Chapter 24 #2
My laugh is a near snort, which makes her sit up and point at me.
“It’s true! You just formed your pack, so you wait. Those guys are going to dote on you and follow you around like lost puppies.”
I purse my lips to stifle a smile. “That doesn’t sound too bad to me.”
She scoffs. “They all say that at first.”
Demeter and Sephie, as Izzy calls her, both lift their heads at the same time and sniff the air a moment before the doorbell chimes.
Izzy’s face is all confusion as she sets her wine glass down and stands. “I wonder who that is.”
It isn’t long before I hear a frazzled and kind of dramatic female voice and the clicking of heels on the tile floor.
“I saw you have company, and I’m sorry for barging in, but please, I need you.”
Izzy’s laughter carries. “Come on in. Let me introduce you to my friend.”
Entering the living room beside Izzy is a gorgeous woman, tall and slender with straight blond hair cut short to around mid-ear, a curtain of bangs over her forehead. Her blue eyes are a bit wild as she looks around the room, but she seems to calm a bit after her visual sweep.
“Adley, this is Bec. Bec, Adley.”
Bec approaches from around the sectional, her hand out to shake mine.
She’s wearing a very expensive designer dress, black with an asymmetrical skirt and long sleeves, that looks poured on.
I recognize the style and fabric from, well, my own closet.
Her heels are way taller than anything I’d dare wear, and stilettos to boot, a shade of light pink that matches her manicured nails on the hand I shake.
“It’s very nice to meet you. I’m sorry to barge in like this, really. I just don’t have anywhere else to go.” She looks at Izzy. “I didn’t want to disturb Violet.”
Izzy’s head shakes comically quick. “No, no. No disturbing the very pregnant lady, please. Sit, I’ll bring wine and we’ll talk.”
Bec carefully perches on the other wing of the sectional, and we wait in awkward silence until Izzy returns, bringing not only a filled glass for Bec, but the rest of the bottle.
Bec brings the glass to her lips and downs the entire thing in an impressive three gulps, then pours herself another full glass.
Huh. They must do this often.
“Okay, spill. My guys and Adley’s are downstairs. Likely for a while.” Izzy sips her wine and raises an eyebrow at Bec, who shoots me an apologetic look.
“I’m hijacking your time.”
My head shakes automatically. “No, please. What’s going on?”
She lets out the longest sigh I think I’ve ever heard in my whole life.
“Men.”
“Here-here!” Izzy raises her glass and sips again.
And I’m… confused. “Someone needs to catch me up.”
After another gulp of wine, probably for fortitude, Bec leans forward. “Here’s the situation. I moved here a couple of years ago from L.A., where I had a very lucrative freelance job as a literary editor.”
“Violet was one of her friends-slash-clients,” Izzy supplies.
“For some gods-awful reason, I decided to move here. I blame Izzy.”
“I make the perfect scapegoat.”
“One holiday here with her pack and their and Violet’s families, and I was totally done for. Brain turned to mush.” She looks at me with great dramatic flair. “I bought a B&B.”
I return her gaze with mock horror. “No. Not a B&B!”
“I know, right? What the fuck was I thinking?” Another sip. “Figured I could run the place, hire help, and still do some freelance work on the side. And that was the plan. Until they showed up.”
“To be fair, she met them at my holiday party,” Izzy interjects, gesturing at her friend with her wine glass.
“Yes. As I said, that party turned my brain to mush.”
“Who are we talking about here?”
“A couple of dogs with a bone,” Bec says at the same time Izzy says, “Her mates.”
Ohhh… This is the friend Izzy and Violet mentioned who was “stubborn.”
I bite down on the inside of my lips to keep from laughing. I don’t think Bec would take kindly to my reaction.
“It’s infuriating,” she goes on. “Neither of them lived here when Izzy held that party. I didn’t expect them to both uproot their lives and relocate after meeting me.”
She didn’t?
“Bec. Bestie. You know why they did it. We’ve been over this a million times. If you’d just get off those shitty suppressants, you’d see things differently.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she grumbles.
I tilt my head and examine her. A lot of frustration there, that’s obvious. But there’s something else deep inside. Something I’ve seen before in friends of mine.
Insecurity. Fear. Pride.
But I can’t say that to someone I just met.
“I’m from one of the only official packs in L.A., so I never took the suppressants that affect the senses. I never thought much about how they knew which drugs had those side effects or not.”
Bec scrutinizes me, but not in an angry way, more like I’m an experiment she’s observing. “You’re a Pepper.” It’s a statement, but I nod to confirm anyway.
“Adley Pepper, that’s me.”
“I met your brother a few times.”
I cringe outwardly. “Which one?”
“Aaron.”
That’s two people who know my asshole brother here. “I’m sorry for your trauma.”
Bec laughs and finishes her second glass of wine, not refilling her glass this time. “Well, now that you’re caught up—”
“That’s not entirely true.” Izzy’s voice is just slightly slurred. She looks at me. “One of her mates, as I think I told you earlier, is my brother. Well, the other one is Matthew’s dad.”
I can’t school the shock on my face. I already knew about her brother, but the odds of the other Alpha being related to one of Izzy’s mates has to be minuscule. Yet, here we are.
Izzy laughs and laughs.
“So nice of you to make fun of my pain.”
“Oh, stahhhhp it. They’d both murder for you.”
“Each other?”
Izzy huffs, and Bec sighs.
“I apologize. I didn’t mean that.”
Izzy frowns, but says, “I know.”
After a moment of silence, I ask, “Why don’t you want to be with them? They obviously want to be with you.”
Bec contemplates—really contemplates—for what seems like forever before her sad blue eyes turn up at me.
“It used to be because my career meant more to me than anything. Success was all I ever cared about. Making money. But now…” She flops back into the back of the sofa, her whole body going limp, something I’m guessing is uncharacteristic for her.
“I just don’t know anymore. Habit? Fear of change?
I’ve been alone a long time. I always thought I preferred it that way. ”
“Are you happy?”
“No.” She says it immediately, and I think she even surprises herself.
“Well, don’t you deserve to be? What if being with your mates really changes your life for the better?”
Bec’s lips part and close, then part again on a humorless laugh. When she looks at me this time, her eyes are glassy. “Perhaps you’re right. I’ll think it over. Thank you, Adley.”
“Adley is good people!” Izzy shouts, her words a bit slurred. Sephie’s head rises from between us and she shoots her mama a death glare. “I’m sorry, babyyyy,” she whisper-coos.
“If I change my mind, this will be quite an adjustment.”
“But you’ll handle it. Because you’re Bec-motherfuckin’-Brown. Nobody gets in your way.”
“Except for me, apparently.”
Izzy makes a pffft-ing sound and puts her empty glass on the table. “Just kick yourself in the ass and go sexify your men.” She pauses. “But I don’t want to hear a word about it.” Izzy shudders.
It’s then that Sephie and Demeter both slide their pibble-mix bodies off the couch and trot away, heading upstairs.
“Nooo! Babies! Don’t leave meeee…”
Bec and I share a look and start laughing together.
We may have all just met, but I don’t know that I ever felt that I had truer friends in my life.