16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Try it again, but this time move in closer. It’s a romance not a fucking business meeting,” Eli called from the sidelines as Artie and I slid hand-in-hand across the ice.
After realizing that ice dancing would be a better fit to help Artie continue to skate we’d gone back to Eli with our tails between our legs and asked him to coach the both of us.
Pulling Artie a little closer, I tucked his hand more firmly around my waist.
“Ice dancing is all about synchronicity, if you can’t match steps you may as well not even bother!”
Two weeks, it had been two weeks and we still struggled to skate on the same wavelength despite being nearly the same height.
Artie’s strides were always just a hair quicker than my own, at times causing our legs to tangle and nearly fall.
The music of the practice piece filled my ears as I worked on staying on the beat, almost playing chicken with Artie’s feet as we zipped across the ice.
Eli wasn’t done yet because as we turned to face each other his voice filled our ears again. “You two look like you’re about to go in for a tandem colonoscopy. Artem, haven’t you ever wooed a woman before?”
“No, actually,” Artie muttered under his breath as we moved clumsily through the choreography that we’d only learned earlier this week. “I haven’t.”
I blinked, surprised at that little snippet of information. The omega was definitely flirty, so I figured that it would come easy to him regardless of gender.
“It’s easy,” I told him as he spun me around. “All you’ve got to do is tell her she’s pretty and then figure out her deepest darkest secret.”
Artie’s smile was slow, his finger squeezing mine. “That’s all?”
“That’s all,” I confirmed as we pushed away from each other and began the step routine that Eli had laid out for us, circling each other around the center of the ice.
“There we go!” Eli hooted. “That’s what I meant when I said romance!”
Apparently, our little exchange had helped us sync up.
“Don’t overthink it, I guess is the lesson here,” I called to Artie before flipping around so that I was skating backward. Artie did the same, just a split second too late.
“Stop! Come to the wall!”
The music cut off, leaving my ears ringing from the loss of it.
Once we made it back to where Eli was standing, I could tell he was about to chew us out about something.
“I thought you two were crazy when you brought this ice dancing idea to me and now I know it. How are you supposed to be in sync if you don’t trust that the other person is going to be on time?” Eli asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
Artie shifted from one foot to the other, glancing over at me before back down to the ice. “I’m just having trouble keeping it together once everything starts moving and before I know if I’m kind of just guessing where Ciara is at with the choreo…”
“I wasn’t talking about you, Artem.” Eli turned to shoot me a withering look.
My spine straightened as I held my hands up defensively. “What did I do?”
Eli scoffed at my tone. “This was your idea but you’re trying to lead the entire damn thing. Just like you always have.”
“I do not do that and I resent even the accusation of it…” I muttered under my breath but the man just ignored me.
“If you two really want this to work, Callaghan, you’re going to have to change that stubborn ass mindset of yours and let Artie lead. You watch him and sync with his movements because half the damn time he can’t see what you’re doing.”
I hated to admit it… but he was right. Glancing over at Artie, I found that his shoulders had sunk again. The omega was obviously despondent over our clear lack of progress.
On our own, we were great skaters, but together it was like we were learning how to do it all over again from scratch.
Eli looked between the two of us before sighing. “Ice practice is done for the day.”
“What? But we’ve still got another hour!” I protested, loathe to give up the ice any earlier than we had to.
“You may have another hour but you two are going to sit your happy asses down on this bench and actually get to know each other,” Eli said, pointing at the bench behind him.
Artie frowned. “And how are we supposed to do that?”
Eli looked as if he was about to start yelling, but he finally sucked in a calming breath before throwing his hands up in the air.
“I don’t know! However the hell you young people get to know each other these days. Play fifty questions for all I care, but if I come back in fifteen minutes and you aren’t engrossed in deep, meaningful conversation then I’m going to bar you from the ice for the rest of the week!”
With that the man turned and ducked out of the doors to the lobby, leaving Artie and me alone.
I wasn’t very good at “getting to know” people. My track record with anyone outside of my family was… not good.
Glancing over at Artie, I realized that he seemed to be having the same problem as me.
With a sigh, I skated to the edge of the ice and put my skate guards on before wobbling over to the bench and flopping down.
“So,” I began, searching my mind for a question—any question—to ask. “Do you have a favorite color?”
Artie stood, frowning at me, and for a moment I was scared he was going to refuse to answer entirely. Then he humored me.
Once he’d settled in next to me, he untied his skates and popped them off. “I like the color blue. My mum does too—painted nearly every wall in the house some shade of it. You?”
“Green.” I answered, not elaborating because as soon as I said it a certain alpha’s green eyes popped into my head.
The corner of Artie’s mouth pulled up into a half-smile, like he could read my mind and he knew that my thoughts had strayed to his packmate the way they often did these days.
“What’s your favorite food?” I hurried to ask before he could say anything else.
We went back and forth like that for who knows how long until I knew what his favorite food was, where’d he’d gone to university, how he’d gotten into figure skating. He knew about what I liked to the extent that no one outside of my family knew.
The questions and answers were easier now and I found myself laughing at him as he told me a story about something Enzo had done that sounded nothing like the surly, frowning alpha.
“He just doesn’t look like the type to pull pranks,” I told him honestly.
Artie’s easy grin faded. “He wasn’t always the alphahole that’s been rearing its ugly head these days. When we first met he was so fun. Everyone always knew it would be a good time if Enzo showed up and while we Brits rag on Americans, we do love to party with them.”
“And he’s changed because of your…?” I gestured to my own eyes.
The omega nodded, his cloudy blue eyes slanting away from me as his lips came together into a tight line. “It was like life poured a bucket of ice water on him that day. He threw himself into protecting me and all he saw were potential dangers—even when my eyesight was better than it is now.”
“He fought tooth and nail to get to the top of the guide dog list to get Charm and even used some of his inheritance from his nonna to pay for her,” Artie continued, picking at the zipper of the athletic jacket he was wearing.
Nibbling on my lower lip, I finally voiced what I’d been thinking since meeting Artie and seeing the dynamics their pack had. “Enzo can’t roll you up in bubble wrap and keep you inside forever—that’s no life to live.”
It made me claustrophobic just to think about it, but then again, my own habit was to run away when the walls felt like they were closing in on me.
“Don’t I know it.” Artie’s chuckle was dry as he shook himself and straightened. “So, now that I’ve told you something deep about me, it’s your turn.”
There were so many things I wanted to do other than tell him something more intimate about myself. Then I remembered the whole point of this exercise—the reason why Eli had kicked us off of the ice for the day—was to build the relationship between Artie and me.
Paired skating took trust. A fact that I had neglected to think about when I brought it up that day when Enzo dragged me into their apartment.
And trust was… definitely not one of my strong suits.
Why does it matter? A voice whispered in my mind. Just give him something surface level, just like you’ve been doing.
I opened my mouth to tell him a silly story about my adolescence in Minnesota—when everything got marginally better for me—but instead of that I blurted: “My da was a drunk and my mam left me with him for six months and when she did come back for me she died in a car accident.”
The words tumbled out of me in a confused jumble, blending together into almost one long word as I sucked in a deep, steadying breath once I’d finally gotten them all out.
Then they were immediately followed with: “Don’t tell Leith or Enzo about that.”
I couldn’t look at him. My face burned at the admission—one that I rarely ever told anyone outside of the members of my family.
Silence hung in between us, long and heavy, until I felt him slip his hand in mine.
We’d held hands often since starting our paired skate practice, but that always felt perfunctory—almost clinical in nature as we moved through the motions of the choreography.
But now the places where our fingers touched warmed inexplicably. Comfort radiated off of the omega as we sat together, the silence not so awful anymore as I eventually gathered enough courage to finally look over at him.
Artie’s eyes were already on me and I found them to be soft. I always worried that if I told people about my past that they would look at me with pity in their eyes.
All of the doctors and nurses had when I woke up in the hospital after the accident and it was the way that all of the adults in the incredibly small town in Minnesota that the dads brought me to looked at me as well.
But Artie’s smile, while empathetic, held no note of that teeth-gnashing, skin-grating, awful stare that grown adults used to give me when they learned about how my mam had died.
“You never told Leith about it? In the three months you were together?” he asked, giving my fingers a gentle, encouraging squeeze.
“How much of that has he told you about?”
Because I had told Leith about it—at least the annotated version of it.
It was a bit hard not to when there had been a handful of nights when I woke up screaming. Instead of riding through the aftershocks of the nightmare on my own, he’d caressed and cuddled me, whispering sweet nothings while I babbled incoherently about the accident and how alone I felt.
Artie shrugged, and as if sensing the shift in my mood, he scooted in closer until our legs pressed against one another, thigh-to-thigh, knee-to-knee, and calf-to-calf.
I’d been soothed by an omega before—by Aurelia more times than I could count. She’d been the one, after all, that had cradled me close at night and kept the nightmares at bay when I was little. Aurelia was an older sister and a second mother all wrapped up in one. No one in our family would have survived without her after the accident, and no one had to grow up as fast as she had.
Her touches had always been soft and maternal, making me feel drowsy as if I was about to fall asleep.
But this felt different. The combination of his closeness and the tart of his citrus scent made each one of my tense limbs practically melt at his touch as he answered my question. “Just the basics. Whatever we could pull out of him. The man was a mess for the first couple of months after we met.”
Guilt coiled low in my belly, but Artie’s words weren’t an accusation, but a fact. I had hurt Leith four years ago, if not by leaving him asleep in my hotel room with just a note, then by not being honest about my panic over the feelings I felt for him.
“I don’t talk about my Mam much and I talk about my Da even less. Sometimes I wish I could forget everything about that time and just start when Maxim and Alexei Peterson brought me to Minnesota to live with them,” I told him honestly, thinking of Brynn’s head injury that had stolen parts of her memory for almost a year. “Sorry, that’s probably more than you want to hear from me…”
After my hasty apology, Artie was quiet for a moment and I watched his nose scrunch with what I was now recognizing as indecision before he spoke again. “Sometimes I wish that my eyesight would just hurry up and go away.”
Sucking in a lungful of his scent, I found it to be tinged with a sour note, like the smell of unripened oranges pulled off the tree too soon. “Why?”
The omega’s shrug was limp, as if someone had tied strings to the tops of his shoulders and suddenly jerked them up before letting them drop almost immediately. “Then it will just be over and done with and we can move on with learning how to deal with it. Wouldn’t it be easier on everyone if they stopped fighting so hard to fight against a disease that doesn’t have a cure?”
“But it can be slowed down, right?” After Enzo had scolded me about offering to coach him, I’d done some research on Artie’s condition. It usually took patients with open-angle glaucoma ten to fifteen years to completely lose their eyesight, but the way that his alphas spoke about it made me think Artie’s was progressing much more quickly than that.
Artie nodded. “With a surgery at the end of the summer—but even that isn’t guaranteed.”
“How much can you actually see?” I asked, my curiosity finally getting the better of me and I hurried to apologize for the slip of the tongue. “Sorry, apparently I left my filter at home today.”
Artie’s lips pulled up into a smirk. “It’s all right, frankly I’m surprised you managed to wait this long. Most people don’t.”
His hand slid out of mine and lifted to touch my face, the pad of his thumb brushing along the edge of my lips.
My heart hammered in my chest so loudly that I was sure the omega could hear it because his smile widened even more.
“The edges of my vision are black—sort of like looking down a dark tunnel—and the center is blurry but not enough for me to not be able to see your features. I can see the outline of your lips and eyes and tell the color too for now.” He huffed a little laugh before: “Though if you ask me to look at a mole for cancer for you, I’m afraid I’d be at a loss.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told him and damn if a tiny little giggle didn’t slip from between the lips he was still currently touching.
“I am glad I met you before it went away completely though. It helps to be able to see what Leith means when he says you’re one of the most gorgeous women he’s ever met.”
And just like that, the intimacy of the moment cracked and reality came crashing right back down. The omega in front of me was a part of a bonded pack—and with that came commitment and that terrified me most of all.
I’d played fast and loose with Leith’s feelings once, and I wasn’t sure anything was really any different now than it had been four years ago.
Gently pulling his hand away from my face, I gave it a squeeze of my own before I scooted away from him. My inner alpha protested almost immediately, telling me that I was an idiot for not touching him anymore.
“I have to shower and head out,” I murmured, watching his expression fall.
“Already?”
I nodded. “I… I have a date tonight.”
It felt a little bit wrong to use my date with Wiz like a barrier, but it worked because Artie’s own face shuttered closed and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling.
“I see,” he said, reaching down to pick up his skates. “Same time tomorrow then?”
His attitude was polite and professional. It almost hurt my feelings to see even though it was completely my fault.
“Same time tomorrow,” I promised softly and watched as he whistled for Charm, who had been snoozing right behind us for the duration of our conversation.
I waited until he was gone before finally untying my own skates and shoving them into my bag, ignoring the nagging feeling that I’d made a mistake and was mucking all of this up.
“It was the right thing to do, Ciara,” I muttered to myself as I shouldered my duffel and headed for the door.
It had been right to put a bit of space between myself and Artie when it was clear he was interested in me. If his words and actions didn’t tell me that, the bloom of his orange perfume most definitely did.
A biological scent match, I’d realized pretty early on when interacting with the omega.
Every single alpha-prep class I took in high school told me that they were rare, and yet it seemed that they were all coming out of the woodwork and running headlong in my direction.
“It was the right thing to do,” I repeated, not even believing myself this time.
“Oh my god!” I gasped, staring up at the marquee with an open mouthed awe. “How did you even manage to get these tickets?”
Wiz grinned at me, clearly pleased with himself as he shoved his hands into the pockets of the leather jacket he was wearing.
I’d spent the rest of the afternoon after practice with Artie in a bundle of nerves, pacing the apartment until Penelope finally called for backup.
I hadn’t told Brynn or Aurelia about agreeing to a date with Wiz and no one had been more surprised than them when I blurted it out like an absolute loon while crossing from the front door to the sliding glass door on the other end of the living room.
“You’re full of surprises these days,” Brynn had said as she watched me, a strange smile on her face.
“Why’re you looking at me like that?” I snapped, suddenly feeling like I should call and cancel the whole thing.
Brynn shrugged, that damn smile still on her face. “I don’t know, Ceer, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous for a date before—hell—I don’t think you’ve ever actually gone on one before.”
“That’s not true, she went to prom with Bobby Wexler in high school,” Aurelia pointed out, always ready to defend my honor.
It devolved into a mess of chatter after that as they began pulling clothes out of my closet and prepared me for what I was afraid was my first real official date in my entire life.
Gods, that sounded pathetic.
Even with Leith we never went outside of our rooms because I was terrified of people seeing us and thinking that there was more to us than just friends with benefits… and there most definitely was more than just that when it came to Leith and me.
I could admit that now even if I hadn’t wanted to at the time.
After watching my mam live the way she did, always making excuses for Da when he came home drunk and threw things or pushed her, I always swore I would never put myself in that position.
And yet here I was about to walk hand-in-hand with a very handsome man to see one of my favorite musicals ever.
“My cousin works for the theater,” Wiz told me as we waited in line at the box office. “He managed to get great seats since it’s a weekday.”
As he spoke, a massive blonde man came barreling our direction, swooping Wiz right off of his feet. “Jason! You made it!”
The bear of a man swung my date around in a circle and Wiz laughed the entire time until he was placed firmly back on his feet again.
Looking at the two of them… I wasn’t sure where the family resemblance was, but there was definitely affection between the two as they turned to face me.
“Ciara, this is my cousin Frank McDonald, Frankie, this is Ciara Callaghan, the girl I was telling you about.”
I held my hand out to him and the man’s paws enveloped mine as he gave it a gentle shake and I could tell that, despite his massive size, the man was the gentlest of giants.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. When Jason called me about tickets I thought I was hearing things. He almost never takes girls out on—”
“Okay!” Wiz cut in, pulling my hand from his cousin’s. “Frankie, can we maybe get through introductions without you embarrassing me?”
Frankie shot him a sheepish grin before pulling a pair of tickets out of his checkered shirt pocket. “Sorry, enjoy the show. Jase, you should definitely bring her for family dinner. You know the aunts would lose their minds.”
“I’ll think about it. Thank you for doing this, Frankie,” Wiz said and together we waved as the giant man ducked back inside and disappeared from our view completely.
“He’s…” I began searching for the right word.
Wiz grinned. “A lot? Crazy? Large?”
I returned his grin and shrugged. “All of the above?”
Wiz led us inside, making a beeline for concessions as people milled around the lobby waiting for the doors to the theater to open.
“Why does he call you Jason?” I asked after we’d collected more food than I was sure either of us could eat. Buttered popcorn, a pretzel with cheese, nachos, two drinks, and a box of Mike amp; Ikes were piled onto the plastic tray that I was sure was going to collapse under the weight as I carried the drinks.
“My parents are from two different cultures. My mom is American, born and raised just outside of Seattle, and my dad is Korean but moved here to be with her,” Wiz explained as we passed through the now open doors and into the dimly lit theater to find our seats. “When I was born they wanted me to have a Korean name and an American name, so Jae-Sun and Jason are pretty interchangeable in our family.”
I chewed on the information as we settled into our seats, our shoulders brushing together. “It doesn’t bother you?”
Wiz shook his head. “It might bug some people, but I like it. My mom has a huge family. She’s the youngest of six siblings and because of that I have fifteen more cousins just like Frankie that all live in Washington.”
“Fifteen?” I couldn’t even fathom having that many cousins.
My mam had been an only child and my da never spoke with his sister, so life had been lonely without many other children to play with until I met Brynn and Aurelia.
With a shake of my head, I snagged some popcorn out of the bowl. “Did you ever know any peace?”
“Absolutely zero peace,” Wiz said around a mouthful of pretzel. “But it’s always a lot of fun. Now that I’m back I’m able to go to the weekly family dinners for the first time since I was in college—and I’d love to bring you so you can witness the craziness of the McDonald clan.”
I nearly opened my mouth to agree, and then reminded myself that this was one date so that he would stop asking. There wouldn’t be more after this.
Thankfully, a voice came over the loudspeaker announcing that the show would be starting shortly, instructing the audience to silence their phones, cease conversation, and enjoy the show.