Chapter Nineteen – Rourke
We spend the next few hours fishing, although we do take a break to eat lunch.
Jess is a natural, as much as she doesn’t want to be, and consistently catches more fish than me and Asher combined.
Asher, on the other hand, manages to catch the biggest fish of the day and pretends to pose with it like someone’s taking a picture of him and his catch before he releases it back into the water.
It’s a fun time, if you ignore what happened before we started fishing.
I didn’t mean to upset her, bringing it up.
Hell, I probably shouldn’t have brought it up at all.
What was I expecting? I’m here to make sure she gets through her first heat, a witness that she hasn’t been matched.
Telling her she’s my scent match goes against that.
Clearly, at the time I wasn’t thinking, but I couldn’t keep holding it in.
Each day just grew worse and worse, harder and harder; I thought it best to get ahead of things and clear the air.
Except, in doing so, I upset her and made her cry, and that’s the last thing I ever wanted to do. I feel like shit, but Jess seems to get better as the day wears on, so I try to push it from my mind for now.
It’s sometime in the afternoon when we start to notice the sky becoming cloudier and cloudier as the time rolls on, and it eventually gets to the point where you can’t see a single spot of blue amongst the gray. The moment we hear thunder rolling in the distance, we know it’s time to pack it up.
“Crap,” Asher says as he hurriedly reels in his current line. “These afternoon storms can be bad. One minute everything is fine, the next there’s hail and raindrops so big they hurt coming down. We should try to get back to the cabin as fast as we can.”
Jess makes her skepticism known by saying, “Come on. The storms can’t get that bad that fast—” And, no joke, before she finishes that statement, the clouds above let loose a wave of rain, and in a few seconds we’re drenched. She spits some rainwater out of her mouth and mutters, “Point taken.”
We hurry off the dock, though Jess has to slip on her shoes first. She kept them off all day.
She tucks her socks into her pockets and carries her rod, while Asher and I carry ours and make a beeline for the blanket, the basket, and the bait tins.
I grab the basket and shove the tins inside, while Asher folds the blanket and tosses it over his shoulder.
He offers to take the fishing rod from Jess once she catches up to us, but she refuses the aid.
All in all, it doesn’t take us much time to clean up and gather everything, and yet the sky is unwavering in its switch up. The rain comes down harder, more lightning gracing the darkening skies, and the sound of thunder becomes louder and louder.
Walking back in the rain isn’t the most fun thing.
You’d think the trees of the forest would protect you somewhat from the rain, but when it rains that hard that fast, the trees can only do so much.
Within a minute or two, the forest floor is drenched, and our shoes collect more and more mud as we go.
Thing is, you can’t exactly hurry, not when you’re juggling multiple things and the ground is slippery.
“You really weren’t joking,” I say, although I have to shout it thanks to the sheer level of noise the heavy rain makes. Nature is quiet until it isn’t. Can’t say I’ve ever been caught out in a storm like this before. Guess there is a first time for everything.
I toss a glance at Jess and find her pace slowing. She’s trying to avoid the muddiest areas of the ground, and she’s obviously failing. The omega is not all too good at keeping herself upright. Her balance is lacking.
“Give me that,” I say, slowing to walk beside her.
“No,” she hisses, “I got it. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re slipping left and right. At least you’d have both your hands free, might help you keep your balance. Give it to me.” I stop walking directly in front of her and go for the rod.
She jerks away from me, trying to prove a point or something, and in the process she nearly falls. The only reason she doesn’t is because I’m right there, ready to grab her—and unlike Jess, my reaction time is instant.
I grab her by the arm and steady her, and before she can say anything else, I take the fishing rod from her hands and add it to mine.
“I didn’t need your help,” she says, although I barely hear her words over the sound of the pouring rain. Lightning strikes in the distance, thunder booming loudly. If anything, the storm is continuing to get worse, not better. I’d rather not be out with so many lightning strikes.
“Come on!” Asher calls to us, a good fifteen feet ahead. “We’re not even halfway back yet.”
Jess and I exchange looks, though the look she sends me is much different than the one I send her. I can’t tell if she’s upset I want to help her or if she’s upset she couldn’t do anything to stop me from helping her.
Maybe it’s neither. Maybe needing my help now is a reminder of her needing my help in a more general sense, and she doesn’t like relying on me. That possibility hurts. If anything, she should know I’d do anything for her.
It’s what scent matches do.
She doesn’t know that, though. I have to remember to meet her where she’s at, and if she’s not ready to face facts, then I can’t push her into anything.
One thing at a time. We’ll get her through her heat and then we’ll figure out what comes next.
Regardless, no matter what happens, I want to make sure she gets her family’s inheritance.
We resume our pace, and we pick up speed.
As fast as Asher and I can move, we’re slowed by Jess and her shorter stature.
Nothing against her or her lack of balance, but I bet Asher and I could’ve made it back to the house in less than half the time without her, but of course, abandoning her out here isn’t on the table.
The sound of Jess slipping on the mud and the audible oof that follows causes me to stop and whirl to face her. What I see is the omega on her ass in the mud and an annoyed frown on her face.
“Shit,” she whispers, though I don’t hear her say it. I only see her mouth the word. She tries to get up, but she slips again and winces, and I wonder if she hurt something. Her ankle, maybe? Either way, she clearly can’t finish the walk back on her own, no matter how hard she tries.
I hand Asher the two rods. He gestures for me to give him the basket as well, shouting over the loud rain, “I got it. She needs help.” He’s more than willing to juggle everything while I focus on helping the omega who, I’m guessing, doesn’t like being helped.
Ironic, considering.
After I give Asher the basket too, I move to Jess, who’s now on her own two feet, but she’s using a nearby tree for support, not putting any weight on her left ankle.
She wears an adorable frown, though the adorableness wears off a bit, replaced by pure aggravation, when she realizes what I’m about to do.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses as she puffs herself up—as if she could scare me away from helping.
I stop when I tower over her. Like hell is she going to intimidate me into not helping her. “I’m giving you a choice: let me carry you, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder like I did the first night I was here. Your choice.”
The way she grinds her jaw and glares up at me tells me all I need to know: she really hates me right now. But I’m not stupid. I know she doesn’t hate me, not really. It’s all an act, a show, and up until recently, she was getting through life with everyone believing said act of hers.
Lightning lights up the dark sky, and right after the thunder comes along with it, Jess’s shoulders slump and she says, “Fine.”
She doesn’t need to say anything more. I grab her, heaving her up into my arms like she weighs nothing at all. Lifting her is like lifting a pack of feathers; I could carry her all day, every day, and never tire, never complain.
Jess, for her part, keeps her arms folded over her chest and her gaze averted, refusing to meet my stare the entire way back. In other words, she pouts the whole time. Honestly, I don’t expect anything less from her.
I follow Asher’s lead back to the house, being extra careful due to the precious cargo in my arms. We make good time back, I think, and as we walk up the few steps of the back patio, Mason appears just inside, a deep frown on his face.
He yanks open the door for us as we approach, demanding to know, “Didn’t you see the storm rolling in?”
Once inside, Asher sets the rods down, along with everything else as he says, “We lost track of time.” But his response is ignored pointedly when his brother sees Jess in my arms.
“What the fuck happened?”
I step over the threshold, and Mason shuts the door, locking out the sounds of the pouring rain that hasn’t let up. “She fell,” I tell him in a huff. “Hurt her ankle, I think.”
“My ankle’s fine,” Jess mutters with a roll of her eyes. “It’s just a little sore, that’s all.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask her. “Should I put you down right here and make you walk to your room then?”
She acts as though she’s seriously thinking about it. It’s a long few seconds before she whispers a defeated, “No. You can take me up the stairs.” Hearing her admit that, you’d think I was a dentist pulling her teeth without any type of pain management.
I slip off my muddy shoes before I carry her through the house.
Up the stairs we go, followed shortly by Mason and Asher, both clearly worried about her.
I say, “I know you wanted your room to be off-limits, but I think you should probably do your best to stay off that ankle for a while. Let us take care of you. With any luck, it’ll feel better before your heat hits. ”
When I reach her room, Asher rushes around me to open the door Jess keeps shut, even when she’s not in there—and the moment we step inside, I realize why.
Her scent. It’s everywhere. In the air, in the sheets, probably in the walls.