22. Old Flames
Old Flames
~SAWYER~
There are only so many ways a morning can go sideways before a man stops being surprised by any of them.
I thought I'd hit my limit last night, caught between hiding an Omega under my steering wheel and telling three furious Alphas over the phone to enjoy the peace before the chaos.
I was wrong.
The limit was here, in this kitchen, at this ungodly hour, and it arrives in the form of Amber Whitlock setting those big honey-warm eyes on the pair of us over the rim of her coffee mug and asking — casual as a woman commenting on the weather —
"So. You two fucked?"
I inhale my coffee.
There is no dignified way to describe what happens after that.
The mouthful I've just taken goes straight down the wrong pipe, and I'm coughing into my fist at Amber's little two-seater table while directly across from me — parallel, unbothered, one ankle hooked over the opposite knee — Marshall grins from ear to ear like the cat that got into the whole dairy.
He is enjoying this. He is enjoying this enormously, the cocky son of a bitch.
"We were very playful," Marshall says into his tea, in that unhurried drawl of his that hasn't shifted an inch in five years, "back when he was still in our pack.
Yeah." He takes a slow, deliberate sip and lets it hang there, watching me wheeze for it.
"But he pulled himself out of the packship.
On account of the fact that we don't, as a general rule, encourage incest under one roof. "
I finally get my throat working again through sheer stubbornness and level a look at him that he ignores with the ease of a man who's been ignoring my looks since we were both too young to know any better.
Marshall looks the same, and he doesn't.
Same lean, unbothered sprawl, like every chair he's ever lowered himself into was built to his exact specifications. Same dark, patient eyes that read a whole room in one slow pass and file it away for later use.
He's let his hair grow out some, and there's a new quiet settled into him — the particular settledness that five straight years of being loved right will put into a man.
His scent rolls across the little kitchen the way it always did, cool and composed: bergamot and strong black tea, worn leather, an undernote of wet slate after rain.
The exact opposite of mine, which my grandmother always swore smelled like a man about to start something he couldn't finish.
Seeing him should ache more than it does. I keep waiting for the old wound to reopen, for the grief of everything I set down. It doesn't come.
Looking at Marshall this morning just glows, low and steady, like a coal you keep around for the warmth and not the fire.
We were good together, once — the easy kind of good, the kind you don't notice you're standing in until you're standing outside of it looking back.
Marshall was the one who taught me a pack didn't have to be loud to be a home.
He was also the one who told me, flat and kind over a kitchen table not unlike this one, that I ought to get on a plane to Italy and chase the work that lit me up, back when I was still pretending I didn't want it badly enough to ask.
I've thought about that more than I've ever let myself admit.
Then there's Amber.
She's leaning against the counter of her cozy little kitchen in a long floral dress I would very much rather be peeling off her than watching her drink coffee in, sipping from a mug that is unquestionably still far too hot for a person to be doing that with.
She looks — I genuinely don't know how she's managed it, on the sleep she got, which was next to none and most of that squarely my fault — unfairly good this morning.
Refreshed. Damn near glowing.
She went from thoroughly-wrecked bedhead to all of this in the time it took me to locate my own boots.
The thing that keeps snagging me is her hair.
She's wearing it down. Loose, falling in soft waves past her shoulders, and I'd bet the deed to my dead truck that I've never once seen a photograph of this woman with her hair down. It's always a bun. A twist, a chignon, something controlled and pinned and professional.
She wears her control in her hair.
So this is new.
This is deliberate. I know exactly why she's done it, too, because I can see the edge of my own handiwork peeking out from under those waves anyway — the sea of marks I left down the back of her neck and over her shoulders last night, most of them tucked away now under all that hair.
What the hair can't cover are the ones riding the side of her throat.
The one sitting just above her collarbone, plain as a signature.
Those are going to make three grown men lose their entire minds.
I feel a bit like a villain, if I'm honest.
Some devil come slinking out of the woodwork to collect an old debt on behalf of a woman who deserved a great deal better than the hand she got dealt. I find I am not one bit sorry about it.
Let the three of them see the marks. Let them stand in that town hall and count every last one and understand, finally, in their own slow bones, exactly what they left sitting on the table five years back.
I've planned enough weddings to know the precise look of a man realizing too late what he held in his hands.
I fully intend to enjoy every second of theirs.
Amber, meanwhile, has been studying Marshall over her mug with the frank, unhurried curiosity of a woman who plans seating charts for a living and can therefore smell a social dynamic from three rooms off.
"Why," she says slowly, "do I get the distinct feeling you couldn't care less whether the two of you got up to some sweet Alabama shit back in the day?"
I turn my head, real slow, to look at Marshall.
He shrugs. One shoulder. Black-cat energy, my grandmother would have called that — the exact breed of composure that makes a person want to check their pockets.
He reminds me of somebody. Takes me a second to land on who.
August. He reminds me of August, of all people.
I have not yet decided whether that's a good thing or a problem waiting to happen.
"You're a good reader of the room," Marshall tells her, and there's genuine approval under it. Then he slides his gaze over to me, and his mouth curves. "So. She's the Omega who's actually got your full attention."
It isn't a question. I take a slow drink of my coffee, and the two of us just look at each other across five years and one small kitchen table.
"You mad at that?" I ask.
He leans back in his chair until the front legs lift clean off the floor, entirely at home in a house he walked into twenty minutes ago.
"Mad?" He shakes his head. "No. I'm proud, if you want the honest truth of it.
Proud you've still got the nerve to reach for the thing that makes you happy.
" His voice gentles, just a hair. "The Sawyer I knew five years back wasn't sure he was allowed to reach for anything.
Wasn't even sure he'd recognize the feeling if it walked up and shook his hand.
But that same man was willing to walk clean away from everything the five of us built — the pack, the whole life, all of it — for no reason grander than making his baby sister happy.
" He lifts his tea in a small salute. "I've always commended you for that.
Always have. Then again—" the smirk sneaks back in "—I'm a touch biased where you're concerned. "
"Biased my ass," I mutter.
That knocks a real laugh out of him, low and warm, and he turns it on Amber like he's passing her the good gossip across a fence.
"So. You're all right with him bending whichever way he pleases, are you?"
That is the precise moment I lose my second mouthful of coffee of the morning.
I'm coughing all over again, one hand flat to my sternum, and Amber pushes off the counter with a small, put-upon sigh and crosses the kitchen to me.
"You okay?" She sets her mug down on the table beside mine and lays one warm hand on my chest, patting twice — a good deal more amused than concerned.
Then she looks back at Marshall and lifts one shoulder in a shrug that mirrors his own to the letter.
"I don't really care," she says. "Long as it stays inside the pack, I couldn't tell you who he gets up to things with, and I don't much need to.
" She pauses. Her lips push out into a thoughtful little pout that I feel behind my back teeth.
"Which, frankly — out of my three exes — the only one I'd put real money on actually having a thing for him is August."
I look up at her.
"Is it that obvious?"
She turns those eyes down on me, unhurried.
"It's not obvious, exactly. But last night…that whole standoff with the truck, the two of you circling each other on that road…there was a tension there. I notice tension. It's the job."
"And it doesn't turn you off," I say. "Even a little."
"No."
Another shrug, easy as breathing.
She reaches past me to reclaim her mug now that I've stopped actively dying at her table.
"Though I'll grant you, this is coming from a woman who reads a truly embarrassing amount of MM on the side of her regular cozy omegaverse. So it's possible I'm just well broken in for the idea."
"Books aren't real life," Marshall observes. There's no judgment in it — only that curious, cataloging tilt of his head, the one he gets when he's decided a thing is worth understanding.