Chapter 9 - Byron
At first, I think I’m imagining the banging on the front door, then I pull a headphone away from my ear and realize it is very real, and it’s only getting louder.
Who would come to the door? Aris knows I’m awake, so he would use the pack mind link if he needed me. So would anyone else on the team. I swallow and set my controller down on the desk, pushing the chair away.
I know who it is, on the other side of the door, and my body immediately becomes a war zone; one part of me wants to throw the door open, get my hands on her, touch her, ensure she’s okay—the other part of me knowing that’s the worst thing I could do.
Doing any of that would just open us up to a relationship, and I know I can’t do it. I can’t be with her, give into what we want, because one day she will bring up having kids, and I will have to break her heart again. I’d have to live out the rest of my life knowing I’m the wrong person for her, and watching how my shortcomings hurt her every day.
“Byron!” Olivia shouts, and I jump, “open this fucking door!”
When I swing it open, there she is. We stare at each other for a long moment, her breathing heavily.
She’s wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, which reminds me that I’m in nothing but my boxers. I watch her gaze sweep over me, past my chest and shoulders, drinking me in, and I recognize that look on her face. It’s the face she’d make any time I tipped her head up, about to kiss her.
Her hair is loose over her shoulders, slightly wavy and frizzy, likely from being in the medical bay. On her feet is a pair of slippers from the hospital, and I picture her walking through Rosecreek like this for anyone to see. It makes something protective and possessive rise up in me.
When her lips part, her eyes grow dark, my stomach tightens.
I take a deep breath, averting my eyes from her. I’ll need more clothes—something to hide the way I’m feeling about her—if she’s going to be looking at me. If she’s going to be here.
“I want to see the footage,” she says, finally, when it feels like we’ve been standing here for hours, looking at one another, thinking and thinking and thinking about a time when we were able to touch one another.
“What?” I ask, letting out a breath of surprise. “Didn’t they say you needed to stay in bed?”
I look at her cheeks, which have practically no color, and suddenly want her to come inside, in case she’s going to pass out.
“Come here,” I say, opening the door and inviting her inside. When she brushes past me, I want nothing more than to reach out and wrap her in my arms. I’m torn between this primal urge to touch her, to have her, and this other, more protective feeling that wants to wrap her up and hold her until he’s better.
It’s maddening.
“The footage,” she snaps, turning to me and crossing her arms. “I feel fine,” she lies, “and I want to watch the video of what happened that night. I know you have it. Veronica said she got to watch it.”
“She asked me to send it to her.”
“So, everyone gets to watch it except me?”
“You almost died , Olivia!” I snap, putting a fist to my chest when my heart starts to squeeze painfully. My eyes dart to the medicine on the table, the pills Maisie has been begging me to take. Instead, I reach for my energy drink and knock the rest back.
“Everyone on this team is always almost dying,” she says, voice tight. “And nobody condemns them to be in best for the rest of their lives.
“It’s been one day.”
“It’s awful.”
“Your blood pressure is too low, they need to—”
“Oh, my god,” she says, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Has Maisie been sharing my private medical information with you? That is such a HIPPA violation.”
I shut my mouth, looking down at the floor, not wanting her to read in my expression that Maisie didn’t tell me anything—I simply looked at her chart in the system—
“Oh my god , Byron, you looked up my stuff. That is—”
“You wanna see the footage?” I snap, turning away from her and walking back into my computer room. “Fine. Come see the footage.”
She blinks, apparently surprised that I gave in that easily. I gave in because if I kept standing across from her, watching her yell at me, I was going to scoop her up and take her to my bedroom, and from the look on her face, I knew she would let me.
We’re mated. And blood bound. Our bodies are itching, begging us to come together, to relieve that feeling. Olivia would do it, just to stem the building pressure, and then I would be forced to face the fact that I love her, that I’ve loved her from the moment she arrived in Rosecreek.
And I’d be forced to face the fact that even though I’m her mate, I’m not the right one for her. If the universe chooses these things, it’s finally gotten one wrong.
I tap my keyboard a few times, bringing my computer to life. With a few clicks, I make it over to the footage. The audio file is stored carefully, encrypted, with plenty of warnings and checks. It doesn't feel relevant now that we have the text, but something stopped me from deleting it.
“Sit down.”
I watch Olivia sit in my chair, and my breath gets stuck in my throat. I can’t help thinking about how we’d talked about getting our computers in here together, setting them up next to each other so we could work and play in the same room, at the same time. I glance toward the other side of the room, where there’s more than enough room for the set-up Olivia had shown me—complete with a white PC tower and RGB components.
Her dream set-up includes a chair like mine, but pink, and a mechanical keyboard with cute keycaps. I want it—I want her there, next to me. I just don’t want the rest of it.
“Here,” I say, feeling choked as I settle my headphones down over her ears, click on the video, watch her watching herself. If she passes out—or something worse than that happens—Maisie and Veronica will have my head.
Her face gets a little white as we watch her go down on camera, and before I can stop myself, I’m putting a hand on her shoulder.
It feels like sticking my finger in an electrical socket, and when she looks up at me, her mouth open, eyes wide, I can tell she feels the same.
“Sorry,” I say, pulling my hand back and clearing my throat. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” she says, shaking her head and pushing away from the desk, before reaching up and taking off the headset. “I just—I thought I could see his face. It’s like, I can’t stop thinking about getting the motherfucker who thought it was okay to curse me.”
“I get that,” I say, thinking about how I’d hunted the vampires who killed my parents for years before I finally found them and savored watching them die. “Here,” I say, gesturing for her to sit back down. “Let’s see what we can do.”
I fetch one of my kitchen chairs, and for the next hour, we spend time enhancing the video, and when that still doesn’t work, we hack into different servers to see if any of them have the footage stored from that night.
But the security cameras only keep it for twenty-four hours. We comb through social media, trying to see if anyone might have been taking a picture or video at the moment Olivia was cursed, but the ones that come close to the same time are all from the other side of the ballroom.
“Shit,” I say, shaking my head and reaching for my energy drink, before realizing it’s empty. “I’m sorry, Liv.”
“It’s okay,” she says, breathy, putting her chin in her palm. And then, after a moment, she says, “I never—well, I guess I should thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“I mean, was it weird that you were watching me? Yeah, a little. But also, without that weirdness, who knows where I would be right now. If I’d even be alive. The fact that you were watching got the team to me in time. So. Thank you.”
“Uh,” I say, scratching the back of my neck, trying not to look right at her. It’s like looking into the sun. “Yeah,” I cough, “of course.”
“But don’t ever fucking do that again,” she says, and this surprises me so much that I snap my gaze up to hers. Her eyes are intense, her gaze searching. “If you’re watching, fine, but you tell me. Beforehand. No more looking at my medical files or clocking me through camera hacking. If I’m on assignment, we communicate about the surveillance. If not, you have no reason to look.”
“I—”
“Byron, I need you to say you won’t watch me anymore without my consent.”
Fuck. When she puts it that way, it sounds bad. I rub my hand over my jaw, take a deep breath, and nod.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. From now on, I’ll communicate about this stuff. When it’s for the team. For missions.”
“Okay,” she says, letting out a breath. “Okay, good. Great.”
When I look back at her, I realize that, somehow, we’ve drifted closer together. The pull between us is almost gravitational, and I bit my lip, trying to ground myself.
Her eyes track the movement.
I want to kiss her. I want to buy my face in her hair, run my tongue and lips over her neck, get my hands on her hips. Her eyes are hooded, her body language soft, leaning.
I could kiss her right now.
The more I allow myself to think about it, the closer we drift, until, without warning, Olivia jolts back, breathing hard, her hand to her chest. Like the thought of touching me again might give her a heart attack.
It might give me a heart attack, I think, also bringing my hand up, rubbing my fist into my chest where it hurts. She stands from my chair so fast it spins backward, drifting toward the wall.
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head, before turning on her heel and running for the front door of my apartment. I watch her go, stunned, still reeling, when the door closes behind her.
As soon as she’s out, I spin around to pull up the Rosecreek security cameras but stop short with my hand over the button. I need to make sure she gets home okay, but I just promised her I wouldn’t watch her through the cameras anymore.
I take a deep breath, shut down my PC and head to bed.