Chapter 10 Jae
JAE
ROWAN
How’s the hometown? London’s a bloody oven
I’m sweatin my arse off and Lillian might divorce me, all I’ve been doing is pottering around the house starting projects I don’t finish
but I’m lovin it
exactly what i needed after the tour
also I booked your flight back here for August
album number three LETS GO
Thanks to our intercontinental friendship, I was used to waking up to stream-of-consciousness texts from Rowan. No matter how many records he sold, he was still the bastard who accidentally locked me inside a bar bathroom on a night out.
I should’ve been looking forward to working with him again. We were friends first, collaborators second. It was by far the best working relationship of my short career, and the most lucrative.
Maybe I’d feel more excited once August rolled around. After all, I’d just gotten to Starlight Grove and hadn’t spent enough time with Lucien and Mercer to be sick of them yet.
The living room was a ghost town of furniture wearing plastic sheeting. I picked up the putty knife I’d been using to patch up holes and snapped a selfie.
JAE
Can’t do it
Been renovating the house and decided I’ve missed my calling
ROWAN
all right, we had a good run
I don’t need any more grammys
I snorted as he sent me a close-up of his middle finger.
Lucien had made himself at home in the office very quickly. He was there now, tapping away on his laptop with a permanent frown.
I knocked on the doorframe gingerly. “Want to get started on painting?”
“Shit.” Lucien checked the time with a flick of his wrist. “Yeah, give me a minute.”
He continued typing, hovering halfway between standing and sitting.
A comment about his shitty posture stuck in my throat.
The hesitance was leftover from Appa’s influence on our upbringing, that constant reminder in the back of my mind that he was my elder, my hyung.
Respect …even when he was being ridiculous.
Someone needed to tell Lucien he was working too much, but it wasn’t going to be me.
Lucien eventually extracted himself from his desk. My enthusiasm for physical labor waned as we made our way to the sun-drenched living room. Spending the entire day here was going to be about as pleasant as working in an armpit.
“Here.” Lucien rummaged through our supplies from the hardware store and handed me a multipack of cloths. “We should give the walls a good clean before we prime.”
“Yes, probably,” I said mournfully.
My mood improved once I put on some music and we got to work, each selecting our own half of the room to focus on.
Lucien had picked a sage green for the walls to replace the tired old white.
There was definitely something cathartic about erasing the version of the house that existed in my memories.
As I reached the spot behind where our couch used to be, I laughed out loud.
“What is it?”
“Look.” I ran my fingers over the uneven plaster. “You can still see where Papa patched up this wall.”
Lucien crouched next to me to get a better look. “Yeah, I bet. Stealing his tools and putting about twenty nails in the wall isn’t easy to hide,” he said wryly.
“Mercer and I needed an armory for our superhero lair.”
Lucien palmed his face. “God, I got in so much trouble.”
“You did? Why did you get in trouble?” I didn’t remember that at all. Mercer and I lost gaming and TV privileges for a month, and we took it about as gracelessly as you’d expect.
“They said I should’ve been watching you two better.” He stood back up with a sigh, no trace of resentment or bitterness in his shadowed smile. “As if that would’ve stopped you two clowns.”
Was that how it had always been? I knew he tried to keep us in line growing up but I didn’t realize it hadn’t been his choice.
I guess it made sense, with so much turmoil in the pack.
Mom favoring Greg. Papa and Appa bringing home the lion’s share of the income and doing most of the parenting, too, now that I thought about it.
Lucien was the one who fixed our after-school snacks.
Papa was always the first to leave in the morning so he could finish early and handle dinner.
Then Appa joined us in the evening, still in his suit, while Mercer and I waged a losing war with our math homework.
I had such a narrow view of the world then. Typical, self-absorbed teenager. But had that really changed? I still kept most people at arm’s length. Even the ones who knew and loved me.
I glanced at Lucien out of the corner of my eye. My head was pounding, exacerbated by heat and difficult truths.
Unpleasant stickiness plastered my shirt to my skin and my brush grew more slippery as I worked.
I was going to be more sweat than man soon, even with the windows open.
The AC was busted so we ran the rickety old ceiling fans round the clock instead.
Each squeaking rotation did little to keep us cool.
Instead, all it did was waft Summer’s scent all through the house. Tropical sweetness and floral whispers teasing us from every corner. Brewing this humming desire to see her, to find out ways to draw more of that provocative scent from her. Maddening.
Paint fumes in the soupy heat was actually a reprieve.
It really shouldn’t be affecting me this much.
Summer had barely been around since moving in.
She’d been at the patisserie or out with friends and family.
But it was impossible to miss the signs of her through the house.
Her growing pile of sneakers at the front door, long black hairs on every surface, and the never-ending replenishment of take-out boxes in the fridge.
She had stuck Post-it notes on them: HELP PLEASE EAT and MY PARENTS WON’T STOP GIVING THEM TO ME .
But when she was home…my chances of making it to the pearly gates dropped significantly when I saw the pink short shorts she sashayed around the house in.
“Have you seen Summer much?” Lucien asked.
Did he read my mind? Or…was he thinking about her, too?
“No, not really,” I replied, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. “She’s out a lot. Or at the patisserie with Mercer.”
Going to see her and exchanging stammering one-syllable words did not have the same appeal if Mercer and god knows who else was spectating.
“Hmm.” Lucien’s natural poker face was downright irritating sometimes. “Weird that her scent is—”
“Everywhere?”
His paintbrush stuttered for a moment and he corrected himself. “Yeah.”
“I mean, not much she can do about it.”
“No, of course not. Of course not,” he repeated absentmindedly.
I half-heartedly swiped more Leafy Meadow onto the wall.
“Fans don’t help,” I said shortly.
Lucien chuckled humorlessly. “No. They don’t. The AC technician is booked solid and won’t be able to service our unit until the end of July.”
Jesus, another month of popping inconvenient boners.
“We’ll make do until then,” I said instead.
The two of us continued painting, and I went right back to daydreaming about the omega who had made herself at home in our house.
By the late afternoon, I was dead. My arm was hurting, my neck was hurting, everything was hurting.
The oppressive heat sapped our energy twice as fast. We had done multiple coats and spent forever making sure our work was precise around the elaborate trim.
And we still had the final coat to apply tomorrow.
I was sprawled on the ground like a cadaver outline, unable to get up.
“Lucien,” I croaked. “That was one room.”
“Don’t remind me.” Lucien collapsed onto the plastic-covered couch with a loud crunch . “I didn’t think this through,” he admitted.
“Think what through?”
Lucien made more crinkly sounds as he gradually slid into a more horizontal position. Surely that wasn’t comfortable. “Planning our renovations when Mercer’s focused on his patisserie. He’s not here to help us five days of the week.”
“We’ll force him to work on his days off. And we can sit in lounge chairs ordering him around and drinking beer,” I suggested.
Lucien contemplated that for a moment. “Yeah, okay, that sounds good.”
Eventually the combination of paint splatter and sweat saturating my T-shirt was too gross. I hauled myself to the shower and stood beneath the icy spray until I felt halfway human again.
I was drying my hair furiously with the towel draped over my shoulders and didn’t register the clink of the door opening until it was too late.
“Oh my god, holy shit.”
Summer. Eyes like a stadium floodlights. I was caught, she was caught. In a panic, her gaze hurtled downward. I could actually see her brain catching up as she realized breaking eye contact caused her to get a complete eyeful of…me.
Her scent blossomed in the small space, drenching me in mangoes and sunshine, the tartness of passionfruit so vivid I could feel it explode on my tongue. My alpha surged, sensing her need, and god help me my body responded. At attention. Full mast. Ready for whatever she wanted.
I had no fucking clue what to do or say.
“Uh, bathroom’s occupied?”
Nailed it, dumbass.
Summer made a choked noise and slammed the door shut.