Chapter 21
SPENCER
It was only a half-hour drive to Spencer’s destination, a pretty short distance considering he’d never been there before.
He used the time to try to calm his breathing, clenching and unclenching his fingers against the steering wheel as his air-conditioning worked full-time to cool the sweat off his brow.
Stupid. He’d been so stupid. He’d known Noah was pissed just from the tone of his texts, had known Noah would want nothing to do with him when he came by, and he’d put his foot in it anyway.
Spencer should have stayed with Ryder. The other alpha had tried to keep him in the kitchen, whispering in his low, rough voice that it was better to let the brothers duke it out first. But Spencer had just wanted—
Fuck, he didn’t know what he’d wanted. Too say sorry in person, probably, just the once. To reassure himself that Noah wouldn’t hate his guts forever. But Spencer had already been rubbed raw from giving all of himself to Ash’s heat, and the way Noah had spoken to him …
Spencer wiped at his eyes with a shaky hand. Stupid. He should have waited. Should have let Ryder calm him like he’d wanted with his deep, woodsy scent. Should have sat down with Ryder and Ash afterward and let the two of them finally lay things on the table.
Because Noah wasn’t the only person Spencer needed to talk to. Things had been said—or at the very least implied—about what Ash and Ryder might want from him. What they might want Spencer to be to them. And it was up to Spencer to be brave enough to buckle up and listen.
But he couldn’t really listen to anything with Noah’s, “I’m not fucking talking to you,” ringing in his ears. So Spencer had turned his phone off like a coward as soon as he’d gotten in his car, and now he was running to the one place he had left.
The Desert Dreams RV Resort was clean and spacious, a mix of mobile RVs and stationary cottage models with palm trees dotted throughout.
There was a pool near the entrance with little kids shrieking in the water, and a few older couples sitting under sun umbrellas watching what were presumably their grandchildren.
Fuck. Spencer would have killed to live here as a kid.
He pulled his car up to the site number he’d been sent this past summer to find one of the small cottages, about the size of an RV, painted off-white with a couple of potted cacti set out front.
There wouldn’t be any need to call or text or knock on the door. She was already sitting on the small front porch in a folding chair, her bare feet kicked up on the railing as she smoked what was probably one in a long chain of menthols.
Spencer got out his car and gave her a little wave. “Hiya, Mumsie.”
She didn’t look surprised to see him, just blew some smoke in the air with pursed pink lips. “Uh-oh. You drop out?”
“Nah. Just wanted a visit.”
Spencer’s mom squinted at him, small lines crinkling around her deep-blue eyes. She was an omega, short-statured and still beautiful in her way, with overtanned skin and bleached blond hair she kept in a long shag. “You look terrible,” she said after a moment. “Who’d you piss off?”
Spencer shrugged even as something in his chest twisted. “Everybody, I guess.”
His mom only nodded, like that was to be expected. Spencer climbed up the short steps and took a seat on the porch next to her, dropping his elbows to his knees. “This is a nice spot.”
His mom grunted her acknowledgment. “Got a decent bartending gig. Crazy tips, and the manager nips any bullshit in the bud.”
“That’s great, Mom.”
Spencer meant it. This was one of the better places she’d ever settled on her own, and he was proud of her for it.
Maybe she wasn’t the warmest mom around, but Spencer knew why she was the way she was.
She’d been a fierce, pretty omega, and she’d had a kid too young she’d had to raise by herself, and she’d reached out for help and love over and over again only to be disappointed just as many times.
And fuck if she hadn’t done the best she could to keep him safe and warm and fed, even if it hadn’t always worked out the way she’d planned.
Spencer had once told Chase he didn’t envy him his rich, shitty parents, and he’d meant that with his whole heart. He’d rather have love that was guarded than wonder if there was any love at all.
Spencer looked out into the distance. There was another cottage across the road, but their porch was on the other side, affording a little privacy. “Any terrible boyfriends lately?”
His mom let out a raspy laugh, scratching at her shin with her heel. “Nah. Got a regular wants to marry me, but I’m making him wait.” She shot him a sideways grin. “Trying something new.”’
Spencer nodded. He hoped she made him wait a long, long time. Long enough to see if he was really the type of person to stick around when he said he would. To be nice when he said he would. That alone would be better than any of her exes.
Speaking of.
“Do you ever …” Spencer cleared his throat. “Do you ever think maybe we drive people away?”
“We?” His mom dropped her legs down to the porch and swiveled to face him with a frown. “What’s this we shit? You think my relationships were your business?” She pointed her cigarette at him. “I like losers, that’s my problem, not yours.”
“But if you hadn’t had a kid …”
She barked a short laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Doesn’t make them any less losers. What kinda grown alpha can’t handle a kid? Even a loud one, always wanting something.”
“I annoy people,” Spencer argued. “In close quarters or whatever. I always have.”
“Good. People are assholes, they deserve to be annoyed.”
Spencer wanted to smile, it reminded him so much of something Ash might say, but he bit it back. “Sometimes I think I’m a bad person.”
His mom shook her head with a sigh and swung her legs back up on the railing. “I know bad people. You’re not it. You make stupid decisions sometimes, so what? You get that from me. There are worse crimes in the world.”
Something that had been wound tight in Spencer’s chest loosened, just a little.
This was what he’d come here for, wasn’t it?
A little slap back to reality. His mom was never going to tell him he was the best thing since rolled menthols—it just wasn’t in her nature.
But she was honest enough to remind him they weren’t radioactive just because no one had ever wanted to stick around before.
They just … made dumb choices sometimes.
Followed the wrong people. Spencer had done enough of that growing up, but he’d learned since then.
Choosing Chase and Noah had been one of the smartest things he’d ever done. And when it came to Ash and Ryder …
Well, that had the potential to be life-changing, didn’t it?
They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then his mom stubbed her cigarette out on the ashtray she’d set next to her chair and stood, stretching her back. “You want to come inside? I can make you a turkey and butter sandwich.”
“With white bread?” Spencer asked hopefully.
“You think I have any other kind of bread?”
Spencer followed her inside and leaned against the kitchen counter while she worked.
It wasn’t until she had all the ingredients laid out and had started on the second sandwich that he spoke again.
“I … started something. It was messy and weird but also … good.” Spencer thought of Ash’s fierce affection and Ryder’s soft touches and swallowed hard.
“Really, really good. And I guess I worry sometimes that reaching for something that good means I’m going to mess up and end up with nothing. ”
His mom slapped a slice of buttered bread onto the heap of turkey with a scowl. “Well, who the fuck taught you that? I thought you were seeing some therapist—they don’t have better advice than that? Reaching for bullshit is what leaves you with nothing. I thought you’d seen that enough with me.”
“I took a pause with the therapist.”
Spencer’s mom handed him the sandwich on its paper plate. “Maybe you should start up again, huh? Not my thing, but you seemed to get a kick out of it.”
She was probably right, wasn’t she? Spencer had felt like he was doing fine for a while now, coasting along with good friends and good fun and plenty of hot sex.
But this thing with Ash and Ryder was shifting things, coaxing Spencer to open up and allow for something special to happen.
And the truth was that there was some small, fearful piece of him that kept shutting back up tight again.
Because it had been a relief, in its way, to have an excuse not to tell Chase and Noah what was happening. Even feeling guilty as shit, it had meant Spencer didn’t have to acknowledge and name the fact that he was falling hard for two people that now had the ability to hurt him badly.
And wasn’t that a scary fucking thought.
Hours later, with their sandwiches finished and one and a half TV movies completed, Spencer’s mom told him she needed to run to the neighbors and “make sure they weren’t spreading any rumors about gentleman callers.”
Most likely she just wanted to have a beer and socialize in peace, but she didn’t ask Spencer to leave, so he told her to have fun and stayed where he was. When she was gone, he took a deep breath and turned on his phone.
He had missed calls from everyone that mattered: Ash and Ryder, Noah and Chase. Texts too. Spencer opened Ash’s text first.
Ash: Noah’s fine, I promise. We miss you. Come back.
The simplicity and the sweetness had Spencer’s throat constricting, but he didn’t see how Noah could actually be fine, so he moved on to Ryder’s, a simple and commanding,
Tell us where you are.
That would be smart—running away from Ash and Ryder and his two besties was probably one of those stupid choices Spencer’s mom had been talking about—but Spencer was too drained to be smart right now.