24. Thirteen
Thirteen
Taryn
The group had been fully split on allowing me to come back to work. Caine and Brea staunchly against, Brooks and Lin insisting it was my call. In truth, I was just as split as they were. It would’ve been easier, honestly, if they’d just shut down the entire notion without question.
Because choosing to hide out in the apartment was about as appealing as digging through yesterday’s trash looking for an accidentally discarded bracelet.
(Not based on a true story.) I didn’t want to shut myself away from the world, didn’t want to retreat into the same safe walls.
Being forced away from the rest of society had been what Gran had fought against her entire life.
Retreating, cowering, felt like a betrayal.
Still. I was so damn scared.
Even after four days holed up with Brea and the guys, I still had flashes of those horrifying, terrifying minutes in my dreams. The thought of going out, unprotected, into the world where my attacker still roamed, where Heath still roamed, made me almost whimper.
Yeah, I would’ve rathered they just laid down the law, locked the door and never let me out again. At least then I wouldn’t have to betray Gran just to feel safe.
In the end, the choice was mine. I put on a fight face, hiding the part of me that just wanted to be soothed and protected.
I won’t let this run my ilfe.
So, back to work I went.
Jennie would never say outright she was glad I was back, but there were signs. Literally. Sitting next to a stack of five-by-seven postcards bearing my sketched BeLeaf in Yourself design.
Sneak Peek: New Bean & Leaf merch!
Designed in-house by Darin’ Taryn Maddox
Postcards $3 / 2 for $5
Seeing them there felt like a reward for being brave enough to step outside the apartment, for daring to continue on with my life even though my pulse was shallow and my omega begged me for the safety of home.
Computers were stupid.
Ugly and stupid.
Why the hell did our entire world revolve around these ugly, stupid things?
“Sonuva biiiitch ,” I muttered as I struggled to get the design program to read my mind and do what I wanted it to do.
Lin chuckled from behind his own laptop. “I’m going to tell her you said that,” he said as he typed a few words and clicked his mouse.
I eyed him over the top of my laptop. Jennie had given me free rein to create a digital version of my design idea for consideration (as she’d insisted four times) for more store merch.
So I’d, of course, downloaded the software I’d seen recommended for digital art.
I hadn’t known then that one needed a damn doctorate to work the damn thing.
Eager for a distraction from my frustration, I leaned my chin on my palm to the side of my computer. “I don’t know anything about your family. Any of your families, actually.”
He’d been working at home for the most part since the break-in, which meant I got to witness him with his Work Glasses on. One thing to make a damsel feel less awful about being a damsel? Hot alphas in wire-rimmed glasses.
Lin never paused his work, typing and scrolling and skimming on his computer. His posture didn’t change. But I had the sense that he was happy I was engaging. The slightest wave of smooth blackberry and honey that filtered through the room.
“My home pack still lives out in Fort Matamir,” he said. “My mom, beta, and my three dads—two alphas and a beta.”
“Only child?”
“Two sisters, Xia and Yaling. Both betas. One kid for each dad, essentially. My mom was made in China, born in Matamir, as she’s fond of saying. My bio dad is French Canadian.”
I closed my computer, folded my arms on top of it, and rested my chin on my arms. “What do they do?”
He mirrored me, which for some reason absolutely tickled me to see this normally posh alpha hunched over and staring at me from his folded arms. “Mom’s a middle school principal. My dad works in banking. And my pack dads, Nicholas and Luca, own a photography studio.”
“Was your mom your principal?”
“Luckily, no,” he said with a smile. “She didn’t go back to work till my youngest sister started school, so I was in high school by then.”
I hummed, smiling. “Small favors. Bet your mom would’ve been harder on you than any other students.”
“Without a doubt,” Lin agreed. “Of course, I was an exemplary student and teacher’s pet, so it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“ Pppssh, yeah, right,” I said.
“I was!”
Standing up and heading for the kitchen, I called out over my shoulder, “I’m going to call your mom one of these days and get the real dirt on you.”
Lin laughed, sitting up and leaning back in his chair. “The girls were always bigger trouble-makers than me. Oldest child syndrome—I was the behaved one.” He squinted at me, where I stood next to the toaster oven. “What’re you doing?”
“Making fish sticks.” I closed the door and set the temperature.
His head tilted adorably to the side like a pup who’d heard a new sound for the first time, then his eyes went to the clock on the wall. “It’s 9:20 in the morning.”
“They’re crispy and salty and delicious,” I replied before lifting myself to sit on the counter, waiting for my breakfast. “Just like hash browns. If we can eat hash browns for breakfast, why can’t we eat fish sticks?”
“You know what, you’re right,” Lin said as he stood to join me in the kitchen area. He dropped a quick kiss at my temple before leaning against the island across from me.
“You sound close to your family,” I said after a moment, returning to the previous conversation. “Why’d you move away?”
Lin didn’t answer immediately. His hands were in his pockets, thumbs hooked to the outside, and his head dropped with a sigh as he thought.
“You know Caine and I go way back?” he finally said, looking up.
I nodded. He’d told us as much our first night meeting.
“We were apart for some time after high school. And when we reconnected, he needed a fresh start. Brooks and I were happy to try out somewhere new, and we found Farendale. Not so far from home we can’t ever see the family, but far enough that Caine got the distance he needed. ”
I glanced around the corner and down the hall toward Caine’s room. The door was shut, but he had to be in there. He was so rarely outside this apartment. “Still,” I said before turning back to face Lin, “that had to have been hard. You were going toward something, but leaving something behind too.”
“I don’t see it that way,” he said. “I see it as a comfort. A retreat we can run to when we need it.”
“Have you done that?”
“Once or twice,” he said. “My second big real estate investment was a bust. Brooks was still making intern money, and Caine wasn’t working at all.
And losing that building felt like…letting the both of them down.
So I ran home, stayed with Mom and the dads for a few days, let them fuss over me until Caine marched in and dragged me home because Brooks was too mopey without me. ”
I admired how open Lin was about all of it. “I can imagine that,” I said with a small smile.
Lin snorted. “Brooks ratted him out. Caine slept in our bed with Brooks the whole time I was gone.”
And the amorphous, misty relationship between Caine and the other two reared its head again. Lin was being so open, and I was curious and willing to exploit his eagerness to keep me engaged for the time being. “So…so is Caine…like, you and Brooks are involved, but Caine…?”
“Prefers to speak for himself,” Lin answered, his eyes flicking to my right. I jumped up, turning to find Caine standing at the corner, arms crossed, brows furrowed.
When he’d held me for all those hours, all the gruff brushoffs felt like things of the past. Like he’d taken off a mask and let me see something he rarely let anyone see, ever.
Now, though, that mask was firmly in place.
Where Lin was all easy openness, ready and willing to share whatever I asked of him, Caine was a fortress, locked and armed and prepared to attack if needed.
I swallowed, and as much as my omega wanted to bow my head at his clear alpha agitation, I held his gaze. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was…just…”
“Curious,” Lin filled in for me. It felt like he was backing me up somehow, and the thought of a head alpha like Lin covering my back warmed a piece of me that had gone cold over the last weeks. “We’ve been chatting about our families and past pack life.”
“ Hmph. ” Caine strode past me to the sink to fix himself a glass of water. I met Lin’s gaze from the corner of my eye. He nodded, with a little jerk of his head toward Caine. An encouragement. I wondered if he was sending some similar encouragement down the bond to the other alpha.
I shrugged. “We’re basically living here for the time being, and I just realized how little we really know about you.
All three of you. I…I just…” My bravado died in my throat as Caine glowered unrelentingly at me.
I shook my head with a sigh, taking a step backward to hide out in the guest room, where Brea and I had set up residency after that first night. “It was stupid. Sorry.”
“I hate avocado.”
I halted at the sharp, strange confession. Caine looked exactly the same as he had a moment ago, except for the redness creeping up his neck. “You…?”
“It’s disgusting mush,” he said. With a lot of effort, I suppressed the laugh that wanted to break free at his comically pouty face. He may as well have been a little boy refusing to eat his dinner.
“Uh-huh,” I said instead.
“I’m afraid of heights. I prefer sherbet to ice cream. Dreamsicle is my favorite flavor. And I had a childhood fascination with moths.”
He stated the facts like they were state secrets I’d tortured out of him, his neck and face growing more and more red with each word. I opened my mouth to thank him for sharing, to signal he could stop if he wanted, but he continued on. The dam had sprung a leak.
“My parents were both dead by the time I was twelve and I bounced around the system after that. Lin and his family were the only people who stayed in my life more than a few months at a time back then. I still ran away after I turned eighteen. Made a lot of bad decisions, getting addicted to AlphX among the worst of them.”
My pounding heart sank into my stomach. His face didn’t change any, and his gaze never fell from mine. I could still sense how deep he was digging, how excruciating this kind of sharing was.
AlphX was a brutal drug, one that rewarded devotees with extraordinary highs and agonizing come-downs. At least, for alphas, hence the name. The drug targeted specific receptors in alpha brains to grant them a more intense, longer-lasting high than it did for betas. For omegas, the drug was lethal.
I thought back to the bits and pieces he’d given me before. About his alpha always fighting for control, how difficult being around other people was for him. “That’s why you don’t use suppressants and stuff?”
Supplements worked by engaging the same receptors as AlphX.
He nodded once, his jaw twitching as he ground his teeth together before carrying on like this confession were just the same as all the others falling out of his mouth.
“I’ve kissed four people in my entire life. Lin was the first. I don’t…” He faltered for the first time. “I can’t be with someone unless I know them. Unless they feel safe to me. It hasn’t happened very often.”
Warmth pricked the corners of my eyes. “Caine—”
“Lin and Brooks are pack. And you and Brea are here. You need to be here. But you’re not pack. Okay?”
Lin pushed off the wall he was leaning on, stepping toward me like he wanted to soften the blow of Caine’s words. He didn’t need to.
“I get it,” I said, giving my best reassuring smile. “We just crashed right into your life. I’m not trying to take something you don’t have to give.” I backed toward the guest room door. “I’m gonna lay down for a bit.”
Without waiting for either of them to answer or protest, I slid into the guest room and closed the door. I leaned back against it, sinking down onto the floor with my knees bent into my chest and hugging them tight, trying to squash my omega’s splintering grief at the alpha’s rejection.