Chapter 7 Iris
iris
A Week Later
The coffee cup is doing most of the heavy lifting today. Practice is in full swing, the team running drills in the February cold while I sit on the aluminum bleachers with my clipboard and my laptop and a cup of black coffee that I haven't actually sipped from in twenty minutes.
It's pressed against my face instead, the steam curling up past my nose, because every time Milo laughs on the field or Quentin makes a tackle, my scent warms and sweetens and broadcasts exactly what I'm thinking about to anyone with a functioning nose.
Which, on a football field full of Alphas and Betas, is everyone.
So the coffee stays close. A scent shield disguised as a caffeine habit. Nobody questions it. The team bookkeeper who drinks too much coffee is a far less interesting story than the coach's daughter, who can't stop her scent from going soft every time the Vark twins come within fifty feet of her.
Milo catches my eye from the field, his helmet tucked under his arm, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
He grins at me, and I have to look down at my clipboard and pretend to be deeply invested in equipment costs before my face gives me away.
My pen marks a number I'll have to erase later because I wrote a seven where a four should be.
Quentin doesn't look at me the entire practice. That's how I know he's aware of exactly where I'm sitting. When he lines up for the next rep, his position shifts just slightly, angling him toward my section of the bleachers. Subtle enough that no one else would catch it. I catch it.
The week since the auction has been the strangest of my life. I thought my attraction to the twins would fizzle out like all my relationships do but it hasn’t.
Everything has been really, really good. For the first time in a while, ordinary moments suddenly have depth to them because you're sharing them with people who see you. Not the version you've constructed, not the role you're filling, but the messy, complicated, sandal-wearing reality underneath.
Milo sent me a photo during his anatomy lecture three days ago.
His textbook, open to a diagram of the skeletal system, with a heart drawn around it in red pen and the caption "thinking of Q.
" I laughed so hard in the middle of the library that the girl at the next table shushed me.
Quentin's response, when Milo forwarded it, was a single period.
No words. Just a dot. Milo interpreted this as "profound emotional acknowledgment.
" Quentin said it was a typo. It was not a typo.
Two nights ago, a study session at my apartment turned into Quentin quizzing himself on the bones of the hand while I sketched at the kitchen table. Milo was sprawled in my nest with his own textbook, providing increasingly wrong answers to every question Quentin asked out loud.
"Metacarpals," Quentin said.
"Bless you," Milo replied.
"That's not—"
"Gesundheit."
Quentin threw a pillow at him. Milo caught it, tucked it behind his head, and continued reading upside down with his feet against the wall.
I drew both of them while they argued about whether the hyoid bone counted as part of the skull.
It doesn't. Milo was very committed to his position that it should.
Yesterday, between second and third period, I pulled Milo into an empty classroom by the front of his jacket.
His back hit the door, his hands finding my hips immediately, his head tipping back against the wood.
"Someone's going to catch us," he whispered, his scent already going sweet, his fingers tightening on my waist.
Those moments, the stolen ones, they're what I think about when I'm sitting here pretending to care about cleat budgets. The private architecture of a relationship that nobody knows exists, built in text threads and late nights and empty classrooms, all of it invisible to the people around us.
The whistle blows, signaling a water break, and the team disperses toward the sideline. I keep my eyes on my laptop, typing numbers that may or may not be accurate, the coffee cup positioned strategically at my side.
A shadow falls across my screen.
"Hey, Iris." Chad's voice carries a particular blend of confidence and entitlement that makes my skin crawl.
He drops onto the bleacher beside me, close enough that his knee almost touches mine.
A water bottle dangles from his hand, the Alpha breathing hard from the drill, his sandy hair dark with sweat and still somehow shellacked into place.
"Chad." I don't look up from my screen. I haven’t had to deal with Chad or Kevin personally since the auction but there’s been a lot of glaring and huffing. They puff out their chests like fucking birds trying a mating dance and constantly pick on Milo during drills.
Milo thinks it’s funny. Quentin looks like he’s going to blow a fuse but neither he nor I can do anything about it unless we want to reveal that the auction night stemmed into more.
"So." He takes a long drink, making me wait, like the pause is supposed to build anticipation.
"How was your charity date? With the Vark twins?
" He clicks his tongue as he takes another swig.
"Must've been interesting. A Beta and an Omega. Together. On a date with an Alpha." He’s asked the question before and I pushed it off but mostly because I’ve made it a point not to stay in one place.
I’ve let down my guard lately. "It was fine. Thanks for asking."
"Just fine?" He leans closer. "Because I noticed you all left together after the auction. Seemed like more than fine."
My fingers stop on the keyboard. The urge to bare my teeth prickles at the base of my skull, an Alpha instinct that I've spent my whole life suppressing in moments like this. Instead, I close my laptop, pick up my coffee, and take a slow sip, purposefully slurping as loud as I can to annoy the guy.
"The auction was a fundraiser, Chad. People go home after fundraisers. That's how events work."
"Right." He nods, but his eyes move between me and the field where the twins are stretching. "Just seems like you've been in a better mood lately. Happier. More... distracted."
"My mood isn't your business."
"Everything about you is my business, Iris. It's been my business for over a year."
The sentence hangs between us. He says it like it's romantic. Like persistence is the same thing as devotion. Like wanting someone who has told you no a billion times makes you dedicated rather than delusional. Sometimes, I wish my father would put a stop to shit like this. I know he sees it but I’ve also told him more times than I can count that I can handle myself.
If I speak up now, it’ll mean any connection with the Vark twins will be scrutinized.
"Your water break is almost over," I tell him, turning my attention back to my laptop.
He lingers for a beat, before pushing off the bleacher and jogging back to the field.
I wait until he's out of range to let out a sigh. Fuck. I had hoped the lack of Chad comments meant that he took a defeat after the auction. It seems he’s just been biding his time.
Which is worse because while Chad is annoying, he’s also unpredictable.
After practice, my father catches me in the hallway outside his office. He's got his playbook under one arm and a look on his face that means he's noticed something and he's deciding how directly to address it.
"You seem good," he says, falling into step beside me.
"I am good."
"Happier than usual. Lighter." He glances at me sideways. "Any particular reason?"
"Can't a person just be in a good mood?"
"A person can. My daughter, specifically, is usually in a good mood for a reason." He holds the door open for me as we step outside. "You'd tell me if something was going on?"
"Of course."
I hate myself a little for how easy the lie is.
My father has been the only constant in my life since I was twelve years old, since the morning he sat me down at the kitchen table and told me that my mother wasn't going to get better.
He deserves honesty. He deserves to know that his daughter has been sneaking two football players into her apartment for the past week and that she's happier than she's been in years because of it.
But telling him means making it real in a way I'm not ready for. It means watching his face change, watching him do the math between his daughter and two of his players, watching the coach and the father collide.
"I'd tell you," I repeat, and he nods once and lets it go. But his eyes hold mine for a beat longer before he turns toward the parking lot.
That night, the nest feels different with just me in it.
I settle against the pillows with my phone balanced on my stomach, the group chat already buzzing.
Milo named it "Three's Company (Derogatory)" against both Quentin's and my objections, and nobody has been able to agree on a replacement since.
Milo sends a voice memo of himself attempting to pronounce "sternocleidomastoid.
" He gets about halfway through before it devolves into syllables that don't belong to any language.
Quentin responds with a voice memo of just silence, ten full seconds of nothing, which Milo immediately interprets as "a powerful artistic statement. "
My stomach hurts from laughing, my body curled around a pillow, and somewhere between Milo's fourth attempt and Quentin's second silent response, the thought catches up to me.
This is the part I wasn't prepared for. Not the sneaking around or the risk.
The part where I'm lying in my nest at the end of the day, laughing until my ribs ache, and I realize I'm not performing.
Just texting two people who know about the nest and the math and the sandals, who saw all of it and stayed anyway.
I twist around to put the phone down, ready to settle in when there’s a knock on the door. “No one should be coming through,” I mumble, checking my phone. There’s no new messages but when a second knock hits my ears, I pad to the front door.
The peephole shows both Vark twins standing in my hallway. Milo is holding a bag of takeout, his hair still damp from a shower. Quentin is holding a large travel mug, a tea tag dangling over the side, steam curling from the lid. They look at each other when I open the door, then back at me.
"We didn't coordinate this," Milo says, gesturing between the takeout and the tea. "I swear."
"We absolutely coordinated this," Quentin says.
A grin pulls across my face as I step aside to let them in.