Chapter 12 #2
The only thing I could do was to keep things with Jack as quiet as humanly possible until the Tech Expo was over.
As I walked back to my office, I wrestled with myself over the idea of not texting or calling or contacting Jack at all for a week until the whole thing was over.
I hated the idea, but it might be safer for both of us.
“Um, you’ve got someone waiting for you in Meeting Room Two,” Steve, one of my coworkers, told me as soon as I stepped into the office.
I paused before I’d gone all the way to my desk and blinked at him. “Someone waiting for me in Meeting Room Two?”
Had Jack somehow beat me to the hotel or come in when I’d been talking to Amelia?
I rejected my first thought immediately as I turned and walked out of the office, then down the hall to the meeting rooms. My second thought was that Salisbury had lingered around the office to threaten me personally.
But Amelia would have known about that, and Steve probably would have known who he was.
As soon as I turned the corner and stepped into the meeting room, I nearly threw up.
“Hey, Quincy,” Chester said, turning away from where he’d been gazing out the window at the ocean.
My sever burned like fire all over again.
Which was weird. Earlier, I’d felt something from the stump of our bond before I’d seen Chester.
That’s what the prickling, horrible feeling I’d had even before I’d come down from the office onto the ground floor was, I was sure.
It was totally unsettling that I hadn’t guessed Chester was in the room before I saw him.
Now that I was face to face with him, my inner omega screamed.
“What do you want?” I snapped, ready to turn and run.
“Not even a hello?” Chester asked, taking a few steps away from the window.
I was deeply relieved there was an entire conference room table between us. I didn’t want Chester to come anywhere near me. My omega was instantly hysterical, and the old bond demanded my attention like it never had before.
“What do you want?” I repeated, moving to the opposite side when Chester continued around the table.
Chester sighed and stopped. He had his hands in his pockets, and his whole body was tense.
I had the fleeting feeling that he didn’t want to be around me any more than I wanted to be around him, which was odd.
Odd because I had a sense of what he felt still, even though our bond had been severed years ago, and odd because he had no reason to be there if he didn’t want to be.
“I mostly just wanted to see if you were alright,” Chester said, standing a little straighter and rolling his shoulders. “Things were…a little tense down there.”
I huffed a laugh and rolled my eyes. “You think?”
“I didn’t realize you worked at The Grand,” he said without really answering me. “I was just as shocked as you were.”
“Shocked,” I repeated.
“Well, yeah.”
He started moving around the table, and again, I moved to counter him. I didn’t want the bastard anywhere near me.
Chester frowned and clenched his jaw, then rubbed a hand over his face like he was trying to calm or soothe himself. I had the vague sensation, like watching something on an old-fashioned TV riddled with static, that he resented me.
“I feel really bad about everything that happened,” he said, contradicting that feeling. “We were both young and stupid, and maybe some impetuous decisions were made.”
Warning bells blared in my head. I gripped the back of the chair closest to me.
“You have no idea what I’ve suffered because of the sever,” I said, tense and barely above a whisper.
“I know,” Chester said, lowering his head and looking genuinely contrite. “I’ve…learned a lot in the last few years about what omegas go through after a bond sever.”
“Have you?” I bit out the words, feeling no pity for any discomfort the knowledge made him feel.
Chester cleared his throat and kicked the wheels of the chair closest to him. “One of the reasons I started working with Senator Salisbury is because he’s involved in all these charities.”
I should have been surprised, but instead I narrowed my eyes and studied him closer.
“Senator Salisbury is a great guy, really,” Chester went on without looking at me. “He’s going to make a great governor.”
“If he wins the election,” I said.
“Oh, he’ll win the election alright,” Chester said, looking up at last with a crooked grin. “He’s definitely going to win the election.”
“How do you know?”
Chester’s smile widened, reminding me of the arrogant smirk that he’d worn most of the time in the year leading up to our disaster. “Trust me.”
“I don’t trust you as far as I can see you,” I said, gripping the back of the chair harder. “Not after what you did to me.”
“I wasn’t about to have—” Chester stopped his impetuous reply quickly and schooled his expression. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, he was smiling kindly at me again. “Everything will turn out for the best, you’ll see.”
The man made my skin crawl. But I also sensed something bigger was going on, and I damn well wanted to know what it was.
“How can things turn out better?” I asked, hoping I had enough mental acuity at the moment to bait him into saying whatever I could sense he was hiding.
“This app I’m working on, for one,” Chester said. “It’s great. It allows businesses to track their customers’ spending habits and it tailors future shopping experiences to them based on their online and real-world habits.”
“Doesn’t every app out there do that?” I asked.
“This one is different,” Chester said.
“How?”
“It just is,” Chester snapped. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re an omega.”
I let go of the chair and took a step toward the door.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Chester said, taking a step around the table like he would follow me.
I paused and stared warily at him.
Chester blew out a breath and let his shoulders drop. “The location function of the app is the important part,” he said like he was confessing something. “Once a user signs on, it activates the location feature on their phones.”
“You’ve created an app that tracks people’s locations?” That couldn’t be good.
“It’ll help parents keep track of their children, cut down on trafficking, and help law enforcement capture criminals,” Chester insisted.
It would mean that whoever controlled the app would be able to see where anyone was whenever they wanted. There would be no such thing as privacy anymore.
“That’s not legal,” I said.
“Senator Salisbury says—” again, Chester stopped. He shook his head and brushed his hand through the air. “It’s a feature people agree to when they download the app,” he said quickly. “But it doesn’t matter. It only has good uses. And once Senator Salisbury is elected governor—”
“Which you’re helping him with by, what, donating millions to his campaign?”
“It’s all legal,” Chester said, starting toward me again.
I wavered, caught between wanting to flee and wanting to know more about the connection between Chester and Salisbury. Every instinct within me said that something nefarious was going on and that Chester had spilled more than he was supposed to.
“The future is bright,” Chester said, smiling his mostly fake smile as he inched closer to me. “I’m going to be on top of the world soon, just like I’ve always wanted to be. And who knows? Maybe the omega I was once bonded to can have a place at the top with me.”
I didn’t move fast enough. I was still trying to figure things out as my proximity to Chester shorted out my brain. I didn’t see that he was reaching for me until he touched my arm.
The effect was instant and powerful for both of us. The severed end of my bond flared with white-hot pain, but at the same time, something deep and instinctual inside of me tried to reach for him, tried to push past the void to cling to the alpha who had once been mine.
I screamed, and if I wasn’t mistaken, Chester did, too. My head felt like it was about to split open. I grabbed both sides of my head and sank to my knees as my inner omega started to throw himself at the invisible barrier within me over and over.
“My god, are you okay? What’s going on in here?”
I snapped back to reality as Steve slid an arm around my shoulders and tried to help me to stand. The conference room was filled with half my team, including Amelia. Chester was still there, too, kneeling on the floor with his hands gripping his head, the same as me.
“Mr. Monk?” Amelia asked. “Are you alright?”
“I…I need to go,” Chester said, pushing himself to stand and rushing out of the room.
As soon as he was gone, I felt better. The farther away he got, the more my head cleared up. Gingerly, I felt to see if our old bond had somehow reformed, but the sever was as sharp and bleak as ever.
I’d never been so relieved in my life.
“Should we call one of the medical staff?” Steve asked as I stood.
“Should we call security?” another team member asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, although that made me feel queasy. “No, it’s fine.”
“What happened?” Amelia asked, coming over to take my other arm as the meeting room cleared out. She and Steve helped me sit in one of the chairs instead of taking me back to my office. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I…I know what happened, but I don’t feel up to explaining it right now,” I said.
I noticed Amelia and Steve exchange a look over my head.
“Please, I’m fine,” I said, feeling like I’d run a marathon. “I think I just need some quiet.”
“Take the rest of the day off,” Amelia said.
“No, I just need a few minutes,” I insisted.
“Take the rest of the day,” Amelia said, firmer.
I glanced miserably up at her. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Okay,” I caved. “Just…just let me sit here for a bit.”
“Do you need a glass of water?” Steve asked.
I smiled. “That would be great.”
I didn’t care about water, but I knew saying that would get Steve to leave the room.
Once he was gone, Amelia crouched in front of me. “Honey, if you’re in danger in any way,” she started.
I shook my head and gripped her arm. “I’m fine,” I lied. “But whatever you do, don’t trust Chester Monk in any way at all.”
I’d felt that way for years, but I felt it more than ever now. Chester was up to something far bigger than making nice with me or helping Salisbury to win an election. Salisbury was in the thick of it, too. The two of them were plotting together, and whatever it was, it was big.