Chapter 23 Wilson
Wilson
The article remains open on my phone as I enter my apartment, a place I haven't inhabited for three weeks. I made it all but five minutes in the guest bedroom before I needed air, grabbed my coat, and started wandering the streets before ending up here.
When I push against it, the door resists before surrendering with a familiar grind of metal on wood. Dust hangs in the hallway air, mingling with the lingering scent of coffee from that last time I was here, grounds still sitting in the filter because I departed quickly and never returned.
Above me, the overhead light stutters twice before steadying itself. Everything waits exactly as I abandoned it, dishes in the sink, mail piled on the counter, and bed unmade. A man's shelter, not his sanctuary.
After securing the lock, my hands move through their ritual.
Each window latch clicks beneath my fingers.
My eyes catalog the escape routes: front door with its stubborn deadbolt, fire escape lurking beyond the bedroom window, bathroom ledge I once measured during a sleepless night when panic clawed at my throat.
Three exits should provide reassurance. They do not.
Heat radiates from my phone screen where I’ve kept it lit, the headline still staring back at me.
My name appears beside Hearthstone's like partners in crime, while "complicit" lurks in the second paragraph.
Between leaving Nicholas' embrace at the club and walking twelve blocks through the night, I've read those words repeatedly.
In the locked bathroom stall. On street corners beneath flickering lamps.
With each reading, I feel just a bit worse.
My presence endangers everything. This article with Wilson Ashford's name will contaminate Nicholas' investment and Lorenzo's legal strategy against Voss. Though they aimed this attack at me specifically, standing within Vice & Virtue means everyone I care about remains vulnerable to the fallout.
Cold seeps through the sheets when I lie down, carrying only detergent and my stale scent of coffee and leather.
The warmth Oliver and Lorenzo and Nicholas have been layering into their bed and Oliver’s nest for weeks is nowhere to be found.
The loss of their scents just makes all of this worse, exhaustion threatening to claim me.
“I can’t do this to them,” I whisper into the air as I trace the scar on my neck. Each ridge beneath my fingertip reminds me how Sebastian's ghost reaches across time to rearrange my life even now.
He was the reason I even started working at Hearthstone before I figured out what that place was.
Had I not been so blinded by what I thought was love, I wouldn’t be here.
But then, I also wouldn’t have saved Luca, that beautiful determined Omega.
I would have never wandered into Vice & Virtue and I would have never reconnected with Nicholas.
Grimacing at all of the possibilities, none of them seeming to work, I try to sleep instead. I know I should text at least Lorenzo where I am, but I need a moment. Just one and then I’ll go back and explain everything in my head. Maybe two moments.
A knock on my door wakes me up, confusion running through me as I realize I fell asleep.
I struggle to sit up, fumbling around for my phone only to find it dead.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. I was just going to sit here for a little while and then go back and curl up with Nicholas or Lorenzo and Oliver or let someone fuck this chaos out of my head.
The knock comes again, this time more urgent.
When a sweet smell filters through my door, I just shake my head.
Of course, Oliver would have found out where I lived.
I shuffle off the bed and unlock the door before returning to the mattress, not particularly wanting to get jumped by the Omega I definitely shouldn’t have kept hanging.
“It’s open.”
Oliver steps inside wearing Lorenzo’s hoodie and yesterday’s jeans, one side of his hair flat from sleep. He surveys my apartment without a word, his gaze sweeping the room the way mine does, except he isn’t counting exits. He’s counting how long I’ve been gone.
He doesn’t shout. He crosses the floor and sits beside my bed, back against the nightstand, legs stretched out before him as his scent fills the space between us, pushing back the dust and stale air.
“I would like you to listen to me before you say anything, okay?” Oliver states as he pulls my hand into his lap. “I’m sure you had your reasons. Hell, when everything gets too loud, I duck into my nests. I get it.”
I sit up a little, Oliver moving to crawl into my lap. “Oliver, I didn’t run. I promise. I was just going to—”
He smiles up at me, placing a kiss at the edge of my jaw. “I know. If you had run, you wouldn’t be at the one place we could find you. Wilson, I can see it in your eyes that you think this changes things.”
“It does!” I try to slide from under Oliver but he just twists around to straddle my lap, rolling his hips once before settling. My eyes roll into the back of my head before I grip his hips to keep him still.
“It changes nothing. We told you when we first met you that it didn’t matter, remember?
Wilson, you don’t get to decide for us. You don’t get to decide who we’re allowed to want or who we’re allowed to love.
” Those deep blues meet mine as he reaches up to cup my face.
“Wilson, you don’t get to choose whether or not this would ruin us or break us if you stayed because I’ll tell you this.
If you left? That would break us. That would break me. ”
I wasn’t planning on leaving but every word out of Oliver’s mouth hurts so much more now that it’s been voiced. “The article—”
“I read it. Lorenzo read it. Nicholas’ attorney is already tearing it apart.” Oliver’s hand slides into mine at the edge of the mattress, his fingers weaving through mine. “Your name in a publication doesn’t scare us. What scares me is waking up to find your side of the bed cold.”
My jaw clenches so hard it aches. “If I stay, the article follows me through that door. Every case Nicholas built, every filing, every dollar—”
“All of it belongs to us, not you alone. You don’t have to carry those numbers by yourself.” He squeezes my hand. “Come home.”
I press my free hand to my eyes and finally let the pressure behind them shatter.
Oliver stays right there, silently kissing me as I fall apart against him.
Come home. I hadn’t even noticed I had been treating the club as my home.
It had been weeks since I could remember sleeping without someone in the next bedroom or in my bed.
When I’ve settled, Oliver crawls off my lap and pushes to his feet.
He takes another look around the apartment before pulling me toward the door.
“Get rid of this place. It stopped being your home weeks ago and you know it. I’m giving the key to Lorenzo.
” Oliver frowns as he looks around again before putting his hand out.
It takes me an embarrassingly long few seconds to realize he’s asking for the key.
“He’ll handle ending the lease. Then you’ll come upstairs, eat breakfast, and let Nicholas try to make you coffee.
He can’t operate our espresso machine to save his life, but you’ll let him try. ”
My mind is still a whirlwind of thoughts by the time we make it up to the apartment, Nicholas dragging me into his arms before pointing at the kitchen table. “Welcome home,” he says. “Your lease termination paperwork is on the desk.”
I snort, too tired to ask why they had everything ready but it feels nice that their first reaction was to show how much they cared. Lorenzo calls me to come for breakfast after washing up but I don’t even make it that far before collapsing onto the mattress in the guest bedroom.
It smells like Nicholas. My Alpha. And that’s all it takes to pull me under.