14. Oscar
Oscar
J ake looks helpless as he glances at me. Beside me, Theo is completely still – honestly, I’m not sure he’s even breathing. But his hands clench on the table.
Jake says it slowly. “I’m sorry, Theo.”
She meant every word of that voicemail.
I try to take a breath. “Theo—,”
When he stands, I’m on my feet a second later. “Not here.”
We’re in the middle of the diner again; all of us gravitating here by mutual, silent agreement. And we all know why. It’s quiet tonight, only a few others dotting the booths around us.
And the omega who fate apparently chose to be ours is only a few feet away, separated from us by a shitty plastic door and a whole heap of fucking trauma.
“I’m just going to speak to her,” he says roughly. “I won’t do anything.”
He looks broken. He looks like he did after Brett’s death, when we had to pin him down at the doors of the hospital as he roared for Kennedy and his brother. Except Brett wasn’t there, it turned out.
She’d left him behind. Gone for help for herself, and abandoned him up that fucking mountain to die alone.
“I thought…,” he stares down at the table. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
He hoped he was wrong. But Kennedy confirmed all of his worst fears with her words. I look over at Max and Jake, their faces shuttered.
Max doesn’t wear a hint of a smile. “What the hell do we do now?”
They all look at me. Even Theo, a desperation in his eyes. A silent plea.
Slowly, I sit. “We eat, and we leave. We’ll regroup at home.”
What the fuck do we do? Our mate killed our packmate’s brother. She as good as confirmed it. Pushed him into throwing himself off a fucking cliff, and he went ahead with it while she walked away. I reach for my drink, my fingers clenching so tightly against the condensate glass that I wonder if it’ll shatter in my hand. “Did she say why ?”
Brett wasn’t always easy. I know that much. He could be harsh, and cruel, and possessive. But I never saw him act badly toward her. Not once.
“It doesn’t matter,” Theo mutters, his voice heavy. “It doesn’t change what she did.”
We pause as Mick sets our burgers down on the table. I’m not hungry, and none of them move to touch theirs either. I wait for Mick to leave before reaching into my pocket. “I went to the library earlier. Printed off a few of the news reports. Just in case we missed anything.”
Theo snorts. “They only told half the story.”
“True,” I murmur. “But I found this. It was on a blogging site. They have an interest in conspiracy theories, and they tracked down the hikers that found Kennedy in the woods.”
Theo frowns. “The hikers weren’t named anywhere. We looked.”
I shrug. “They obviously found them somehow. Maybe they knew people connected to the case.”
Spreading out the paper, I gesture to the part I’ve highlighted. “Read it.”
Theo reads silently over my shoulder. When he’s done, I pass it to the others. Max and Jake scan it.
“Poor thing,” Jake murmurs aloud, his brows drawing together. “She was in a terrible state. Catatonic. I’ve never seen injuries like it.”
“She was treated for dehydration.” Theo shakes his head. “They’ve got it wrong. It’s some fringe piece from a journalist that likes to sensationalize.”
“Your father was the one who told us it was dehydration,” I remind him. “We didn’t see her.”
Because we were banned from the hospital. Stopped from getting anywhere near her, even as we almost lost our minds over it before everything came out. Charles told us it was what she wanted, to leave her alone.
The last time we saw Kennedy was her sitting in the front of Brett’s truck as he pulled off that morning. Until this week.
“He wouldn’t lie about it.” Theo is still staring at the paper. “What would the point be?”
That’s a question I’ve been wrestling with myself.
“None of it makes sense,” I say quietly. “And the more I look at it, the more the pieces don’t fit together. So I looked up those hikers, matched the names in the directory, and I left them a message asking them to call me.”
“You’re trying to find another explanation because you don’t want to believe she’s capable of doing that.” A thread of anger enters Theo’s words. “Brett wasn’t an angel, but he would never have hurt her. Never. And she confessed, Oz. She told Max and Jake everything. I don’t see the point in chasing down ghosts.”
I shrug, folding up the paper. “It can’t hurt. Maybe it’s a false trail. Maybe not.”
Max and Jake exchange glances. Theo taps his hand on the table. “I need a fucking distraction.”
Climbing out, I lean against the booth and watch with a growing frown as he crosses the diner. “What the hell is he doing?”
“Fucking up,” Jake says quietly. He gets out too, then Max. All of us watch as Theo leans in, murmuring into a delighted-looking Kristen Edwards’s ear. She titters, flicking platinum blond hair back and away from her face before leaning in and placing her hand on his arm. Theo gestures toward our booth, and she gets up to follow him.
For fuck’s sake.
I force a smile as she beams at us. “I’d love to join you.”
Theo waves a hand. “Sit between me and Oscar. I’ll get you a drink.”
Scowling, I slide back into the booth. Kristen follows me, pressing a little too close for comfort considering Theo hasn’t even sat down yet. Her perfume makes my nose itch. Some sort of spice.
But it’s not cherries and chocolate.
It doesn’t make me want to bite.
Theo is at least smiling when he gets back, even if it doesn’t reach his eyes. He avoids my stare as he drops the drinks down on the table. “There we go.”
Kristen laughs as he slides in beside her. There’s not enough room, so I stretch my arm out across the back of the booth and try not to grimace as she brushes against me. Her giggles grate on my fucking ears. “This is cozy.”
Across from me, Jake and Max wear matching frowns. But she doesn’t seem to notice as she launches into conversation with Theo.
This is a bad idea. My eyes flicker to the door that leads to the staff area. This isn’t going to solve anything, but our omega has a tendency to act first and talk later. Even Theo’s eyes shift to that door before they dart back to Kristen, a small, insincere smile on his face.
Bad. Fucking. Idea.