Chapter 7 #2
“Because some people are complete assholes.”
“My laptop.” She starts scanning the mess.
“Shit. My laptop.” She shoves aside a blanket, books, and a small cooler, and underneath, she opens up a secret panel in the floor where she pulls out a pink laptop and cell phone.
Checks them over quickly, shoulders dropping a fraction when the computer powers on.
I right the coffee container. Pick up a book that landed facedown and smooth the bent pages as best I can. She keeps moving, but slower now, opening a pouch. Checking inside. Closing it. Like every little thing she touches might be the one that finally tips her over.
“Anything missing?” I ask.
“Not that I can see. So what the hell were they searching for? They didn’t touch the cash or cards I keep in the pouch.”
She sits on the edge of the mattress platform, soil still smeared over her fingers. Then she lifts her chin a little and puts that blank expression back on. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”
She’s in a wrecked van, in a pink bikini with bare feet, somebody has gone through her things and slashed her tires, and she’s telling me she’s fine like maybe if she says it flatly enough, it’ll become true.
“Adelaide, you don’t need to pretend.” I wait until she looks at me. “You’re not fine. You don’t have to be fine for me.”
She blinks a few more times, eyes shining, and something twists hard in my chest at the sight of it.
I want to tear apart whoever did this to her.
Her scent is faint from here but still in my head, and I have to fight the urge to pull her into my arms and breathe more of it in, to fill my lungs with her, and make her understand that she’s safe now.
“I’ll check the spare.” I hop out as she crouches by the storage under the mattress platform. I go around to the other side of the van.
A second tire is cut too, a clean slice through the sidewall. “Fucking bastards.” I stare at it for a second, something hot and ugly rising up in my chest. I call out, “You don’t happen to have two spare tires?”
She joins me around the side of the van, despair pulling at her expression. “Just fuck! I only have one.” The gold ring in her belly catches the sun, and I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed it until now. She looks young all of a sudden, worn and exhausted.
“I just need to get it sorted,” she says. “Then I’ll be fine.”
There it is again, her reassurance to herself.
“Where are you gonna stay while it gets sorted?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Warm air moves through the lot, waves rolling somewhere beyond the trees.
I check out the cuts again, then look back at her. “You got any idea who did this?”
She gives a short laugh, but there’s nothing funny in it. “Nope.” She scrubs a hand over her face, then stares at the ground.
I look her for a second. “Those two guys on the beach earlier?”
Her gaze flicks up.
“The ones you kept checking from the water,” I add.
She shrugs, but it’s tight. “Maybe. I don’t know who they were. Figured just some dick Alphas spotting a single Omega and deciding to be weird about it. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Something hard settles in my chest at that. “They were watching you.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
I study the two slashed tires, then look at the wreck inside the van. “Feels like more than weird and as if they were definitely searching for something.”
Her mouth tightens. “Yeah.”
I nod once, already pulling my phone from my pocket.
Her eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
“Organizing for a tow truck to take your van to my local mechanic, who’ll change out your tires while we go to lunch. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.” I offer her a smile.
Then she hugs herself and starts nibbling on the corner of her lower lip, while I get on the phone and speak to my buddy at the garage.
In no time, everything’s moving. I grab her surfboard from the grass and slide it into the back of the van, wedging it in so it won’t shift.
“Pack a small bag,” I tell her. “Just enough for a few days. Depends on what my guy has in stock and how fast he can get the right tires.”
“Thank you. Seriously.” She looks at me, a little softer now. “You didn’t have to help me, but you did.”
I shrug. “Didn’t feel optional.” That gets the faintest flicker of a grin.
She starts pulling clothes together, shaking sand off things, and stuffing them into a backpack.
I stay out of her way, righting what I can, stacking what’s salvageable, trying not to look too hard at how careful she is with that cracked pot when she wraps it in a T-shirt and tucks it into the bag herself.
After a minute, she glances over at me. “I know you want to ask, but the plant was the first thing I got when I bought my van, and I kinda talk to it when I’m alone. So it feels mean to leave it behind.”
“No judging at all.”
“So what do you do, aside from surfing? Unless that’s your thing.”
I huff a laugh. “Right now, it’s a bit of surfing and helping out a friend of ours with on local luaus for tourists.”
Her brow lifts. “Very noble.”
“I’m basically public service.”
She snorts, then zips the bag halfway. “And before that?”
I look down at the tire for a second, then at the mess inside the van.
“Special operations. Military.”
That quiets her.
“Did jobs I can’t talk about for people who’d deny I ever did them.
Was in it for years. Got out after a mission went bad and we lost someone.
” I keep my voice even, though that part of my life still feels branded into me.
I wasn’t in for long compared to some, but it was long enough that some nights I still get dragged back into it in my sleep.
I’ve learned how to live with the ghosts, though, and how to keep moving.
Having Ace and North at my side helps more than I’ll ever say out loud.
She’s just watching me.
I lean back against the van, not ready to open up about a past I’ve locked up and thrown away the key to.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.” I nod once. “Me too.”
For a second, it’s just the breeze moving through the lot and the sound of traffic somewhere beyond the palms.
Then her fingertips brush my arm. “You’re also weirdly calm about being dragged into someone else’s mess.”
“Wasn’t dragged.”
“No?”
I shake my head. “Volunteered.”
That finally gets a real smile out of her.
“There she is,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I nod at the bag. “Ready to go?”
A few moments later, she pulls baggy shorts over the bikini bottoms, shrugs on a little crop top, steps into flip-flops, and zips the bag. Then she swings it onto one shoulder.
I take it from her before she can argue, and she locks up the van. We stroll over to my bike, and she stops dead the second she sees it.
That makes me grin. Matte black. Gold detailing. Low, wide, mean-looking enough to start conversations. People are always staring at her.
“That’s yours?” she asks.
“Yep, and she’s sexy as hell.”
She circles the bike slowly, taking her time, and I just let her. “She got a name?”
“Fever.” I rest a hand on the tank.
“That’s a little dramatic.”
I grin. “She earned it.”
She considers that, then nods. “Okay. I’ll allow it.”
I hand her the helmet from the storage compartment and stow her bag away. When I glance back, she’s standing there with that same tight, worried look on her face, staring past me toward the van.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her.
Her eyes flick to mine. “Is it?”
“I’m going to make sure of it.”
Something shifts behind her gaze, and I doubt she believes me, but once I set my mind to something, I fucking do it.
She shakes her head like she doesn’t know what to do with me, then pulls on the helmet.
I grab a shirt from the compartment, tug it on and then swing a leg over the bike. “Get on.”
She steps closer, one hand landing on my shoulder as she climbs on behind me, and the second her body settles against my back, every instinct in me sharpens.
Yeah. This is going to be an issue.
I reach back for her hands, and she lets me pull them around my waist. She shifts closer, finding her balance, and then she’s there, warm against my back, close enough that I catch her scent properly for the first time. Mint. Flowers. And underneath it, something like chocolate. Captivating.
“You’re gonna want to hold on.”
“I know how to—”
I start the engine.
Fever roars to life beneath us, loud and hungry, and Adelaide’s arms go from polite to tight in about half a second. She locks on to me with a startled laugh against my shoulder.
We roll out of the lot and onto the road. Warm air hits us straight on. Palms blur past. The ocean flashes blue through gaps in the buildings we pass. Behind me, she presses in a little closer, and fire burns off her body. And I like that more than I should. Too much, probably.
I think about her van. The slashed tires. That cracked terracotta pot wrapped carefully in a T-shirt like it matters enough to save regardless of what else gets broken. I think about how she looked when trying not to fall apart in front of me.
Something protective and rough stirs inside me.
Fever opens up on the empty road, roaring, and usually this is enough for me. Wind. Speed. Salt in the air. The clean pull of the bike under my hands.
Today I’ve got an Omega wrapped around my back, trusting me not to let her fall, and already that feels a little too damn good.
I like her too much already.
That’s the problem. Otherwise, today was a very good day to go surfing.