Chapter 13 Beth #2
"Going ninety miles an hour across open water!" I say, gesturing wildly to emphasize the speed.
"Meh, it was maybe forty," he counters.
"You code for a living, Knox," I say. "You build software. You do wellness workouts."
I stare at him. He stares back. Neither of us blinks.
"And then you're suddenly out there being a speed demon on open water," I finish.
He's quiet for a long beat. The therapist works her thumb deeply along the arch of his foot, and he stares up at the amber-lit ceiling before eventually exhaling a slow, measured breath. "I guess my parents were just pretty big on the whole calm, steady, reliable thing growing up."
"Oh." I let out a soft, surprised chuckle, not expecting such a heavy pivot. "I didn't realize we were diving straight into childhood trauma." But when he doesn't smile back, the humor drains out of my voice. I turn my face fully toward him. "Sorry."
"It's okay," he says, offering a small, self-deprecating smile. "I didn't exactly expect to say that out loud myself."
"I'd actually really like to hear about it, though," I say, keeping my voice gentle. "If you want to share."
He stays quiet for a long moment. His eyes drift back up to the ceiling, a visible debate playing out in the tense line of his shoulders. Finally, he lets out a small sigh.
"So my parent's pairing is atypical: my dad's a beta, mom's an omega," he starts.
"I think they spent my entire childhood trying to prove to the world that an Alpha-less household wasn't detrimental to their kid's development.
" He pauses, the lines of his jaw tightening.
"So they focused heavily on looking perfect.
And that pressure bled directly into me.
I got straight A's because that was the expectation.
I played varsity soccer because that was the expectation.
I was relentlessly perfect because anything less meant I was failing them. "
The string music fills the silence that follows. I look over at him. "Did you even want to go into software?"
"Oh, I love it." A small smile. "But that was kind of an accident. The jet ski isn't. The jet ski is the one thing I chose specifically because it's the opposite of measured." He glances at me. "That probably sounds stupid."
"It sounds like the opposite of stupid." I take a sip of tea and set the cup back on the table. "It sounds like you built yourself a pressure valve. Which is an extremely measured thing to do with your need to not be measured."
Something shifts in his face. Brief. There and then carefully put away.
***
Knox leads me down a side street I've walked past a hundred times without looking twice.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"You'll see," he says, smiling.
"Bold of you to assume my feet still work." I do a little hobble for emphasis. Full commitment. "That massage turned my muscles into pudding. I'm structurally compromised."
His head snaps at me in worry. "Sorry, it's been a long day, we can leave of course—"
"Knox. I'm kidding."
"Right. Yeah." He rubs the back of his neck. "I—I knew that."
We turn onto a gravel path, narrow and half-hidden, lined with silver birches. Then the path opens up, and I stop walking.
There's a pond. Still enough to mirror the sky back at itself, a wooden dock stretched out a few feet over the water, a single bench on the shore weathered to the color of driftwood.
The grass around the edges is dotted with tiny white wildflowers I'd need to get closer to identify, and a turtle sits on a half-submerged log near the dock, motionless, committed to the bit.
The whole thing looks like a screensaver.
"Turner's Pond," Knox says quietly, watching my face.
I don't answer. My brain has briefly gone offline and I just stand here with my mouth slightly open, feeling like I've been handed something fragile and private.
"How did you find this?" I finally ask.
He doesn't answer. Just moves past me toward the bench, shoulders a little drawn, his hand trailing along the top of the bench as he reaches it.
He sits down. "I actually found this place when I was sixteen. My parents had gotten my report card—a B-plus in AP History—and from the way they reacted you'd think I'd committed arson. So I left."
I sit next to him. Close. Our knees almost touching. "You ran away over a B-plus?"
"I walked away over a B-plus, technically." He picks up a pebble from the ground, turns it between his fingers. "Walked until my legs hurt more than my head. Found the pond. Sat on this bench for about four hours and watched the water do nothing."
He glances at me, then at the pond. "This—this place is special to me."
His left ear goes pink, the color creeping up from his collar like he's confessing something deeply embarrassing.
Personally, I find it ridiculously endearing.
A soft, involuntary smile breaks across my face and I bump my shoulder gently against his.
"Tell me more. Something I don't know about you. "
He throws the pebble. It skips twice and sinks. "I can't sleep without socks on," he says.
"That's psychotic. But continue."
A surprised laugh. "I, uh—I collect those little state magnets from gas stations. The tacky ones. I've got thirty-eight states. Can't find Delaware anywhere."
"Delaware is deliberately withholding," I say, smiling.
"I'm not ruling it out," he replies with a chuckle. He pauses, leaning his forearms on his knees. "Oh, and I cry at dog movies. Every single time. I don't even try to fight it anymore."
"Which ones?"
"All of them. If a dog is on screen and appears to be in even mild emotional distress, I'm done."
"Even the Beethoven sequels?"
"Especially the Beethoven sequels," he says. "Those went to some dark places."
I'm laughing. "The paranormal romance. The state magnets. The dog movies. You are a deeply unusual man."
"Easy to mock when you've got information advantage," he says, and nudges my knee. "Your turn."
I reach down, pick up my own pebble, and attempt a skip. It plops straight into the water like a small, sad rock funeral.
"I eat pickles with peanut butter," I say.
"I'm sorry?" He asks, blinking.
"On the same fork." I hold up the imaginary fork for emphasis.
He gives me a long, searching stare, like he's reevaluating every interaction we've ever had through the new lens of this information. "That's gross."
"Hey," I say. "Don't knock it."
"I'm just—" He blinks twice, fast. "Processing." A pause. "What else?"
"I can't parallel park. Genuinely cannot. I've accepted this about myself." I pick at a splinter on the bench. "I still sleep with a nightlight after watching a horror movie, though I love them, and I'll fight anyone who has an opinion about that. And I—"
I hesitate. Let the splinter go. The pond is so still that every branch of the tree line is doubled, and looking at it gives me the strange sensation of being suspended between two worlds. Maybe that's why the next thing comes out.
"I used to lie awake and picture what it would be like to be married and bonded," I say quietly. "Either in a pack or just a normal, monogamous relationship, in a not-so-distant past."
He shifts toward me. His thigh presses against mine now, and neither of us moves away.
"I mostly stopped," I continue. "Maybe because I've had a glimpse of that life with all of you. You know, with Mason declaring war on his closet door every morning at seven." I try for light. It comes out medium at best.
"I've come to believe he is angry at the closet," Knox says, his voice perfectly deadpan. "I think it might have wronged him in a past life."
I go for a laugh, but something inside me has shifted, hitting me with a painful throwback.
Jake. Sophomore year. Wanted to "take things slow" and was living in Portland with a girl from his econ class by spring.
Then Caleb, who let me hang around for four months after graduation before sitting me down, very gently, to explain he'd never actually seen me as girlfriend material. Then Grant, of course.
You can't force someone to stay. But you'd think after the zillionth time, I'd stop being surprised when they don't.
"Are you okay?" Knox asks, his voice quiet, careful.
I blink. "Yeah. Sorry. That just reminded me of—Nevermind."
"Hey." He tilts his head, his gaze anchoring mine. "Tell me."
"I just—I have this pattern," I say. "Where I follow alphas around and it never seems to stick. So the happily-married-slash-pack-life fantasy kind of got dismantled along the way."
A kingfisher dives into the pond. The splash is startlingly loud in the quiet, and we both watch the ripples spread in concentric circles until they reach the edge and dissolve.
"I get that," Knox says.
"Yeah?"
"You know how I said my parents spent their whole lives proving they didn't need a pack?
They proved it so well I believed them." He stretches his fingers out, curls them back.
"Relationships were a distraction. Finding an omega was something that would 'happen when it happened,' and it did, but—well. You know how that turned out."
He's quiet for a beat. Then another.
"When Jessica left, I was wrecked. Genuinely. I didn't get out of bed for four weekends, and I'm not—I'm not that guy." He exhales. "But I've been thinking about it a lot since then, and I think—maybe she was never the right one. For me, specifically."
I stay completely silent, my gaze locked on his profile.
"Mason and Arthur were crazy about her. And I thought I was too.
I really did. But if I'm being honest with myself—" He stops.
Starts again. "I think I just went along with it because they wanted it so much.
And it was easier to believe I felt the same way than to sit with the idea that I didn't want the same thing as my pack brothers. "
He looks out at the water. "Something was always a little off. I just didn't want to be the one to say it."
The weight of that sentence lands between us and sits there, and my hand instinctively covers his.
He doesn't pull away. Instead, he turns his hand over, tangling our fingers together until our palms press flat and warm against each other.
I let out a breath and let my weight drift sideways. My shoulder tucks perfectly under his arm, my temple finding the solid, warm divot right near his collarbone. We stay like that for a bit, the quiet hum of the pond settling around us.
Then without realizing I'm doing it, my face shifts. I’m no longer just resting against him; I’m tipping my nose directly into the curve of his neck.
Breathing him in. Beneath the lingering scent of lake water and sunscreen, there is that deep, sharp, woodsy base note that is pure Knox.
It isn't the overwhelming, mind-altering spike from the clearing the other night, but it's enough. It’s more than enough.
My pulse kicks into a frantic, stuttering rhythm.
And then my biology completely hijacks the steering wheel. Driven by a bone-deep, primal urge, I turn my head and slowly drag my cheek against the sensitive skin of his throat. The friction is a jolt of electricity. Oh my god. A hot, dizzying flush washes over me. Am I... scent-marking him?
I should stop.
I don't stop.
His hand tightens on my shoulder. His head tilts, just barely, giving me more of his neck. And then I feel him do the same thing—his breath warm and slow against the skin below my ear, inhaling deeply.
Every hair on my body stands up.
His lips brush my throat, then my mouth finds the side of his neck and he makes a small, wrecked sound, unraveling something in my chest.
Then his mouth is on mine.
I grab the front of his shirt and pull.
It's soft at first. Tentative. He tastes like trail mix and lake water, which sounds objectively terrible but is currently the best thing I've ever tasted in my life.
Then my hand slides up into the damp hair at the nape of his neck, and his control snaps entirely.
His free hand cups my jaw, his thumb pressing firmly into my cheekbone, and the kiss stops being careful.
He slants his mouth over mine with a sudden, desperate, consuming pressure.
It's messy and urgent and entirely unmeasured.
A low, vibrating growl rips from the back of his throat, and every nerve I own fires at once.
When I pull back, his hand stays on my jaw. His breathing is a mess. His ears are so red they could guide a ship to shore.
His forehead drops to mine.
"What are we doing," he whispers.
"I don't know." My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
"Should—uh, should we just keep not knowing together?"
I laugh against his mouth. "That's the best offer anyone's ever made me."