Thirty
THIRTY
Byron
MIA DIMITRIADIS HAD no idea what she was doing with her life, and I wasn’t sure why that fact niggled under my skin like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. An unhappy female omega barreling toward a nasty divorce was in no way my problem... except for the part where she was crashing in the same house I lived in for the next few weeks.
Well, that and the fact that she somehow had Luca tied up in knots. More tied up in knots than usual , that was to say.
I watched her trying to decide whether or not to take my offer of driving her to the grocery store at face value. Speaking of faces, hers was an open book, reflecting every emotion and reaction in real time, along with her flowery scent. She hadn’t learned to wear a mask. Not the way Luca had. Not the way the rest of us had.
“Okay,” she said after a slight pause. “I, um... I was going to hit the Schnucks market off Ladue Road. Do you guys have any reusable shopping bags? I couldn’t find them in the kitchen.”
“Not that I know of,” I told her, since apparently, she had a highly inflated view of both how serious we were about grocery shopping and how much effort we put into saving the environment.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ve probably got some jammed into a moving box somewhere, but that’ll have to wait for another day.”
I made an agreeable noise and herded her out the front door. I hadn’t bothered to park the car in the garage since I’d only been checking in on her. She gave a little squeak and stopped dead on the front porch, staring at the red two-door coupé in the circle drive.
“Is that what I think it is?” Her voice and scent conveyed sudden excitement.
My dick began to sit up and take notice, because sudden girlish excitement suited Mia a lot better than uncertainty and nervousness.
“If you think it’s a 1985 Audi Quattro, then yes,” I said, unable to keep the hint of smugness out of my tone.
What can I say? Chicks dig the car.
“ You drive a classic Audi Quattro ?” she asked, breathless. “Oh, my god! Where did you even find it?”
Some chicks dug the car more than others, it seemed. She led the way to the car, wide-eyed.
“I got it at an estate auction,” I said. “Some guy in Illinois had it parked in his barn with a tarp thrown over it for thirty years. When he died, his heirs found the thing sitting there and had no idea how to value it. I picked it up for about the same price as a slightly used Hyundai and spent a few thousand restoring it.”
“It’s gorgeous ,” she said, reaching out a hand toward the flared quarter panel over a wheel well. Then she froze, glancing at me.
I couldn’t help the swell of uncomplicated amusement and pride that splashed up against the wall of my customary cynicism. “You can touch it if you want. It isn’t a museum piece.”
She wrinkled her nose at me before running gentle fingers over the distinctive lines and angles of the forty-year-old sports car.
“This is so cool ,” she said. “Is this seriously your daily driver?”
“It seriously is,” I assured her, a smile tugging at one corner of my lips despite my best efforts. I unlocked the doors and opened hers for her, watching her settle into the rally-style leather seat.
“Thanks,” she said, with the air of an omega who wasn’t used to people opening car doors for her.
I got in and started the engine, which rumbled into life with the distinctive rough purr of an inline-five.
“Mmm,” she said, closing her eyes and snuggling into the creamy leather of the seat in a way that wasn’t doing a damn thing for my trouser situation.
I depressed the clutch and put the car in first, pulling away from the house. “So, where did you develop your lust for classic cars?” I asked. “I didn’t realize there was much crossover between gearheads and gourmet chefs.”
She let out a soft noise of self-deprecation. “You’ll laugh at me.”
Intrigued, I pulled onto the road and accelerated smoothly through second gear and into third. “Promise I won’t.”
“I’m not a gearhead,” she admitted. “It’s just this car specifically. My mother is a British TV addict.”
I took a moment to try and puzzle that out.
“Okay. Not sure I’m seeing the connection...?” I prompted.
I caught her shaking her head at herself in my peripheral vision.
“Sorry. She used to watch BBC America all the time when I was a kid, and sometimes I watched with her. There was a car like this in Ashes to Ashes . British crime drama,” she explained in response to my blank look. “Set in the eighties. Starred Philip Glenister and Keeley Hawes?”
“Never heard of it,” I admitted.
“I really loved that show,” she said, nostalgia overtaking her tone. “Mostly for the music, but also for this car. Apparently, they’re great for car chases.”
“I wouldn’t know.” I was losing the battle against my smile. “I’m afraid my car-chase days were over well before I picked up this beauty.”
Ladue was too rich to have any food deserts, and the drive to the store was a short one. I spent the last part of it silently reciting baseball statistics until my dick finally got the memo that we were shopping for food, not pussy.
Christ, why did she have to smell so good?
I trailed in her wake, watching the professional chef navigate her natural habitat of the produce section.
“How does everyone feel about spice?” she asked, pausing by a display of what seemed like a wholly unnecessary number of fresh pepper varieties.
“I’m fine with it, I’ve seen Luca pack away some fairly eye-watering curry, and Zalen has been known to substitute habanero sauce for ketchup,” I told her. “Not sure about Emiel.”
Even now, thinking about the big alpha brought a surge of frustration. I put it aside with some difficulty.
She nodded. “Got it. Sauce on the side, just in case.”
“What’s on the menu tonight, anyway?” I asked, trying not to picture two omegas in my bedroom for dessert.
She shot me a sidelong glance. “If you can’t figure it out from the shopping list, I really am going to worry about how you four manage to feed yourselves.”
I snorted, silently accepting the challenge. Three kinds of peppers went in the cart, followed by a selection of tomatoes, onions, avocados, limes, lettuce, cheese, spices, artisan tortillas, rice, frozen shrimp, and a box of something that claimed to be vegan chorizo.
“So, lasagna, then?” I asked innocently.
She snort-laughed and threw a bag of red beans at my chest.
After returning Mia and her haul of ingredients to the house, I resisted the urge to linger. There was work to be done, and the temptation to do something reckless like suggesting a repeat of our night at the hotel was too strong.
I didn’t like the way it had felt to wake up next to her on that sterile pillowtop mattress. Or rather, I had liked it. A lot . That was the problem.
One thing Luca and I firmly agreed on was that both of us had no business getting within a hundred yards of a relationship . You could only be so broken inside before it just wasn’t fair to other people to impose your baggage on them.
That was why Luca and I worked together, to the extent that we did. The two of us knew enough to keep emotions out of it. All the benefits of a relationship, with none of the risks. I knew the shape of his sharp edges. He knew the shape of mine.
No unreasonable expectations.
I sat in the Quattro, preparing to head back to East St. Louis and my job. Unbidden, my fingers traced the ugly divot of a long-healed bullet wound, surrounded by an expensive and intricate tattoo that totally failed to hide the damned thing.
Pressing on the scar didn’t hurt. Scars didn’t denote the presence of pain, so much as the absence of feeling.
My flashbacks were rare these days. But as I sat in the driveway with the engine idling, fragments of images rose before my eyes, obscuring the familiar trees and pavement of the driveway.
It was dark, the streetlights on the main road barely penetrating the wide alley between an abandoned shoe factory and a run-down warehouse. The sound of gunshots echoed off the brick walls with an almost physical force, the deafening blasts stabbing through my skull.
I’d had a headache to start with—caught between one drunken, drug-fueled bender and the next. The nine-millimeter Sig felt heavy and cold in my hand.
I was a nobody in this gang. Before, it had usually been enough to flip up the hem of my T-shirt, displaying the pistol grip sticking up from my waistband. On a handful of occasions, I’d pulled it out and brandished it, just to prove I wasn’t dicking around, and that I wouldn’t be an easy mark.
Now bullets were flying back and forth in the enclosed space, pinging off walls, sending chips of brick dust flying.
It’s war now, fuckers , G had said, checking the magazine on his Glock.
I’d strutted and trash-talked with the rest of them, secure in the knowledge that no rival gang trying to move in on our territory would get away with it.
Screams sounded in the alley in front of me. Several familiar silhouettes went down, falling with limp, wet thuds. I pointed the Sig in the general direction of the alley mouth, frozen in place and unable to pull the trigger.
“Shoot, you useless little cunt!” G snarled from beside me, firing off half a dozen rounds.
I opened my mouth, desperate to say something... to tell him we needed to retreat, to run . Before I could find the words, a heavy impact slammed into my left side. I staggered and went down under the force. It felt like a punch to the gut, but it didn’t hurt.
Why didn’t it hurt ?
Dazed, I lifted a hand to the side of my torso. My shirt felt warm and wet. My vision swam as I lifted the hand and stared at it in the uncertain light from the streetlamp filtering in. The palm and fingers were dark and shiny, like I’d spilled ink over them. A rich, metallic tang filled the air.
I blinked stupidly at my hand, trying to bring my surroundings into focus. More shouts and cries sounded from all around me as the walls of the alley began to spin in slow, dizzying circles.
And then, the pain hit.
I inhaled sharply, heart thudding as the serene surroundings of a sun-drenched, tree-lined property in Ladue blotted out the memory of an East St. Louis alley at night. My hands sat at ten o’clock and two o’clock on the worn vinyl of a forty-year-old steering wheel.
What the hell had brought that on?
With a sharp shake of my head, I slowed my breathing and let the adrenaline shakes drain away. Still feeling faintly nauseous, I put the car into gear, heading away from the house and the sweet-smelling omega inside.
Luca was falling for Mia, and that realization filled me with a different kind of disquiet. Luca and I were a known quantity. We had an understanding . But now Luca was making noises about bringing Mia in as our third... and I had no idea what that would mean for me.
For us .
I turned onto the main road that led to the interstate, putting my foot down harder than I needed to. The car growled its approval, leaping forward into traffic.