Blush spread over my cheekbones, and after I caught Dylan grinning, I quickly looked away.
It was funny how we all defaulted to our usual spots at the dinner table. Dylan and I sat opposite each other, Cooper next to me and Miss B opposite him. For years, this was how we’d all sat for meals, and then when Abbie joined their family, she sat at the head of the table at Miss B’s insistence since Abbie was usually the one who’d cooked us all a delicious meal after all.
No offence to Miss B, but the culinary offerings in this house improved tenfold once Abbie took over.
I couldn’t help but relax into the aching familiarity of it all, even as Cooper and Dylan squabbled over who got the last roast potato from the bowl.
“Well, doesn’t this take me back a few years,” Miss B said fondly.
I smiled because I’d really missed this. Even if I could only have Dylan as a friend, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
After losing my dad, and my grandparents moving overseas, the only family I really had left were my cousins, Milly and Pippa, and Pippa was away most of the year, playing for the Vixen Vipers.
I had never truly thanked Miss B for welcoming me into her home and treating me like a bonus son. My childhood would have been incredibly lonely otherwise because Dad worked insane hours to make sure we could get by.
Guilt weighed down on my chest when I realised that not only had I never thanked her for her kindness, but I’d been harbouring secret feelings for her son since he was sixteen years old. My food sat heavily in my stomach for the remainder of the meal, and I knew I was being unusually quiet.
After we’d finished eating, I joined Cooper in his room as if on autopilot.
“Fresh air?” he asked, and I nodded.
Just like old times, the two of us clambered out of his window and up onto the flat section of the roof where we’d smoked cigarettes and weed for the first time.
My brain was still spiralling with an endless loop of regret and shame.
“What’s up with you?” he asked. Cooper occasionally had his moments of perceptiveness.
“Do you ever regret never leaving Foxwood Hollow?” I asked with my head tipped up to the night sky. It was a full moon tonight, and the yellow glow chased away the darkness.
He took a moment to ponder the question, not seeming too fussed by the oddity of it out of nowhere. “Not really. This is home. I never dreamt of a big life. Just a quiet one where I was happy,” he said, more honestly than I’d been expecting.
“I worry sometimes that I’ll never be good enough for someone who… who wants more than a small life here.”
“Like Lauren?” he asked.
Hearing her name jarred me momentarily. Because I hadn’t been thinking of Lauren, although I suppose it was a similar issue that had eventually parted us.
She’d wanted to live in the city, and I hadn’t. I’d been content working for my dad’s business, and it relied on my generation to add to its reputation. You couldn’t exactly up and move it to a big city and expect it to thrive.
The second thing that had put the nail in the coffin of my and Lauren’s relationship was that after four years together, I still wasn’t prepared to spend my rut with her. And eventually, she called me out on it in a way I couldn’t skirt around anymore.
We had a huge argument that started with her being mad that I wouldn’t even spend the off-season in the city with her and progressed to her agreeing to move back to Foxwood Hollow if I was prepared to settle down properly and begin a family with her. To finally, her asking me if I was saving my first shared rut for someone else.
I’d choked up under the direct scrutiny. The truth of a statement I hadn’t even admitted to myself yet. But she’d been right, and I couldn’t lie to her. I was saving my first shared rut, something I wanted to keep for and experience with my mate that would be only for them and nobody else. And I knew she wasn’t it.
We broke up that day. I’d never told Cooper the full truth, just the part about how we wanted different things—her the concrete jungle life and me a small local one. Hence, the fact he thought my latest existential crisis was about Lauren rather than his little brother, who I knew had always dreamed of a big life. A life away from here with new faces and epic experiences.
Why had I ever thought someone like me could contain a spirit as wild as Dylan’s? Why would I even want to? I should want more for him.
Would I give up my little life here for Dylan so I could watch him burn brightly in a city bursting with energy? I probably would, only he would light up the sky, and I would dim to nothing. Just ashes left in his wake.
“Sure, like Lauren,” I replied to Cooper, barely a whisper. My mind had wandered to an alternate universe, possibly even bleaker than this one.