Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ETHAN
“ F inally decided to show up, brother?” Emily stands at the top of the porch stairs of our parents’ home leaning against the railing, her arms crossed and her hair pulled back. I pause at the base of the stairs, trying to gauge her mood. Her voice is neutral, but the look she pins me with is borderline hostile.
When I scowl, she just shakes her head.
“When I took Cam last night,” she says with acid in her voice, “it was with the understanding that you were stuck in Jackson and wouldn’t get back before his bedtime.”
I cock an eyebrow and cross my own arms. “All right?”
I let it sit as a question between us.
“So since Caleb is currently flying a damn plane, you get to explain why you both lied to me and then had the audacity to show up two hours late to picking up your son.”
“I was stuck in Jackson yesterday afternoon dealing with paperwork bullshit.” I start up the stairs. “And you don’t actually want to know why I’m late, Emily.”
The sight of Brielle collapsed against the side of her bed, her legs splayed and her cunt wrapped tight around my knot as I brought her to her third orgasm this morning flashes behind my eyes. Mint permeates the air around me, and her eyes narrow. I shrug but don’t say anything.
“You were in Jackson?” She double checks.
I nod again, trying for patience. In reality, I want to collect my son and spend a quiet afternoon riding up to the Arch or maybe Bluebird View.
A growl rumbles through my sister’s chest. I pause on the step below her.
“You going to tell me why Devynn saw you leave The Outpost last night with Brielle if you were in fucking Jackson ?”
She doesn’t move out of my way. She’s tall for a woman, even an Alpha, but she’s still only eye level with me from her perch above me. And every single speck of that brown that’s identical to mine sparkles with rage right now.
“Probably because she saw us leave together,” I say, keeping my voice low and disinterested. “I went there after I got back from my shit in Jackson.”
Just in fucking time, too.
The thought of Jake touching her, bruising her, has my own rage festering.
Her mouth tightens with her rising anger. It bleeds into her vanilla scent, giving it a sour edge.
“All right. So now you get to tell me why Joan saw you drop her off at her car this morning after when you said you’d be by to pick up Cam.”
I give her the glare that her demand really deserves. Goddamn small towns. The lack of privacy has never really bothered me—until now. Maybe because I’ve managed to keep my secret still secret despite the gossipers searching for the next big story. At least until Brielle moved back.
“Yeah, you know why,” I tell her, “and despite what you might tell me, you don’t actually want me to tell you I had Brielle laid out on my bed this morning, Emily.”
Emily raises an eyebrow but doesn’t move.
“Mom know?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes before shaking her head once.
Thank God. I don’t have the patience to tell Mom about the scent match today. And the rest of it? Well, at least she’ll understand some of it better than most. But even still, it’s not something I want to approach today.
“Good,” I say, trying to move around her.
Emily growls, low and lethal in a way I’ve never heard from her before. I pause.
“Brielle is my friend, Ethan,” she says, her voice low. “Don’t you fucking dare think about hurting her.”
My patience snaps.
“So Caleb’s allowed to fuck her as often as he wants, mark her and make it clear to everyone with a goddamn half of a brain in town that they’re serious as fuck, but the moment I show the slightest bit of interest, you decide to have a problem with it?”
Her throat ripples with her swallow, but her gaze stays flinty.
“Caleb wants to move on from Kayla,” she says, raising her voice.
I scoff. “And I don’t? You have no fucking idea where I am in grieving my bonded Omega.”
“He’s her goddamn scent match, Ethan.” Emily spits the words at me. “And when I cornered him after he took her out hiking and asked why he had a sudden interest in her, he was fucking honest about it. But you? You’ve done nothing but lie to me about her at every possible moment.”
“What the hell have I lied about?” I snarl the question and force her back a step, crowding onto the porch.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you spent an entire summer with her, wrapped up around her, entrenched enough that it broke her heart when you broke it off when she went back to school.”
I pause. She’d told Emily I’d broken her heart? I open my mouth to say something, but she doesn’t stop.
“Or how about when she showed up at Brandon’s funeral in support of Melissa, you looked me dead in the eyes and said you didn’t fucking know her and Kayla frowned because she could tell you weren’t telling me the truth.”
Her chest heaves, and she fists her hands, dropping them to her sides.
“Did Kayla know, at least? Or did she get to live in your lovely web of lies, too?”
Something snaps in me. My voice is low and venomous.
“What good would it have been to tell her? We were bonded. It’s not like I was going to run off with Brielle. In case you’ve forgotten, I fucking loved Kayla. I was happy , Emily. She was struggling, barely surviving. I got to have a front row seat of her falling apart and having no power to change any of it.” I take a deep breath, trying to get the feelings of those last few months out of my mind, out of my body, before it makes me want to punch something. “You’ve never been in that situation, in a pack where an Omega appreciates you all but has a special bond with one Alpha in particular, and it’s not you. Kayla loved us, but she adored Brandon. Losing Brandon was like losing herself. All telling her about Brielle would have done is cause her to kill herself faster.”
The truth of the comment rings between us. Emily’s eyes widen.
“Maybe if the first time she showed back up here wasn’t for Brandon’s funeral, it might have been different. If Kayla had asked me, I would have said something. But she didn’t, and I was more concerned with keeping her alive than with airing out a relationship that had happened long before she was mine. Especially since Brielle showed up with the largest goddamn rock I’ve ever fucking seen on her finger and a piss poor excuse of a Beta playing jealous asshole the entire fucking funeral.”
I suck in a breath and try to calm the trembling of my hands. Fuck , I want to punch something.
“Melissa knew. Mom knew. I’m pretty sure Olivia knew, too. We kept it low key because you know as well as I do that the gossip would have been orders of magnitude worse than whatever Jessica Bailey can manage now.” Emily’s eyes are still mutinous despite her shock at my candid mention of Kayla, my explanation not quite breaking her down yet. “When she went back to school and I cut it off, I asked them to keep it all quiet.”
I take another step toward my sister, crowding her against the door.
“And just so that everything is on the table now,” I bite out, my voice so low it rumbles around us like the thunder of a spring storm. “She’s my goddamn scent match, too. So forgive the fuck out of me if I take an extra two hours with her to sort through the bullshit of the last decade to figure out if she can love me again even when all I have is half a heart and a fear of feeling my Omega’s life drain away while I’m too far from her to change the damn outcome.”
Not that we’d discussed any of that. Admitting that we haven’t actually discussed anything outside of not wanting to ignore the realities of our being biological soulmates isn’t something I’m going to do in front of my sister. Not when she’s clearly still ready to feed me to the fucking wolves over pursuing Brielle at all.
“You’re scent matches?” Emily’s arms drop to her sides, shock the only thing written on her face. All the anger is suddenly gone from her voice.
I nod once before pushing past her, opening the door to our parents’ place. It takes her a long minute before she follows behind me.
CALEB
“Papa, look at this flower I found!”
Camden holds up a mangled blue wildflower too close to the camera for me to see much more than a torn petal. I settle in the chair of the hotel room and lean my cell phone against the hotel’s landline. My head pounds from the lack of sleep over the last 48 hours, but I ignore it in favor of spending time with my son.
“So Sunday brunch was a success,” I say with a smile.
Camden nods before frowning. “Brielle still hasn’t come. Can she come next week? I want her to see how I help Nana make pancakes.”
Before giving an answer either way, I focus on Ethan where he sits a bit behind Camden, sharpening some of his farrier blades. Instead of the malice or irritation I expect, his eyes are thoughtful. And then I notice the bruise just above the neckline of his shirt.
Brielle texted me yesterday morning, letting me know about her and Ethan. She hadn’t given any specifics aside from his confirming bloodwork, but they weren’t needed. Not yet. Seeing Ethan not bothering to hide her bruises was a good sign.
Curiosity spikes over what made Ethan drop his resistance.
“I thought you said the weekend was uneventful,” I say, trying to hide my amusement.
He scowls for a heartbeat, and then it melts away.
“Figured it was the type of situation better explained in person.”
There’s no amusement in his voice, just a neutrality that means he’s nervous about… whatever happened between them. Or what it might mean long term.
“Papa, can you invite Bri?” Camden steals my attention. Ethan goes back to sharpening his blades. “Papa, I tried but she said she needed to talk to you or Daddy.”
“You all right with it, Ethan?” I ask.
I don’t want to step on his toes especially if they’ve started figuring out something tentative between them. Ethan can be fickle as fuck over stuff like that. He drops the blade and runs his hand down his face, closing his eyes. And then he shrugs.
“Sure,” he says.
“Yeah, bud,” I tell my son. “I’ll invite her to the next one I’m home for. Hopefully it’s this next one, okay?”
He grins so bright it lights up his eyes and shows off both dimples.
Damn , he looks like Brandon.
This time, the thought doesn’t hurt at all.