Chapter 4 #2
“I’m a primary school teacher, first grade,” I said, feeling stupid for making small talk with a strange alpha in a designer suit, who still hadn’t taken off his silken mask, while I was naked and curled up in a cocoon of blankets right next to him.
“You know you’re still wearing your mask, right? ” I asked, then felt even stupider.
Saint grinned sheepishly. “Um, yeah, that’s on purpose,” he said, surprising me. “I have a bad scar.”
“That’s okay, I don’t mind,” I said, suddenly eager to see the scar.
He paused, like he thought maybe I should mind, then reached for the back of his head.
He untied the scarf and lowered it, revealing a wicked scar that ran across his forehead, through his left eyebrow, and across his temple into his hairline.
It was old and white, but it must have been bad when he’d first gotten it.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” I said. “It’s just a scar.”
“I’ve been told it makes me look scary, and in my line of work, I need to not look scary,” he said.
My eyebrows went up. “Do you wear that when you’re consulting with patients?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted with a nod. “Not with adults. Mostly with kids. I tell them it’s my superhero mask.”
I smiled. That’s what I’d thought, too. “I bet that really helps them to open up and feel safe. I work with kids, obviously, and superheroes carry a lot of weight with them.”
Saint was my superhero. He’d rescued me from—
No, that was silly. I hadn’t really been in any danger, and I didn’t really know Saint.
Whether my facial expression changed or whether Saint just felt the mood shift, he frowned. “I’m not happy about the way your brother set you up for this, the way he pranked you.”
“I’m not either,” I admitted. “I feel like such a fool for falling for it when I knew he was up to something.”
“What did he tell you about this event?” Saint asked.
“Nothing, really. He told me he had scored a job interview, but he had another opportunity come up at the same time,” I said.
“And you were willing to go to a job interview for him?” Saint asked, his non-damaged eyebrow raised.
I shrugged, then had to pull the blanket up over my shoulder on one side.
I noticed Saint’s gaze zip to the bare skin I’d revealed for a second.
“Lucas might be a jerk and the evil twin, but he’s still my brother.
The rest of the family has moved away, and even though I should leave him to take care of himself, I still feel responsible for him.
Plus, he really does need to get a steady job. ”
“Is he unemployed?”
I winced. “Not really? I guess? He always seems to have one thing or another going on. Like whatever this other opportunity is he’s got going on this weekend. He’s at our family beach house, storing some things for a friend who is selling them online or something.”
Saint frowned at that. “What sort of things?”
“Nothing illegal,” I rushed to say. Though, actually, I didn’t know if I was telling the truth. Come to think of it, with Lucas, it probably was illegal.
“Whatever the case, it was wrong of him to send you to the omega auction without knowing what you were going to first,” Saint said.
I huffed a humorless laugh. “You can say that again. I’ve never been so scared in my life. If this is what he pranked me with this time, what more does he have up his sleeve?”
That was the wrong thing to say, as it turned out.
“I’m not letting him prank you like this ever again,” Saint said, standing.
“Thanks, but I’m not sure there’s much you can do about it,” I said, awkwardly getting to my feet with the blanket wrapped around me still.
“There’s always something to be done when it comes to standing up against a bully,” Saint insisted.
“Like what?” I asked, one eyebrow raised dubiously.
“You need to confront him,” Saint said. “You need to put your foot down and set boundaries that he can’t cross.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I’ve tried that before. It never seems to work. I am a boundaryless doormat.”
Saint didn’t like me saying that at all, I could tell. “What if I helped you confront him?” he asked.
My eyes went wide. “You’d do that? You’d help me work out my relationship with my brother?”
“Of course I would,” he said.
“But you don’t really know me,” I insisted.
Saint shrugged. “I feel responsible. And mediating was part of my training.”
“I really appreciate it,” I said, something warm and sentimental stirring in me. I really liked Saint. He lived up to his name.
“Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go settle this right now?” he went on.
I wasn’t so sure. “It’s the middle of the night,” I said, glancing to the clock on the bedside table. Okay, it was ten p.m. For some people, the night was still young. “He’s all the way at our family’s beach house. He’s never going to change.”
“He’ll change if he knows what’s good for him,” Saint said, striding over to the far end of the bureau to fetch my clothes and bringing them to put on the corner of the bed near me.
“I’ll go with you. We can confront him together and I can facilitate.
I just don’t like the idea of your own twin doing something that will potentially hurt you. ”
I drew in a breath, accidentally catching Saint’s sandalwood scent with it.
Weird though it was, with Saint there to encourage me, I felt like I could actually do it.
I might actually be able to confront Lucas like I should have years ago and convince him to stop with his pranks and whatever other dangerous things he might be tempted to get up to.
There was something else going on, too. It might have only been ten o’clock, but that was still too late to pursue family counseling.
Saint was filled with energy about the whole thing, though.
If I didn’t know better, I’d’ve thought he had some sort of ulterior motive for getting me and Lucas to talk.
I didn’t think he was a bad guy. In fact, I thought he was an incredibly nice, caring guy.
The way he’d taken care of me through what should have and could have been a deeply scarring event had me feeling all sorts of feels.
But I also felt like, in some unknown way, this was personal for him.
“Alright,” I said at last in a tiny voice. I wasn’t actually convinced, but something deep within me didn’t want my acquaintance with Saint to be over so soon. “I’ll get dressed and give you directions to the beach house.”
“Good,” Saint said with a nod and a smile. “You can use the bathroom, if you’d like, or I can go wait in the bathroom or somewhere else until you’re changed.”
“I can use the bathroom,” I said, shuffling over to grab my clothes, which was awkward as I was trying to keep the blanket wrapped around me at the same time. “I’ll just be a second, I said over my shoulder as I headed into the bathroom.
I wasn’t entirely certain what I was getting myself into by rushing off to confront Lucas in the middle of the night, but the visceral omega in me was desperate to trust and obey the alpha who had come to my rescue.