Chapter 47
After Spencer came back downstairs, trailing both Sarah and Al, he went out to unload the little Volkswagen.
They had run errands before we met them out and about, so the tiny car was already full before they added anything from the nesting store.
Paul and Sam are both in the kitchen, and Al takes off again to show Teddy, Kelly, and their shadows his library.
I feel kind of useless just standing here, so I meander out after the big guy to see if he needs a hand.
I didn’t realize Sarah had followed him too until I see her trying to help unload—he keeps taking things out of her arms. He finally settles on letting her carry in a small stack of pillows, since they’re light but bulky, but even then he’s hovering like crazy.
Snatching up a couple of cans of paint from the frunk, I follow them back inside and up the stairs as he quietly directs her down the hall to a large set of double doors.
She lets out a happy little sigh when he opens and then flicks on the light switch.
Dim light filters down from recessed bulbs set in the four corners of the room.
She nearly drops the stack she’s carrying, and he quickly sets his own paint and blankets inside before taking everything from her arms. She wanders farther into the room, and I can see why she’s enchanted.
It’s a nest, a nice one. Or it might be.
It’s mostly empty now, except for the low platform bed near one blank wall.
The mattress is wrapped in sealed plastic, and there are several drawers on the platform itself.
The walls are a bland grey right now, flat and dull, with three other doors—one on the right side, two on the left, and a full wall of curtains directly across from the door we entered through.
The big alpha carries all the pillows he took from Sarah and opens the door on the right to what appears to be a closet, carefully depositing all of them safely in the back.
The walls on either side of this closet have several shelves running up each one, and he takes the paint cans from me and deposits them on the bottom of one of them before retrieving his own and setting them together.
He’s been pointedly avoiding looking at Sarah as she wanders around the room, checking each of the doors.
When she steps through one closest to me, I hear her quiet, “Holy fuck. I want this tub.” Spencer has a huge grin on his face, but still won’t look in the direction she went.
My guess is the bathroom is really nice, though he hasn’t tried to show her anything specific, letting her curious nature run its course and explore on her own.
“Hey, Spence. You ok there? How’s the nose?
” It should feel awkward just standing in silence in a stranger’s home, but it doesn’t.
I don’t have as strong of a sense of smell as Sarah, but this room is mostly free of anything but the big guy’s grass and leather scent, and now Sarah’s strawberry shortcake as she wanders back out of the bathroom and beelines for the last door.
The alpha raises a hand like he wants to tell her something, but stops short as she opens the door and steps inside.
Her voice is quiet from the other room. “You ok, Moose? This room smells like you…and sad.” She doesn’t say anything else as she comes back out, walking over to him and wrapping her tiny arms around his huge body.
His big hand brushes the hair back from her forehead as she stares up at him, and even though it’s a private moment, I don’t feel like I’m intruding.
It’s freaky, really. That this feels so normal.
Not the sad look on the big guy’s face, but them, and this place.
I don’t feel like a stranger here. Maybe it’s just his exuberance and welcoming personality.
He has to bend way down to press a kiss to her hair before he pulls away.
“Lemme show you the best part.” He walks over and pushes a button on the wall beside the door she just left, and the room brightens considerably as the set of curtains along the far wall pull back, showing three large floor-to-ceiling windows.
He presses another button, and more light floods in from the ceiling.
What I thought was a solid area in the dim light is actually a skylight, shuttered over with a solid panel that slides away.
It brightens the room significantly, and I notice long tracks along the ceiling as well that could be used for additional curtains to enclose the space around the bed.
The added light allows me to see that the walls have actually been primed recently, so that explains the paint, though not why there are so many colors.
The floor and bed platform are the same pale hardwood, almost the sun-bleached color of driftwood that washes up on the beach close to the omega center.
The plastic covering the mattress crinkles loudly where Sarah stretches back on it.
Her head faces the foot where she can look up at the now open skylight, watching the clouds skitter by in a high wind.
“This is beautiful, Spence.” The fact that she doesn’t use his nickname sends a pang through my chest, as her emotions must be pressing enough that she’s not her usual playful self.
He stares down at her, his eyes full of a yearning that finally makes me feel like I’m intruding.
You can see the internal struggle, and it occurs to me that this man would be a terrible liar and probably has absolutely no filter most of the time.
He swallows before setting his shoulders, finally prying his eyes away from my omega to stare at the sky himself.
“Yeah, I wanted to try to make the paint look like the sky. Starting out with the floor, that looks kind of like the color of sand and like you’re looking out over the horizon.
My parents took us down to the gulf when we were little a few times.
Never anything big, just…like short summer day trips.
And it always made me feel small to stare out at the ocean.
Especially in the evening when the stars were just coming out, and the sky was almost black up high, but you could still see all the purples and blues and stuff on the horizon.
” He shuffles his feet as he talks, looking embarrassed.
“I’m not a good artist, I can’t add in birds or anything like that.
Maybe those funny little M shapes for them.
And it’s not exactly my room.” Her head snaps up and she stares hard at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice, too lost in his own mind.
“For now, I can do whatever I want with it, like that bedroom you were looking at. But one day, I don’t know.
Al dates betas sometimes, and Paul doesn’t really date anybody.
Maybe we’ll find somebody who wants us?” He shrugs his big shoulders in an almost helpless gesture.
“It just seems a shame to let it sit here empty for now. I wanted to make it pretty,” he mumbles, running one big hand through his messy hair.
“Show off the potential…I don’t know. Just ’cause nobody wants it right now doesn’t mean it’s not good enough, it just needs the right person to really see it… to love it.”
The tips of his ears are bright red as he stares at the sky, and he won’t meet either of our eyes as he shifts from one foot to the other.
Sarah is looking at him like he might hold the meaning to the universe—it’s forty-two.
But as soon as she opens her mouth to reply, he bolts from the room.
His voice calls over the loud thump of feet.
“Gotta go finish unloading the car. I bet Paul and Sam have food ready.”