Knot Her Shot (MVP: Most Valuable Pack Book 2)

Chapter 34

chapter

thirty-four

This is sick.

I should leave.

I know I should leave. I don’t even want to be here…

My feet stay rooted to the floor. In fact, they may even press into the sticky linoleum a bit more. Like my body is staging a sit-in to protest my brain.

You caused this, asshole. Now you get to sit here and watch.

It’s been a week since Remi moved into the pack house, and my life has turned into a living hell.

A living hell with homemade muffins, lemon-scented candles, and fresh flowers on every table.

So, really, it’s heaven.

But hell, nonetheless, because our omega hates me.

And I don’t blame her. Especially after the other night.

While I remain paralyzed, the line at Proper Coffee slogs forward, bringing new customers up to the register. I should at least pretend to be doing something, but I can’t.

The fact is, I’ve fucked this whole thing to hell and back. Treating an employee like a servant. Scaring an innocent omega. Barking her out of her home. Putting her in our guest room. Rutting her mouth like an animal.

The worst part may be: I don’t regret making her leave that mold-infested hovel any more than I regret making her suite perfect before I let her see it.

She deserves a perfect room and a beautiful nest. Especially since she has to put up with the likes of me in order to live in our house.

The same house that Remi’s whipped into shape. Doing what I couldn’t accomplish over two years in a matter of days.

It started with the kitchen, of course.

I’ve continued my irregular working hours, doing my best to avoid run-ins with her. Not wanting to scare her or be a looming presence she can’t avoid. Not wanting to smell her perfect perfume and end up rutting her into a wall the way I almost rutted her into my bedroom floor.

One day, after leaving well before anyone was awake and coming home after ten, I walked in the back door and found the cabinets painted a light, powdery blue. They looked fantastic. I was so impressed that I opened one to see if she had the insides done as well.

Only to find food.

In our kitchen.

Not Cocoa Puffs, either. But actual ingredients.

The next night, I discovered that weren’t just for show. Sometime after eight, I slipped in the back door, intending to go up to the desk in my room to keep working. But a cheerful yellow note on the island stopped me cold.

Alpha,

Your dinner is in the oven. Please turn off the warm setting when you retrieve it.

-Remi

I stared at that fucking dash for way longer than I’d like to admit, feeling nauseous about it. Wondering what she’d use to sign a note to Cassian or Damon. If their three scents—twined and soaked into the couch, the kitchen, the upstairs bedrooms—were any indication, I bet they’d at least get a smiley face.

Yet, no matter how much our omega clearly loathes me, I find a plate of food in the oven every single night. All of it has been delicious, nutritionally balanced, and heaped with extra protein. As if she took a special class on cooking for alphas.

Hell. Maybe she did. That wouldn’t even surprise me.

And the one night my meal was clearly something the three of them had ordered in? She left me an apology, explaining that Damon requested Chinese food and promising she would go back to her meal plan the following night.

Which, she did.

While I did everything I could to avoid going home, I also did everything I could to avoid setting foot in Proper Coffee. For one, I hadn’t replaced her when I forced her out of her old life and into ours. That meant I had no idea what sort of chaos would confront me when I walked in.

But, more importantly? I honest-to-God could not face being in the room where I made her hate me.

Eventually, I didn’t have a choice. I had to come in and deal with the place—whether that means selling it to another investor, ripping it down to rubble, or something else entirely.

Despite all of my mistakes, all of the shit I buried myself under… I somehow managed to keep it all together.

Until I walked in here this morning.

And found Remi behind the counter. Working.

In a surreal moment of horror, I realized—I haven’t been sneaking out of the house before she wakes up. She has been sneaking out of the house before I wake up.

The reason the manager never called me to bitch about being short-handed?

We weren’t.

Because Remi found some way to haul herself down here without a car every morning.

And after working her shift? She went back to my pack house and spent hours doing more work. Cleaning, renovations, gardening, cooking and grocery shopping and decorating. And catering to three alphas intent on having their way with her.

How on earth has she managed all of that?

The guys likely have no idea. If she made some excuse for why she isn’t there when they wake up, they probably think she’s out shopping or exercising most of the day. They have morning skate, anyway, followed by conditioning. I bet they arrive home right after she does, thinking she’s been there relaxing all morning.

Fucking hell.

This is the first time I’ve seen her in days. She looks as lovely as ever, her light brown skin flawless, and her curls styled into an elegant bun. She has on one of her sundresses, I note. It’s very different from the way she used to dress for work, and I wonder why until I catch her glance over at me and tug the neckline of her dress up.

It’s for me.

She’s dressed up for me. In case I came in here and saw her.

Does she do this every day? At home, too?

Holy fucking shit. I didn’t know I could hate myself any more than I already did.

While I watch, a middle-aged beta woman with two kids orders. The manager—who I suddenly have the violent urge to strangle—lazily types the drinks in…

…and the little omega I can’t stop staring at scrambles into motion.

For all her poise, she’s jumpy. Rushing.

After weeks of standing over every latte, drawing cutesy shit in the foam, now she’s decided to be efficient?

Or was I just not paying attention before? Maybe I saw what I wanted to see. All of the moments she allowed herself to slow down… I tallied those against her because I couldn’t figure out the insistent, insane urgency pulsing in my blood.

Now I know why she made me feel so agitated. It was my Alpha, trying to help me recognize our mate. But I’ve been using my instincts to conduct business for years. When they tried to direct me for more personal reasons, I couldn’t understand them.

If I’m honest with myself, I’ve spent months dreading this stop on my daily schedule, hating the way something about the shop twisted my stomach into knots. There didn’t seem to be any reason why, but every time I came in the door, every aggressive, impatient urge inside of me would lunge forward, trying to rip the reins away.

It made me more agitated than usual. Ruder, I’m sure. And I’m not a particularly forgiving person on a good day. Now, I flinch every time a new memory comes to me.

Fucking hell. Did I really call her incompetent?

And pathetic.

Guilt. That must be the reason I can’t get up and leave. Why I can’t look away.

I watch Remi work, remembering all of the things Cassian ever told me about her when he was in the group home. It wasn’t much.

The impressions he shared were just flickers—a rooftop, books, cookies, a butterfly clip. I recall thinking that she sounded like an imaginary friend. Then, as the months went on and he started to show up with a vaguely smile-like expression on his face, I remember thinking that maybe she was an angel. Some ethereal creature, sent to save him from drowning in his own apathy.

Really, she was just a girl. A sweet, giving sort of girl who had nothing but still shared her books and her desserts with a lonely boy.

And I made her cry. Every. Day.

I am a fucking asshole.

A fucking asshole who can’t stop staring.

Remi sets the latest round of drinks on the service counter and stretches her neck out, tilting her head one direction and then the other. I watch the way the sunlight reflects off her blank throat and feel a prick of arousal. Along with a heavy truth, sinking on top of my lungs.

I want her.

But I don’t deserve her.