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

Chapter 52

chapter

fifty-two

“Remi?”

I barely hear my name. My mind spins through the last few weeks, clicking pieces together. He’s unavailable from five until eight most nights—at some sort of daily meeting he doesn’t volunteer any information about. And when he turns up? I can sense that he’s been around another omega.

What if my instincts weren’t being psycho? Has he really been spending his evening with another omega? Is that why he’s never tried to get anything more than a kiss on the cheek from me before tonight? Is he getting everything he needs from someone else?

“Remi?” I can’t deny the alarm in his voice. “Are you all right?”

My face feels like it’s made of dry clay while I set the phone back in the center console. “I’m…”

What? Surprised? Stupid? Heartbroken? He won’t like any of those reactions.

Am I supposed to just be okay with this? That’s how a more sophisticated, worldly woman might react. It’s not like he and I are sleeping together. Or having any sort of relationship among ourselves. This is our first date, technically. Maybe, if I try really hard, I can sway him away from whoever Irene is?—

“Remi.” Smith’s gruff, irritated voice matches the way he yanks his hand off my leg and scoops up his phone. Keeping one eye on the road, he glances at the stack of unopened alerts that cascade from the top of his screen when he pulls the tab down.

I can see his gears churning, trying to figure out what I saw. The moment he realizes his mistake, his expression hardens. The hand gripping the wheel goes white-knuckled as he sets his phone back in between us. His posture tightens.

“Remi…” he grunts. “I—it isn’t what you think.”

I must still be in shock because even that lame line doesn’t hit me the way it should. I blink at the side of his face, feeling my insides go cold. He flinches, cringing slightly.

Oh right. My scent. It must be horribly burned by now.

I’m shocked and a little offended that his isn’t. Nothing like the first time we met as mates, at Forever Matched, anyway. This is more…tingly. In a bad way. It makes my nose itch.

Embarrassment, I realize. Not stress or anger or shame. He’s just…embarrassed? By having a mistress?

Is she even a mistress? I’m not really this alpha’s omega. Maybe I’m the mistress?—

Smith guides the SUV off the road, slowing to a stop on the side of the highway and turning to face me completely. His low, even voice interrupts my spiral.

“Petal. Try not to panic. It…Irene isn’t a woman I’m seeing. She’s my teacher.”

I swear, you could hear a pin drop inside my head right now. Empty silence echoes back at me while that word swirls around.

Teacher? For what?

He clears his throat, which is his tell. He’s telling the truth, but he doesn’t like it. “After you moved in, I realized how little I knew about being the sort of alpha you deserved,” he says, quiet and gruff. “I decided I needed help.”

Oh. My. God.

Images of the high-and-mighty Smith Pierson—in his perfectly pressed suits, scowling over lessons on slick and nesting—leave me gaping. “That’s where you’ve been every night?”

I sound small and wobbly. Smith’s scent deepens, growing darker. He instantly leans closer, gathering my hands in his, and sloughs out a deep breath. “Yes. The classes are… intensive. The course only lasts a month, so Irene and Julian—the omega instructors—insist on perfect attendance.”

And here I thought he had avoided all of the family dinners I tried to make because he couldn’t stand me. When, really…

I squeeze his hands. “Smith?—”

He purrs, leaning closer, his smooth, sexy voice dropping into a murmur. “Don’t. I don’t want you to thank me or think this means you owe me anything. You deserve alphas who know how to take care of you; who make you feel as cherished as you are. You owe me nothing for doing what I need to do to become that for you. But I owe you an apology for not being that alpha when we met.”

I’m torn between smiling and tears. My eyes water while I smirk. “Are you ever going to actually say you’re sorry.”

A spark moves through his dark eyes. His sculpted mouth quirks in wry amusement. “Have I never said that out loud?”

A giggle bubbles out of me. “No!”

He grins—a quick, pure expression of delight. It fades as he looks down at our entwined fingers. With utter sincerity, he bends his face to my hands and kisses both of them. When he speaks, I can still feel the brush of his lips, his words a rumbling skitter across the thin skin of my wrists.

“I’m sorry, angel. I’m so sorry that I ever scared you or hurt you. I’ll regret the way I treated you for as long as I live.”

He means it, with every tiny piece of himself. I can feel it. And as I sit there, in his luxurious leather car, watching him literally bow to me….

This isn’t what I want.

“Smith.” I cup my palms over his stubbled jaw, lifting his face back to mine. “I don’t want you to live with that sort of regret. I want?—”

I want you to be happy.

That’s all it really is, isn’t it? All my perfectionism and my constant desire to please him. I want him to be happy.

With me.

When I finally get the words out, he listens, more intent on what I’m saying than anyone ever has been. I watch his deep, brown eyes bounce between mine, absorbing the words. When they crease in pain, I realize it’s the good kind. The sort that makes your heart ache.

He leans his forehead into mine for a long moment, letting the tension slip off his features. “There’s something I need to show you.”

Turns out that,even after discovering his Deep Dark Secret, Smith Pierson is still a mystery.

When he turns off the interstate and begins driving us toward the ocean, I naturally assume we’re going to the beach. Instead of heading for one of the public access points, though, the Range Rover cuts a sharp right onto a sandy residential street.

With the sun nearly setting, tangerine light suffuses the coastal area. Slants of orangey gold slice through the narrow street’s foliage. All the beachy sorts of plants make me smile—sea grapes, bougainvillea, hibiscus bushes.

It doesn’t take long for me to see that the impressive landscaping along the street is hiding some pretty luxe houses, though. They all sit far from the lane, their backs to the ocean, fronts obscured by palm fronds and elephant ears.

A nervous niggle starts in my stomach. Is Smith about to pull into one of these million-dollar homes and show me a whole new estate I have to become the mistress of in order to impress him?

We do make one final turn, into a crowded, unevenly paved driveway. I lean forward, looking out the windshield at the house in front of us, blinking my shock.

…what?

It’s the smallest house on the whole street. In fact, one could easily mistake it for the neighbor’s pool house. Or even a quaintly designed storage shed.

It’s neither, though.

It’s a bungalow.

A tiny white bungalow, trimmed in garish turquoise paint and standing on sandalwood stilts. It has a worn roof and flaky window tint and the front yard is a veritable jungle…

But it’s adorable. I’m instantly in love.

“What is this place?” I buzz, beaming at the flamingo mailbox hanging beside the front door.

Smith gives nothing away, coming around the car to open my door and help me step onto the white-sand-covered concrete.

While I drift toward the little place, he clears his throat and begins to ramble. “I thought we might… stay here tonight. If you’d be open to it, I can order dinner, and there’s a hot tub in the back. No pool. But there is beach access.”

He must be a damn good developer because he’s a terrible salesman. I bite down on a teasing grin and nod along, letting him give me all sorts of useless information.

Now that I don’t think of him as the terrifying alpha who intimidates me anymore, it’s easier to find him cute when he babbles about square footage.

Even when he’s muttering on, he’s still in command, leading me right up to the house using a keypad on the front door. My eyes trace over the sign hung above the doorframe, thinking that it’s super ironic—for both Mr. Perfectionist and myself.

Don’t make perfect the enemy of the good.

Damon would love that. And Cassian would say something akin to, “Duh.”

Smiling to myself, I follow Smith inside, seeing that this isn’t a typical vacation rental. Unlike a furnished pad, it’s empty, aside from a table and two chairs.

The tiny home is one long living area, narrow but with a high A-frame and natural wood beams that stand out against the bright white beadboard covering the ceiling. There isn’t much to it—a small living room area to the left of the entrance, a cased opening leading to a dining nook, and a tiny kitchen tucked off to the side.

But the whole back wall of the house is a hodgepodge of windows. Warped antique glass, seafoam-stained panes, and some that are crystal clear. It doesn’t really matter because the view is incredible.

There’s nothing fancy about it. Just a clear, straight shot at the ocean. Pale sand, gray-blue water, and a hazy pink sky. I stand and stare at it from just inside the front door.

Smith takes my hand, threading our fingers back together as he pulls me through the cased opening and into the small kitchen area. I see it has appliances— newer ones that don’t match the worn, round table and chairs at all.

Ignoring the room, Smith guides us out one of the stained-glass French doors and onto a back porch that’s as wide as the kitchen itself.

The house is totally out of balance. Clearly designed by someone who just loved this view and the ocean so much that they didn’t mind sacrificing half of their home’s footprint to make room for an outdoor living space. The more I look out at the water, the less I can blame them for it.

“Who owns this?” I ask, lifting my free hand to touch a set of shell wind chimes. “I like their style.”

Smith waits for me to look back at him and his rueful half-smile. “It’s mine.”

My fingers twitch against his. “Yours?!”

The humor falls off his face. He turns to the ocean, sighing. “I bought it as an investment property two years ago. It’s a prime piece of land. Great street. Every other house here goes for anything north of ten million dollars, but this one…”

His pensive expression draws me closer to him. “This one?” I prompt.

His blond brows furrow. “This one belonged to a very old man. An alpha who bought it back in the eighties. For his omega.”

He swallows. “When she died, he lived here without her. Refused to sell it to anyone, even though he got offers for more than five million. He said no. Got a reputation for turning down any developer who darkened his doorway. And not being very polite about it, either.”

A slight smile touches his mouth, but not his eyes. “I thought I was hot shit, back then. We’d just made our first—well, a lot of money. And I wanted a beach house. For the pack. Our future family. Whatever.

“So I came here, determined to tell the old bastard anything he wanted to hear. I told him we had an omega who loved the beach. I told him we wanted to have kids and bring them here to play. And I swore—up and down—that I wouldn’t tear the place to the ground the first chance I got...”

He glances at me, a familiar darkness in his gaze. “Knowing that’s exactly what I would actually do.”

My heart squeezes, aching for the alpha who missed his lost love and couldn’t stand the thought of letting her home be dismantled. I’m almost afraid to ask, “Did he sell to you?”

Smith nods slowly. “I was very convincing.”

My stomach sinks, along with the bubble of hope that had risen in my chest. “So this house… you want to tear it down?”

He gives a hard, breathless laugh, the sound rueful. “I can’t tear it down,” he huffs. “I’ve hired the crew and called it off a dozen times. Every time I try I just—” He shakes his head, looking back out at the view and murmuring, “I can’t do it.”

There was a time when I would have told you I could never, ever love this alpha.

But right now? I think I really could.

Especially when he turns his dark eyes back on me, saying so many things without words.

This is personal, I realize.

A real, true piece of Smith. No polish or shine or pretense or power. This forlorn place, with its beautiful story of love that’s been lost to the tides of time—this is the sort of thing he carries around with him. Hidden under all his expensive suits. Inside his heart.

“Why did you bring me here?” I whisper, needing to hear him say it. “What did you want me to see?”

He releases another breath, glancing fondly at the charming little house. “That alpha? I hated him. And it took me months to figure out that I was jealous of this lonely, angry, old widower. Because he had a real partner. Someone he made decisions with. Like another half. And the more I planned to tear down everything they built together, the more I realized what I really wanted.

“It wasn’t the property or the money or any of that shit. It was his life. A pack. A partner. A mate.”

I remember wondering why a man like Smith had ever submitted an application to Forever Matched in the first place. He seemed so solitary—what would he want with an omega?

This.

He wanted a connection. A partner.

“You wanted me to see you,” I realize out loud, whispering.

He cups his hands around my face, strumming his thumb over my lower lip. “I wanted you to see me. And when I tried to think of a place that felt like me, this was it.”

I glance over at the house, feeling its magic soak into my center with every pull of salty ocean air. When I look back up at Smith, for the very first time, it isn’t hard to tell him the truth.

“I love it.”