Chapter 17 Nicholas
Nicholas
Wilson’s mouth tastes like salt and cinnamon. I’m still at the bar, palm flat against the scar on his neck, his fingers tangled in my shirt, when a low laugh cuts through the dark behind us.
“If I leave you two down here, you’ll find a way to sleep down here and then someone’s going to find you passed out on the bar at six AM. I’m not explaining that to the delivery crew.”
Lorenzo’s leaning in the office doorway, dressed in only a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. His eyes flick from Wilson’s face to my hand on his neck to the tear tracks drying on our cheeks, and the corner of his mouth quirks.
Wilson pulls back, his grip on my shirt loosening as he straightens his collar and wipes his face with the back of his wrist. “We were just—”
“I know what you were just.” Lorenzo chuckles as he pushes off the doorframe. “Upstairs. Both of you.”
“I can head out.” My throat feels thick, my lips still tasting Wilson on them.
Lorenzo arches an eyebrow. “Did I say head out?”
“No.”
“Then I didn’t mean head out.” He nods toward the stairs. “Move, Alpha.”
Wilson exhales beside me, starts to argue, but when Lorenzo’s shoulders square and his jaw sets, Wilson’s spine follows suit. His body answers Lorenzo’s command before his brain does.
I’m stepping toward the stairs before I even notice. Heat trails me up the steps as Wilson slides in beside me, his coffee-and-leather scent drifting through every breath. The apartment is warm and lived-in. Lorenzo clicks the door shut and the lock clicks into place.
A muffled whine drifts from the bedroom. “Zo? Why is everyone in the hallway and not in here with me?”
Oliver’s voice is thick with sleep, the Omega letting out a second whine that is most definitely a demand. I glance at Wilson as the corner of his mouth twitches upward.
“You’re laughing,” I whisper.
“I’m not.”
“Your face is.”
“My face is doing nothing.”
Lorenzo’s hand lands on Wilson’s lower back, steering him toward the guest room, and I feel the shift behind me. “Oliver will absorb both of you into the nest and none of us will sleep. Guest room.” His gaze finds mine over Wilson’s shoulder. “Nicholas.”
My name carries permission in it. Trust. I nod once, and Lorenzo turns back down the hall where Oliver’s whining has escalated into a full dramatic monologue about abandonment and cold feet and the injustice of an empty nest.
Wilson’s laugh is quiet enough that I almost miss it.
It does something to my chest that five years of aching couldn’t have prepared me for.
I take in the simplicity of the guest room: a bed with clean sheets, a nightstand, a window with the curtains drawn.
Extra blankets are folded at the foot of the bed, and the pillow smells faintly of Oliver’s sweetness.
Wilson stands in the doorway with his arms crossed, his weight on his back foot.
“You don’t have to stay in here with me.” His voice is flat, in that protective register. “I can… There’s the couch downstairs. Or the nest, Oliver would—”
“Will.” He stops himself. “Get in the bed.” His arms uncross. He moves past me and sits on the edge of the mattress, his hands braced on either side of his thighs. The lamp throws his face into warm light, the shadows under his eyes darker than they were an hour ago.
I hang my jacket on the chair, kick my shoes off by the door, and set my watch on the nightstand. Wilson tracks each motion with the careful focus of someone memorizing changes in a room, and I slow down to give him time with each one.
The mattress dips when I settle beside him, his breath hitching slightly.
“Fuck, relax. Will, lie down.” He lies back, his body rigid against the pillows, shoulders pressed into the mattress, his hands fisted at his sides. I move close enough that the warmth of me reaches his arm but I don’t push, knowing that he needs to adjust.
That even if my presence is helping him relax, dragging him into my arms after the confession downstairs won’t help anything.
A minute passes. Wilson’s breathing shallows, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then his body rolls toward me. His forehead presses against my chest and his hand finds the front of my shirt.
I wrap my arm around his shoulders, smiling as the tension in his body eases in increments, his forehead pressing harder into my chest, his breathing deepening. His grip on my shirt loosens until his hand just rests there, fingers curled in the fabric.
And then his scent starts to soften, the bitter edge fading into something warmer beneath. I feel the exact moment sleep claims him, his body growing heavy against mine, his mouth parting slightly against my shirt.
Twenty minutes later, his hand tightens around my collar, the fabric tightening around my neck. His body goes rigid as his breathing kicks up, Wilson’s face contorting as if he’s fighting something in his sleep. And then a low, fractured sound pushes through his teeth.
His head twists against my chest. His arm swings out and strikes the mattress. His legs draw up, his body curling in on itself, and the sounds from his throat grow louder, half-formed words I can’t make out.
“Will.” I move my hand to his shoulder. “Wilson, wake up.”
His eyes fly open, his pupils blown, irises dissolve into nearly nothing. His gaze darts around the room, scanning the ceiling, the lamp, the window, the door, cataloguing exits before he’s fully conscious.
Then he sees me, and his whole body shudders.
“Nico.” His voice scrapes against his throat.
“Right here, baby. Right here.”
He grabs the front of my shirt with both fists, pressing his face further into my chest, breathing ragged against the fabric. The trembling starts in his hands, moving through his arms and shoulders, until his whole frame is vibrating against mine.
“Can you—” His voice catches in his throat and then he swallows before trying again. “Can you lay on me? Your full weight. Just block everything out.”
I shift over him carefully, settling my body on top of his, distributing my weight across his chest, hips, and thighs. I brace my forearms on either side of his head, and his hands find my elbows, pushing them flat.
“All of it.” His voice is muffled against my collarbone. “I need all of it.”
I flatten my arms, pressing my full weight into Wilson and pinning him to the mattress.
His hands slip free of my shirt and curl around my back, fingers digging into the muscles along my spine to hold me there.
I feel his breathing slow, each exhale pushing tension from his body, his muscles relaxing beneath me.
His grip loosens, one finger at a time, until his hands are simply resting on my back.
He buries his face into my collarbone, his nose pressed into the hollow of my throat.
Minutes pass. His trembling stops. His breaths come steady against my neck.
His body softens again but I keep my weight where it is.
All I hear is his breathing and the distant hum of the building settling around us.
When he finally speaks, his voice is soft, murmured against my throat like a thought surfacing from the dark place his dream dragged him through. “Your jokes were so bad.” I rest my chin on the top of his head and let the words settle between our breaths.
“What?”
“At the barbecue. That first one about the penguin and the bartender.” His mouth moves against my collarbone with every word, each a warm press of air.
“I wanted to leave. I was sitting on my cooler, wishing I was anywhere else, then you sat down with that stupid grin and those massive glasses and told the worst joke I’ve ever heard. ”
I have no idea why Wilson is bringing this up but if it helps him calm to walk down memory lane, I will do it in a heartbeat. “It was pretty bad,” I admit.
“It was criminal. You should have been arrested.” He traces a slow, absent line along the muscle between my shoulder blades.
“I couldn’t figure out why you kept talking to me.
Everyone else at that party was smiling and laughing and being normal, and there I was with my arms crossed looking like I wanted to set the backyard on fire. ”
“You did look like that.”
“So why me?” His question is so quiet I feel it more than hear it. “There were so many people there who weren’t—” His hand stills on my back and the sentence dissolves.
“You told me the truth.” I turn my head so my mouth hovers near his ear.
“Everyone else laughed at the penguin joke because that’s what you do at a party when someone tells a joke.
You looked me in the face and said, ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,’ then you took my beer out of my hand and drank half of it. ”
“You offered it,” he says softly.
“After you stole it.”
His chest hitches against mine. “You could’ve been talking to anyone.”
“I did talk to other people for about ten minutes. Then you sat on the cooler next to mine, crossed your arms, and glared at the grill like it had personally wronged you, and I thought—” My thumb finds his ear, tracing its curve.
“I thought if I could make you laugh, really laugh, that sound would be worth more than anything else that happened to me that year.”
He tilts his chin up, his eyes rimmed red in the dim light, his face carrying the raw openness that only surfaces when sleep and fear and the weight of another person have stripped him bare.
“You choked on your beer,” I remind him. “You snorted half of it through your nose. Your eyes watered. It was the best sound I’d ever heard.”
“I didn’t snort.”
“You absolutely snorted.”
“That was just the carbonation.”
A soft laugh meets my bare skin as Wilson tugs me closer.
God, I would give anything to this man. “Will, I was there. You snorted. Beer came out of your nose. You wiped it on your sleeve and then stole the rest of my drink and told me to try again with a better joke. So I did. And the next one was worse. And you laughed harder.”
He lifts his hands from my back to cup my face, my fingers mirroring that same path along his jaw. His thumb brushes across my lower lip, the heat between us tightening.
“I sat down on that cooler because you were wearing glasses that were three sizes too big,” He murmurs. “You looked ridiculous. And you were smiling at everyone like you actually meant it. I’d never met anyone who smiled at strangers like they mattered.”
I tilt my head up. “I got better glasses.”
Wilson shakes his head, stifling a smile as best he can and failing. “The new ones are worse.”
“How are they worse? They actually fit.”
"They make you look like a professor," he says, tracing my lip more slowly this time. "Like you're about to explain something I didn't ask about and somehow make it interesting."
I let out a soft laugh. "Is that bad?"
He searches my eyes. "No, Nico. It's not bad."
His thumb stills on my lip as he presses his cheek into my palm.
Then my voice drops to a whisper. "Will, I need to tell you something.
When Sebastian took you from me, I tried to convince myself that what I felt didn't matter.
That you were happy. That I was supposed to step back and let you live the life you chose.
But I never stopped building a life that had space for you in it.
Every apartment I rented, I looked for two bedrooms. Every plan I made, I left room.
Five years of leaving room for someone who didn't know the door was open. "
I hold his gaze, my fingers pressing gently against his jaw. His mouth opens, and the breath that comes out shakes a little. "I didn't know." His voice cracks. "Nico, I didn't know you were—"
"I know you didn't. I never told you. I never gave you any way to know, because I was too busy being patient and careful and respectful and every other word for coward that sounds better in a sentence."
His hand slides from my face into my hair, fingers gripping the curls at the back of my head.
"You're not a coward." He spits the words out and somehow it feels like those words are for the both of us.
"You're the least cowardly person I know.
Sebastian would have—he would've just taken.
He would've shown up, forced it, and called it love.
You waited. For five fucking years you waited, because you wanted me to choose.
" His grip tightens in my hair. "That's not cowardice.
That's the bravest thing anyone has ever done for me. "
I try to make a sound, but my throat closes around it. His face so close that his breath warms my mouth, every defense stripped, every wall flattened by my weight on his and the dark around us and the hours since that first kiss at the bar.
"I choose you." His whisper barely stirs the air between us.
"I don't know what that looks like yet, and I can't promise I won't fuck it up every other day, but I choose you, Nicholas.
I chose you on that cooler, and I chose you every time you were in Sebastian's bed, and I chose you the morning I got his teeth ripped out of my neck, and I'm choosing you now. "
I drop my forehead against his. A raw sound rips from my chest, pulled from somewhere beneath my ribs that I've kept locked for five years. His hand tightens in my hair; his other hand finds my face, both palms pressing my cheeks, holding me steady as the tremor runs through me.
"Will—"
"I know." I feel his thumbs gather my tears before they slip down to my jaw. "I know, Nico."
I lean in, our mouths meeting in a slow, salt-soaked kiss.
His tears mingle with mine on our lips as he threads a hand through my hair, fingers carding through the curls while I deepen the kiss.
I settle my weight fully onto him, pinning him to the mattress, and he arches up into me with a sigh that I taste on my tongue.
"Nico…" His voice is fading. "I need to tell you about—when I asked Sebastian—there's something you don't—"
His hand slips from my hair to my shoulder and then goes slack. His breath evens into a slow, steady rhythm, his chest rising and falling beneath me as sleep claims him. His mouth parts, lips still grazing mine. A snore rumbles up from his chest, vibrating against my chest.
I rest my forehead on the pillow beside his head, a sound bubbling up inside me, something between a laugh and a sob, released at last. Sliding an arm under his shoulders, I shift my weight so he can breathe, then press my lips to his temple.