Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Cooper
After spending the next week alternating between relief that I’d finally, at twenty-three, had a positive sexual experience and melancholy that I might have to wait another twenty-three years to find another, I was relieved to have something to take my mind off it all.
Every year, my mom had a meal to celebrate equal rights for omegas, and for the first time in three years, my baby brother, Dylan, was finally home to celebrate with us.
Dylan and I were basically opposites. He was clever, loud, and witty, and I…
was not. When we were younger, I’d been a little embarrassed by him.
It’d never seemed to occur to him to hide who he was—and who he was, was a lot.
When you’d been hiding as much of yourself as I had, that was fucking annoying to deal with.
But the years Dylan had been gone from home had slowly killed me.
I’d missed him, and our talks on the phone had never settled the feeling that he hadn’t been as close as he should have been.
He’d always found every excuse under the sun not to even visit, so it’d shocked me when he’d finished uni and hadn’t announced he was jetting off to Timbuktu and had instead actually been planning on returning to Foxwood Hollow.
Dylan was back now, though. That was all that mattered, and today, everyone I loved would be together. I couldn’t wait.
Was it also a super convenient distraction from thinking about Patrick’s tongue and fingers inside me? Yes.
The ground had been covered in frost on my walk over to my mom’s house, and stepping inside was like being blasted with a wall of heat. I quickly shook my coat off in the hallway and headed towards all the chatter of the kitchen dining room.
My mom’s omega partner, Abbie, was cooking—thank god—and Mom, Dylan, and two of his friends were sitting at the dining table drinking wine.
I greeted Mom and Abbie with kisses to the cheek before sneaking up behind Dylan and wrapping both arms around his chest, squeezing him tight.
“Can’t. Breathe. Cooper,” he gasped, so dramatic as always.
“I missed you.” I sniffed his head. He smelled like expensive shampoo and whatever fancy product he used to keep his curls from going completely wild.
“You saw me yesterday. Unhand me, you big oaf!”
I let go, and he introduced me to his friend George, who’d been his housemate at uni, and George’s alpha, Ivan.
There was something about having all the people I loved in one room that made the tight bands around my chest release; the only person who was missing was my best friend, Axel, and just as I’d thought it, there were three loud knocks.
I dashed off to open the front door. “Come on in!”
“Hey, mate.” Axel smacked me on the shoulder in one of his “bro” hugs and smiled. “You look happy,” he added.
“I am happy.” I grinned. I was mostly happy.
“Aww. Your inner collie is living his best life right now, isn’t he?”
I rolled my eyes. Axel and my family had a recurring joke that I was like a border collie because I liked to herd my loved ones into a single place. They weren’t necessarily wrong, but I wasn’t thrilled about being compared to a farm dog.
Even as I thought about it, though, I couldn’t help but picture what it would be like if I’d had a partner here with me.
Someone who might squeeze my leg under the table when I can’t stop jiggling it.
Someone who’d ask to see baby photos of me and smile at Dylan’s theatrics.
Not Patrick, specifically, of course. But maybe someone like Patrick. Patrick adjacent, if you will.
We joined everyone in the kitchen, and once Dylan had introduced his friends to Axel, we sat down to eat. Abbie had outdone herself this year—there was enough to feed a small army.
“How was interrailing? I saw some of the photos you posted and was super jealous,” Dylan asked his friends.
I’d never really understood the appeal of spending weeks at a time sleeping in a different bed every night that wasn’t your own.
“It was great. It’s actually a shame we have to, like, return to real life and get jobs and stuff. Oh, but, oh! I forgot to tell you, guess who we bumped into in Prague, of all places?” George said.
“I’m definitely not guessing; who was it?” Dylan replied.
“Remy! And let me tell you, the guy somehow looked even hotter under the summer sun. I will never understand why you didn’t lock that down when you had the chance.”
Remy… the name was familiar. “Is that the guy you nicknamed ‘Adonis’?” I asked, snickering.
“Maybe,” Dylan mumbled, rolling his eyes.
“Oh my god! I forgot you called him that.” George laughed.
“Why didn’t I ever hear about this boyfriend?” Mom asked.
“Ugh. He wasn’t my boyfriend. It was just a casual sort of thing.”
I nearly choked on my chicken when Mom said, “Well, I hope you used protection.”
“Good god, Mom. We’re eating here.” Dylan’s face had turned bright pink.
I glanced at Axel to smile at him, but he was staring at his plate of food like he might kill the chicken on it for a second time.
“There’s never a wrong time to talk about safe sex practices.”
“I’m with Dyl on this, Mom. I don’t need to be thinking about Dylan having any type of sex, safe or not, with an Adonis, while I try to eat chicken.” I waved the chicken on my fork into the air for emphasis.
“Bullshit, you could probably eat with a rotting corpse next to you,” Dylan said.
“I was on your side!”
I’d missed bickering with my little brother.
Dylan had had a crush on Axel when we were kids that had turned into something stronger.
In his attempt to avoid Axel and move on, he’d barely returned home after he’d left for uni a few years ago.
It made me ridiculously happy to have them both sitting side by side in the same room, and I was relieved to see that Dylan had managed to get over his feelings for my friend.
Axel still looked a bit moody and like he’d eaten something sour, but he could be a bit of a grump sometimes, so I left him to it.
When we were about halfway through eating Abbie’s famous trifle for dessert, Axel’s phone rang, which was weird, because his phone was always on silent to the point of it being annoying trying to get hold of him sometimes.
“Oh god. Get out of there! I’ll be right over,” he said with far too intense theatrics to really sell it to me. What was going on with him?
“I’m really sorry, Miss B, Abbie, I have to shoot. That was Milly; there’s a gas leak in her apartment.”
I narrowed my eyes at my best friend. Why was he lying?
Mom clearly fell for it, however. “Oh gosh, no way. Of course! We have Cooper’s old room free if she needs somewhere to stay while it gets sorted.”
I huffed, still salty about the fact Mom had turned my bedroom into a guest room the second I’d moved out.
“Thank you. I’ll, um, let you know,” Axel said before sprinting from the room like his arse was on fire.
We all sort of sat there in stunned silence for a minute, and I was about to go after him and find out what the problem was until Dylan said, “I’ll be right back.” The stunned silence continued as he dashed from the table, and then we heard the front door slam behind him.
What the fuck is going on?
The meal awkwardly resumed without them.
I tried to make small talk with Ivan, but he had some kind of degree in business economics and no hobbies, so it was a bit like trying to connect with a stone.
George happily filled any gaps in conversation, and occasionally someone would speculate about whether Dylan was planning to come back.
When an hour had passed and neither of them had returned, I dipped out of the room to send a voice note to Milly.
“Are you okay? Axel ran off, saying you’d had a gas leak, but it seemed like a lie, and then Dylan ran after him, and they never came back. Do you need any help?”
I got a text back a minute later, which I asked my phone to read out to me.
Milly
I don’t think either of us wants to know what my cousin and your brother are doing right now. Ignorance is bliss, my friend. I’m not even home, don’t worry.
Oh god, please no.
My stomach plummeted.
I was so fucking stupid. I’d known for years that Dylan liked Axel. How had I missed that my own best friend might have felt the same way? I mean, I hoped he felt the same way if they were… if they were… Do not think about it.
My heart beat a little too fast as I panicked because surely Axel knew he couldn’t just hook up with Dylan like it was casual? If this ended badly, I feared Dylan might move to another country, never to be seen again. My brother was both impulsive and a bit of a flight risk.
And then the selfish part of me wondered, if it didn’t end badly, what about me?
Axel had been my best friend since we were four years old.
He’d stood by me when I’d been bullied at school for not being able to read and write like the other kids, and he’d been by my side every time we’d got in trouble with my mom or his dad.
Would he be Dylan’s now, instead of mine?
I had the absurd urge to talk to Patrick about it. He seemed like someone who’d have sage advice and reassure me. Maybe he’d let me be a bit sad and scared about what this would change, give me a cuddle but tell me it’d work itself out in the end.
Obviously, it was just a silly fantasy. Patrick wasn’t my Daddy no matter how much I wanted it. It was a comforting fantasy all the same, though.
It was well over a week later before I could really speak to Axel.
I tried desperately hard not to think about the fact that he’d gone into rut and spent it with Dylan.
The day before it’d been over, I’d gone into rut myself and endured it miserably, replaying my scene with Patrick until I’d cried into my pillow.
After my rut had ended, Axel had texted and asked me to meet him at the duck pond.
I knew I had to go, but talking about him and Dylan was pretty low on the list of any conversation I wanted to have, ever.