Chapter 16 Wilson
Wilson
He brought cinnamon rolls again. The box is sitting on the bar when I come downstairs, white cardboard with a grease stain spreading across the bottom, the smell of sugar and butter cutting through last night’s lemon cleaner.
Third time this week. He doesn’t announce them.
Doesn’t wait for a thank you. Just leaves them on the bar before his shift and lets Oliver demolish half the box before I even get there.
I eat two standing at the counter while pretending to read the day’s schedule. Oliver catches me licking frosting off my thumb and grins so wide it fills his entire face.
“Shut up,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face is saying it.”
“My face is just happy, Wilson. It does that sometimes. You should try it.”
The third cinnamon roll gets wrapped in a napkin and shoved into my jacket pocket for later. Oliver tracks the motion with the satisfaction of a man who’s just won something he’s too smart to name.
Nicholas is everywhere now. At meetings with Lorenzo.
On the club floor during his security shifts.
Some mornings, he’s back at the bar with Lorenzo, going over legal filings while Oliver pours coffee into mugs labeled in paint pen.
Oliver’s says Angel Face. Lorenzo’s says Boss.
Mine says Grumpy. Nicholas’s is still blank. Oliver’s waiting for the right word.
The arbitration filing went through on Monday.
Nicholas’ attorney sent a letter to Voss that Lorenzo read aloud in the office while Oliver sat cross-legged on the desk.
The letter was almost surgical. Voss’ new rates are now frozen pending review.
The fabricated code violations are being challenged through a separate channel.
Nicholas sat in the corner during the reading, ankle crossed over one knee. When Oliver launched himself at Lorenzo for a hug, Nicholas caught my eye and the smile he gave me was so small it barely qualified. Private. Meant for just us.
And now, a whole twenty-fours after everything seems to be going well, I’m fraying at the edges again. Lorenzo and Oliver went to bed an hour ago after that late meeting with the county clerk. I stayed long enough to see Nicholas finish reviewing the property filings, before heading upstairs.
Everything else that follows is routine, right down to sliding beneath the covers and trying to pass out but sleep evades me. No matter how many flops and turns and different positions I try, I just… can’t.
My feet hit the floor before I even finish the thought. I descend the dark stairs into the club’s main room, aimlessly about to search for some kind of work to pick up to ease the unrest in my head. And then I clock the Alpha who shouldn’t still be here.
Nicholas is sitting at the far end of the bar, laptop closed and reading glasses folded on top. His sleeves are rolled, hands wrapped around a glass of water. He tilts his head back, staring at the ceiling, the line of his throat outlined by the exit sign’s red glow.
When he hears me, his head drops. His gaze finds me in the dark, and his face shifts in a way I can no longer ignore. “Hey,” he says softly. “Can’t sleep?”
I pull out the stool two seats away from him. "No." The metal feels cold beneath me. "You?"
Nicholas swirls the water in his glass before taking a sip. "Finished the filings. Was going to head out but the quiet is nice." He looks up at the ceiling. "It's a good building when it's empty. You can hear it breathe."
"That's the plumbing."
His laugh fills the empty room, rich and warm as it bounces off the dark walls. “Very romantic, Will."
"I'm not a romantic." My fingers trace an invisible pattern on the bar top.
"I know." His smile catches the dim light, softening the angles of his face. "You're a realist who eats cinnamon rolls when nobody's looking."
Heat creeps up my neck. "Oliver told you."
"Oliver tells me everything." Nicholas leans forward slightly. "It's one of his more alarming qualities."
My mouth twitches. I press my lips together, but Nicholas sees it anyway. His gaze lingers on my mouth, and his smile deepens in response.
Silence settles between us until my big mouth gets the better of me, using the nickname I used to have for him. "Nico." His hand goes still on the glass. "I don't understand how you can be here. After everything."
"After everything what?" His voice drops lower.
"After I chose your brother."
Nicholas sets down the glass carefully as he fully turns toward me, his knees angling in my direction. "Will, you didn't choose Sebastian."
"I let him claim me." The words taste bitter on my tongue.
"He told you what you wanted to hear." Nicholas speaks quietly, but intensity radiates from him.
"You were twenty-one and you wanted a pack and he made himself look like the answer.
" His voice remains level while his hands unfold in his lap, his fingers pressing hard against his knees.
"I watched it happen. I watched him say the exact right things in the exact right order and I watched you light up because you thought someone was finally offering you what you'd been looking for. "
My jaw aches from clenching so hard. "I could have said no."
He leans forward on his stool, elbows braced against his thighs. “To a claiming bite from an Alpha who’d spent weeks dismantling every reservation you had?” he asks. “Sebastian doesn’t give people choices. He gives them the illusion of choosing what he’s already decided.”
A sob catches in my throat as I start replaying some of the scenes with Sebastian. Nicholas isn’t wrong and I hate that. I hate that I thought I was making decisions and it was really just Sebastian being…
“When I found out about the bite removal, I—” He stops; I watch his Adam’s apple bob. “Sebastian called me drunk that night. Fuck, he was so mad about how you went behind his back.”
I breathe out, “I didn’t have any other options.”
He presses his lips into a thin line. “He called you property.” His voice flattens on the word. “That’s what he said. That his property had damaged itself.”
A cold metal taste floods my throat. I swallow against it, one hand drifting toward my collar as his expression shifts, something raw cracking through.
“I wanted to call you that night. I wanted to find you and make sure you were safe. And I didn’t, because I thought showing up would make me the same thing he was. Another Alpha pursuing someone who’d just gotten free.” His hands press harder against his knees. “So I waited.”
He meets my eyes. “For two years.”
“For two years. Hoping. Hating myself for hoping because you were healing somewhere and I was sitting in my apartment wanting something I—” He clears his throat.
“Something I convinced myself I had no right to want. Because every time Sebastian invited me into that bed, I told myself it was just physical for you. That I was reading into things that weren’t there. ”
I whisper, “You weren’t reading into things.”
He goes completely still on his stool. “What?” His voice is barely a sound.
“You weren’t reading into things, Nico. It wasn’t just physical for me. It was never just physical.”
His composure cracks. The steadiness he’s worn every moment I’ve known him all fractures across his face in real time. “Will.” My name comes out of him broken, the four letters carrying five years of ache. “Will, I thought—for years I thought—”
“I know what you thought.” My voice shakes as my whole body trembles, my hands vibrating against my knees. “You thought I chose Sebastian because I wanted him. You thought those nights were just sex. And I let you believe that because I—”
Air catches in my chest. The words are right there, crowding against the back of my teeth, pressing to get out. My throat burns with them.
“I asked Sebastian if—”
Nicholas goes perfectly still. “If?” he whispers.
“I asked him if you could—” My throat closes. The taste of copper floods my mouth. Sebastian’s face flares behind my eyes, warmth draining between breaths, that flat, dead look as he said he is not your Alpha. “I can’t. Fuck, I can’t get it out.”
He slides off his stool. In one step he crosses the distance between us, his hands finding my face, palms warm against my jaw.
His thumbs press against my cheekbones where tears are already spilling.
He’s close enough that his scent obliterates everything else—amber filling my lungs so completely there’s no room for Sebastian’s cold metal scent, no room for the copper taste, no room for anything except Nicholas Cavallero’s hands on my face in an empty club at 3 AM.
“You don’t have to finish it.” His voice comes out wrecked, thick with something I feel vibrating through his palms against my skin. “Will, you don’t have to say it.”
“I asked him if you could stay.” The words tear free in a gasp, ripping open the seal in my throat. “I asked him if we could be a pack, you and me and him. I wanted you to stay, and I told him, and he—”
Nico’s forehead drops against mine. A low, anguished sound leaves his chest, one I feel in my bones, five years in the making. His thumbs are still on my cheeks, catching my tears, and his breathing has gone ragged against my mouth.
“He said you were a guest.” My voice is barely functioning.
I split the words into fractured pieces between breaths.
“He said you weren’t my Alpha. He said I didn’t get to decide.
And everything got worse after that, Nico.
Everything got so much worse because he knew.
He knew I wanted you, and he made me pay for it every single day until I ripped his fucking teeth out of my neck. ”