Chapter 21 Hunter
Hunter
“Okay, let me get this straight.” I ran my fingers through my hair.
I’d been at work too much lately—trying to drown out the memories of Clover, though I was relieved to at least have a name for the face now—to notice what was going on at home.
“Every single one of us has slept with Clover over the last month?”
Avery’s eyes gleamed, staring Parker down. “Got all the glitter out yet?”
Parker rolled his eyes. “I don’t think it’s even possible.”
“Gimme the deets. You’ve been keeping everything to yourself, and I’m tired of waiting for you to open up on your own. It’s gotta be good. I kept expecting fury, and instead you’ve been grinning like a loon for days.”
After seeing how spectacularly Clover’s glitter bomb had pissed off Parker, I suppose Avery hadn’t been able to resist a little chaos of his own. “I still can’t believe you customized a pink glitter bomb with your initials in it.”
“Please tell me it went off during the act.” Avery wiggled across the couch to be closer to Parker, knowing his proximity would make him cave faster. “Because, personally, I think that would be excellent timing.”
“It didn’t.” Parker leaned against the kitchen counter, keeping a watchful eye on Avery—like he thought he was going to pull another glitter bomb out of his ass, which wasn’t all that improbable. “It went off right before.”
“You had sex with Clover in the glitter?” Avery asked.
“So what if we did?” he countered.
“Nothing.” Avery raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just surprised you were willing to get glitter in unmentionable places. I thought you’d come find me and strangle me after it went off.”
“I was distracted.” Parker pursed his lips, cocking his head to the side. “It was worth it.”
“Okay, so what does this all mean?” I asked, trying to get a read on the pack vibes. “Do you all want to officially date her as a pack?”
Avery and Logan nodded.
“I’m open to it,” Parker replied carefully. “We have a lot to learn about her, but I’m curious to know more.”
“We could all know more if you’d quit hogging the info,” Avery groused. “I haven’t had a conversation date with her yet. Tell me the secrets!”
Parker had seemed so surly about the whole situation that I hadn’t expected him to be interested in pursuing Clover. I agreed with Avery that Parker had been annoyingly tight-lipped about his experience taking her to an apology dinner.
I wasn’t surprised that all of them liked her, but it was a truly impressive undertaking of fate to introduce Clover to every member of our pack without her knowing that’s what we were to each other.
“We can’t date her publicly, or, at least, I can’t,” I told them. “Clover doesn’t want Meadow to know she slept with me, because Meadow’s pack works under my label. She thinks it’ll make things weird.”
Every time I saw someone from Meadow’s pack, I wanted to ask about Clover, but that would require an explanation of why I knew her to begin with and cared enough to inquire.
“Convince her otherwise,” Logan suggested. “You’re a professional. It’s not like you’d take it out on Hard Knot Life if things went south with Clover.”
“I know that, but she doesn’t.” I sighed. “I’m happy to pursue things, I just don’t know what my next steps would be.”
“Getting secrets out of Parker!” Avery prodded our pack mate.
Parker sighed. “I introduced her to duck confit crepes, she told me she’s going to law school, probably on the East Coast—”
“If she moves across the country, I vote for some light stalking,” said Avery.
“We’re not stalking her,” I replied blandly.
“But—”
“No.” My phone buzzed with the reminder of a meeting today. “Shit. I forgot about Arlo coming into the studio. We’ll deal with this all later. Someone come up with an alternative to stalking. Logan, are you still coming, or are you not feeling up to it?”
Poor guy had been feeling nauseated for a while. Better him than me, because nausea took me the fuck out, but Logan was weirdly good at powering through it.
“I’m okay,” he insisted. “Let’s go.”
“All right, I’ll make Avery wait on secrets until you guys are back,” Parker announced.
“Cruel!” Avery pouted, but I was glad we’d get to learn everything together.
“Sounds good. Later, guys.” I bolted for the car. Hard Knot Life was already signed to my label, but we were working through the fine details of their next album, which had been going relatively slowly since the arrival of their son.
Logan swung into the driver’s seat, our most common arrangement since I struggled to put work down. We had a chauffeur for our regular commutes, but most of the time we drove ourselves outside of that.
“You seem twitchy,” Logan told me. “What’s wrong?”
“Stress. What else is new?”
“Not much,” he conceded. “I think we all need a vacation.”
What would I even do on a vacation? They would have to take all of my electronics away, and then I would be stressed about work not getting done instead. “Probably.”
Logan sighed, pulling us from our neighborhood and into LA traffic. “Tell Arlo we’ll be late.”
“On it.”
Hunter:
Stuck in traffic
Help yourself to any food and drinks
Arlo:
Already did
It took us almost an hour to get to the studio, but Arlo didn’t seem annoyed in the least. He had his son on his lap, an open soda on the side table, and a giant cookie in his mouth.
Logan paused, staring at Forest. “That’s your kid?”
“Yep,” Arlo said around the cookie, holding Forest up for Logan.
I had never seen Logan scrutinize a baby before. What on earth?
“I want to ask if you’re sure, but that feels like a stupid question.”
Arlo tilted his head, looking at Logan like a confused puppy. “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”
“He looks really familiar.”
“He was on the Christmas card that’s stuck to our fridge,” I pointed out, though Forest had been a newborn in that photo and was quite a bit bigger now.
“All your clients are on the fridge because you feel weird throwing their photos out.” Logan shook his head, obviously frustrated. “Anyway, it’s not that. I’ve definitely seen this baby recently, but the only explanation with the information I have is that you guys cheated on Meadow.”
“What?” Arlo squawked. “We would never.”
“So his mom isn’t a blonde omega who lives in our neighborhood? Because that’s who I saw him with, stroller and all.”
Arlo looked so confused before realization dawned. “Do you mean Clover?”
Logan and I exchanged a glance, and Logan nodded.
Arlo burst into laughter. “Clover isn’t his mom. She’s Meadow’s best friend and lives in our guesthouse.”
“But she…” Logan frowned, his eyebrows furrowing. “I guess she didn’t specifically say she was his mother. I assumed and she didn’t correct me.”
I had almost forgotten about the whole baby angle that was twisting Logan up in knots.
“We’re definitely not sleeping with Clover and never have.” Arlo made a gagging sound. “No offense. I know, aesthetically, she looks great, but I don’t think I could survive being mated to her.”
Nerves took over my belly again. Was Arlo’s opposition to Clover because of Meadow or because there was something about this omega we didn’t know? “Why not?”
“Meadow is my safe space. Clover is more like a trampoline park.”
“What does that even mean?” Logan asked.
“It means that she’s a lot to handle, and she’s similar enough to me in the chaos department that we drive each other up the wall.
People think they can handle a trampoline park, and then they end up leaving barely able to move.
We’ve had a prank war going since she moved in, and honestly, she’s a little scary.
In a good way, I guess? No one’s ever been able to go toe to toe with me on that before.
She’s great besides that, don’t get me wrong.
I’m probably pitching her terribly. She loves Meadow and Forest, turned her whole life upside down to take care of Meadow when we couldn’t, and moved down here a few months ago to help us navigate Forest’s first year.
Clover’s pretty cool, even when she’s being a menace. ”
That sort of friend didn’t come around very often, and it only made me like Clover more. “I think it’s good for you to have someone around that gives you a taste of the chaos.”
Arlo barked a laugh. “Very true. So, you know Clover?”
“Barely,” Logan confessed. “I met her while she was out for a run with Forest, and she briefly visited the house. Oh, and once more at a club.”
Arlo narrowed his eyes. “When was the club?”
“A couple of weeks ago now.”
“Are you the reason I saw her sneaky walk-of-shaming through the yard at lunchtime?”
“I—”
“Don’t say anything,” I ordered Arlo. “She doesn’t want Meadow to know.”
“Wha—? Why not?” Arlo asked.
I could only shrug. “That’s a question for her. Can you promise not to say anything?”
“Yeah, yeah. Lips are zipped.”
What was going on in Logan’s head right now? A child definitely made things more complicated, but if Clover wasn’t really a mother, then that wasn’t an issue. Maybe he had been bringing himself around to the idea of a kid. It had crossed my mind a time or two.
Our pack hadn’t had much in the way of serious discussions about our hypothetical future children, but no one was opposed to it.
If Clover had been a mother—and she at some point got over her reservations about who we were in relation to Meadow’s pack—then we’d have been an instant family.
It was a cozy thought, even if it didn’t match up with reality.
“Do I get the gossip?” Arlo asked with a grin. “Because I’m more than happy to wait on album stuff if you want to give me details. She’s been hiding out in the guesthouse a lot more, which, while peaceful, is getting boring.”
Hiding out? “Is she okay?”
“That’s a good question.” He pulled out his phone, balancing Forest in one arm and tapping away with the other. After a few seconds, his phone buzzed with a response. “She says she’s alive, just tired. Probably out with someone else I don’t know about.”
Tension shot through me, my spine stiffening.
Arlo eyed me shrewdly. “Don’t like that idea?”
I might as well be honest. If Arlo was going to keep Clover’s secret, it probably didn’t hurt to keep him in the loop.
“Not particularly, no.”
“Because he slept with her,” Arlo asked, gesturing to Logan, “or because you want to?”
Arlo put on a good front, so people underestimated him, but he was painfully good at reading people.
I wasn’t going to spill my guts and tell him that Clover had been branded into every cell in my body since I’d fucked her on my desk at the party.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell him I had thought about her every single day, had woken up spilling on my sheets with her image in my mind, or that I had fucked my fist a hundred times while trying to conjure every detail of her I could remember.
“Both.”
“And why aren’t you guys pursuing her if you want her?”
“She’s made it pretty clear she has no interest in being pursued for anything long-term,” Logan grumbled.
“I had no idea you were that bad in the sack,” Arlo said with a laugh.
Logan choked. “What the fuck, Arlo? I’m not—”
“Just teasing.” Arlo looked so damn pleased with himself. “From what I’ve overheard, she’s weird about dating because she hasn’t decided if she’s staying or not.”
Panic shot through my body. “Not staying? Where would she be going?”
“She’s been accepted to half a dozen law schools all around the country.
I can see how it would be hard to turn down Harvard or Yale.
We’re pretty sure we can convince her that UCLA is the best choice, but she wants to keep her options open.
She can go wherever she wants, obviously, but Meadow would miss her, and while she might be a pain in my ass right now, I know I would miss her too. ”
Law school was intense. Getting accepted was a huge accomplishment, let alone to multiple schools of that caliber.
That meant she was wicked smart and had a work ethic that would make most people cower.
Someone like her could put Parker in his place when he needed it, and I didn’t give a shit how often he said he wanted a docile sweetheart, he’d be tired of that inside a month.
Clover was an omega who needed a safe space more so than one who provided one to others.
I could be wrong about that, but everything I had learned about her told me it was true.
How was I supposed to stomach the idea of her moving away? Who would ever compare?
“All those schools were okay with her not starting right away?”
“Sure seems like it,” Arlo said with a shrug. “I haven’t really asked about the details, but I can only assume they understand that someone like Clover doesn’t come around too often.”
I never thought I would have so much in common with an educational institution, but I was already coming to that same understanding.
We all wanted Clover. The problem was that she didn’t seem to want us, beyond what we had already given her.
We wouldn’t have long to convince her we were worth it, and this new information from Arlo lit a fire under my ass.
It was already spring, and come autumn, Clover could be out of reach. I caught Logan’s eye and his subtle nod. A silent agreement, then.
We couldn’t let her leave without showing her what a life with us could be like. The ball might be in her court, but the game was fucking on.