Chapter 3
Miles
Ican see through the restaurant window that there are four place settings instead of three, and I almost turn around and get back in my car.
I don't, because I'm a good son. I'm an excellent son.
I show up once a month for dinner, I wear a nice suit, I let my mother kiss my cheek and tell me I look thin.
That's the deal. She doesn't ask about my suppressants, I don't mention that Dad still hasn't paid back the money I lent them for the house.
We're a family that runs on polite avoidance, and it works.
But four place settings means she's done it again.
I push through the door and the hostess smiles at me like she knows something I don't, and I weave through the tables until I spot them in the back corner.
My mother is in her nice blue dress, the one she wears when she's trying to impress someone.
My father is in his usual sport coat, looking slightly uncomfortable the way he always does in restaurants that don't serve beer on tap.
Sitting across from them is an alpha I've never seen before.
He's handsome. Of course he's handsome. My mother has a type she picks for me: tall, dark-haired, well-dressed, with a strong jaw and the kind of effortless confidence that comes from never having to question your place in the world.
This one is maybe thirty, thirty-two, with broad shoulders and a pleasant smile that he aims at me as I approach.
"Miles, sweetheart." My mother stands up and pulls me into a hug that smells like her perfume and hairspray. "You remember I mentioned Garrett? He works with your father at the firm. Garrett, this is my son."
I don't remember her mentioning Garrett, because she definitely didn't, because she knows I would've cancelled. I shake his hand anyway. His grip is firm and what he puts off is something woodsy and clean, and I feel absolutely nothing.
"Nice to meet you," I say, and sit down.
"Garrett was just telling us about his new house," my mother says with the kind of enthusiasm she usually reserves for when I tell her about a promotion. "He bought a place out in Westfield. Four bedrooms."
Four bedrooms. She might as well have said room for children. I pick up my water glass and take a sip.
"It's a lot of space for one person," Garrett says with a self-deprecating laugh. "But I figured I'd grow into it."
"That's smart," I say. "Planning ahead."
My mother beams at me like I've just said something brilliant. My father nods approvingly at his steak menu. Under the table, I press my thumbnail into the pad of my index finger hard enough to leave a mark.
"So, Miles," Garrett says, leaning forward with genuine interest. "Your mom mentioned you're at McKenzie and Randall. How long have you been there?"
"Seven years. Since law school."
"That's impressive. It's a brutal firm."
"It is." I take a bite of bread because it gives me something to do with my mouth.
"He's up for partner," my mother adds, reaching across the table to squeeze my arm. "This year. We're so proud."
"She's jumping ahead," I say. "It's not a sure thing."
"Of course it's a sure thing. You've given everything to that firm.
" She says it with pride, but there's something underneath it that I've learned to hear over the years—the relief.
He's given everything to the firm, which means he's not thinking about the other thing, the thing we don't talk about, the thing that happened when he was sixteen and changed the shape of his whole life.
As long as I'm working, I'm fine. As long as I'm achieving, the rest of it doesn't matter.
My father clears his throat. "The partnership would be good for the family," he says, which is his way of saying he's proud of me without using any of those words.
"Partner before thirty," Garrett says. "That's really something. You must not have much of a social life."
He laughs when he says it, like it's a joke, but it lands weird and the table goes quiet for a second. My mother jumps in.
"Miles works very hard," she says. "But he's learning to make time for other things. Aren't you, sweetheart?"
"Sure." I have no idea what other things she's referring to. This dinner, probably. These monthly setups that she pretends aren't setups and I pretend I don't dread.
Garrett is nice about the awkward pause.
He pivots into a story about a case he's working on, something about a property dispute that went sideways, and he tells it well.
He's funny in a low-key way that makes my parents laugh.
He doesn't talk over me. He doesn't do that alpha thing where they angle their body toward you like they're trying to physically claim the space around you.
He's polite and normal and if I were a different person, I'd probably find him attractive.
I am not a different person. I eat my salmon and nod in the right places and feel nothing at all.
My mother keeps glancing between us with this hopeful expression that makes my chest ache, like she's watching a plant she's been watering and praying it'll flower.
It won't. But she doesn't know that, or she does and she's decided not to.
"My sister just had her second," Garrett mentions, pulling up a photo on his phone. A baby in a yellow onesie, red-faced and screaming. "She's a handful already."
He holds the phone across the table and my mother takes it, making the sounds women make at pictures of babies. My father leans in to look. It's a nice moment for all of them. I pick up my fork and move a piece of asparagus from one side of my plate to the other.
"Do you want kids?" my mother asks Garrett, and her voice has that careful casualness she uses when she's steering a conversation somewhere specific.
I know where she's going. She wants him to say yes, and then she wants to look at me, and then she wants to imagine a future where this nice alpha and her son and a couple of grandchildren fill up that four-bedroom house.
"Definitely," Garrett says. "Not right away, but yeah. Someday."
My mother looks at me. I eat the asparagus.
"Miles," she says gently, "Garrett's been asking about your hobbies."
"He hasn't, actually." I smile to take the edge off it. "I don't really have hobbies, Garrett. I work. It's not very interesting."
Garrett laughs, good-natured. "I get it. I'm the same way. Maybe we could grab coffee sometime? Talk shop?"
He's looking at me with this open, hopeful expression, and I want to feel something.
I really do. He's a good-looking alpha with a four-bedroom house and a kind smile and he's interested in me, and I should want this.
This is what my mother wants for me. This is what omegas are supposed to want—a stable alpha, a nice house, a future.
Except my future has a wall in it that I hit every time I try to imagine past a certain point, and no amount of four-bedroom houses is going to fix that.
"Sure," I say, because it's easier than the truth. "That sounds nice."
My mother looks like she might cry from happiness, which makes me feel like shit, but that's not new.
Dinner wraps up with my father paying the check and Garrett shaking my hand again and saying he'll text me.
He won't, because I'm going to wait a few days and then send a very polite message about being too busy with the partnership track, and he'll get the hint, and my mother will be disappointed, and we'll do this again in two months with a different alpha.
It's a system. It works.
Outside, the air is cold and bracing and I stand on the sidewalk for a minute just breathing. My mother hugs me goodbye and holds on a beat too long.
"Just give him a chance, sweetheart," she says quietly, close to my ear. "You deserve someone nice."
I don't trust my voice, so I just nod and kiss her cheek and watch them walk to their car. My father raises a hand in a wave without turning around. That's about as emotional as he gets.
I start walking toward the parking garage, and I hear the music before I see the place.
It's coming from half a block up—bass-heavy, muffled through the walls, with the door propped open and light spilling onto the sidewalk.
There's a neon sign that says REVIVAL in pink and blue, and a small crowd of people outside smoking and laughing, and I can tell immediately from the mix of what's in the air—alpha, omega, cologne, sweet pheromones—what kind of bar this is.
I should keep walking. I always keep walking.
But tonight my feet slow down. There are two omegas near the entrance, younger than me, dressed in something I'd never have the nerve to wear, laughing so hard one of them is doubled over.
An alpha couple is sharing a cigarette, leaning into each other.
Someone inside shrieks with laughter. Through the open door, I can see a packed dance floor and colored lights, and the smell hits me like a wall—alpha pheromones and omega heat and sweat and alcohol and life.
Just life. Messy, loud, uncontrolled life.
I stop.
"Hey." The voice comes from my left. I turn, and there's an alpha leaning against the brick wall next to the entrance. He's tall, dark-skinned, with a shaved head and a loose grin. He's looking at me the way alphas look at omegas outside clubs, appreciative and unhurried. "You coming in?"
"No," I say. "I'm just passing by."
"That's too bad." He pushes off the wall, not crowding me, just shifting closer. He's got nice eyes. Kind. What he gives off is pleasant—cinnamon and something darker underneath. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with him. "You look like you could use a drink."
"I look like I could use a drink?"
"You look like you just came from something boring and you're trying to talk yourself out of something fun." His grin widens. "Am I close?"
He's close. He's annoyingly close. The worst part is that he's exactly the kind of alpha I'm supposed to want—confident without being aggressive, attractive without being intimidating, someone who would buy me a drink and make me laugh and take me home if I let him, and it would be fine.
It would be a perfectly fine night. He smells like cinnamon, and cinnamon is nice, and nice should be enough.
Except all I can think about is that cinnamon isn't pepper and ginger. This alpha's relaxed smile isn't the same as Ray's, and I'm furious at myself for making that comparison, standing on a sidewalk outside a club I'll never go into, thinking about a man who calls me boss to piss me off.
I look at the open door again, and the music swells as someone walks out, and I can feel the warmth from inside on my face, and for one stupid, reckless second I want to go in.
I want to be a person who goes to bars on a Tuesday night and lets a hot stranger buy him a drink and dances with his sleeves rolled up and maybe goes home with someone who smells good and doesn't ask about his career or his family or his future.
"I can't," I say.
"Can't, or won't?" He's still smiling. He's not pushy about it. He's just there, and that almost makes it worse, because he's not demanding anything. He's just offering. I'm the one who can't take it.
"Both," I say, and it comes out more honest than I meant it to.
He nods like he gets it, which he doesn't, but it's nice of him to pretend. "Well, if you change your mind, I'll be here."
I walk away before I can change my mind. My shoes click on the sidewalk and the music fades behind me, and I don't look back because if I look back I'll go in, and if I go in I'll have to be someone I don't know how to be anymore.
My apartment is exactly how I left it. Quiet and clean and perfectly organized and so goddamn empty that the sound of my keys hitting the counter seems to echo. I hang up my jacket. Loosen my tie. Stand in my kitchen for a minute staring at nothing.
This is what I chose. I chose the clean apartment and the silent evenings and the career that fills up all the space where other things are supposed to go.
I chose it because the alternative—wanting things I can't have, letting people close enough to figure out what's wrong with me—is worse. I know it's worse. I've done the math.
I pour myself a glass of water and drink it standing at the sink, looking out at the city lights through my kitchen window.
Somewhere out there, the alpha from the club is probably buying someone a drink.
Somewhere, Garrett is telling his sister about the omega he met at dinner, the cold one, the one who probably won't call back.
Somewhere, Ray Garcia is doing whatever Ray Garcia does on a Tuesday night—something fun, probably, something loud and effortless and full of people who are happy to see him.
I rinse my glass and set it in the drying rack.
I go through my nighttime routine on autopilot—wash my face, brush my teeth, check my email one last time. Then I open the medicine cabinet and pull out my suppressant case. The conference is next week. I count the pills, moving them from one compartment to another with my finger.
I count again.
I'm one short.
I stand there in my bathroom, in my boxers and my undershirt, staring at a plastic pill case, and my heart rate picks up.
It's fine. I'll call the pharmacy tomorrow and get an early refill.
Insurance might push back, but I can pay out of pocket if I have to.
It's fine. It's manageable. People adjust their schedules all the time.
I just need to make one phone call, and the timing will work out, and I'll have enough to get through the conference without my body deciding to betray me in front of a hundred lawyers and the one alpha whose scent already makes me lose my mind.
It's fine.
I close the case and put it back in the cabinet and brush my teeth again because I already forgot if I did it the first time. Then I get into bed, in my silent apartment, in my perfectly made bed, and I stare at the ceiling.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I pick it up because I always pick it up, because even after everything tonight—the dinner, the club, the suppressant math—I'm still the guy who checks his phone at eleven PM in case something needs handling.
It's a text from Ray.
Garcia: Hey boss, what's the dress code for the gala? Do I actually need a tux or can I get away with a suit?
I should not be smiling. I type back:
Me: It's Covington. And yes, you need a tux. Rent one. Don't get the cheapest option.
Three dots appear. Then:
Garcia: Aw, you care about how I look ??
I put my phone face-down on the nightstand and press my palms over my eyes.
The apartment is very quiet. I roll over and face the wall and try not to think about what it would feel like to not be so alone all the time.