Chapter 18 Eli
Eli
Moving her to the living room doesn’t work.
I get her seated and comfortable on the couch, tucked in with a blanket around her legs. Then I venture back into the kitchen and finish up our lunch. Her scent follows me, heavy and heady with a desire I haven’t indulged in years, and I can’t stop stealing glances in her direction.
She tugs at a part of me that has been dormant since losing Gloria.
Finishing up the food preparations doesn’t take long. I cook up the rest of the pancake batter while some bacon is frying, and I decide at the last minute to cut up some fruit that needs to be eaten. Soon, I’m on the couch with her, the two of us with massive plates of food in our laps.
Her scent invades my surroundings.
But her next question makes me ache.
“Did you and Amber’s mom do this much? Cooking together and stuff?”
The memory of Gloria slams into me, and it takes me a moment to work my answer around the knot forming in my throat.
“She couldn’t cook a baked bean out of a can,” I manage to say.
Lia’s giggle is divine, and it loosens a bit of the pain in my chest. “So, you did most of the cooking?”
“All of it,” I say as I pick up my fork and dig into my pancakes. “I didn’t mind, though. I loved watching her eat my food. She was always so…”
I feel Lia’s gaze on the profile of my face. “Yeah, I get it. It’s like when I watch people enjoy my baking. There’s pride, but also a sort of selfish motive to it, too. Like you know you did a good job simply because they’re enjoying it. It’s hard to explain.”
“You explained it pretty well to me,” I say as I peek over at her, taking in her gorgeous green eyes.
I’ve never seen eyes as green as hers.
I watch her movements as she takes a bite of the food. My lips unlock and the words come out before I can stop them. “We lost her during childbirth.”
Lia’s eyes bulge as she shifts a bit, turning her body to face me. “Wait, really? That’s what happened? I thought maybe you were divorced or something.”
I shake my slowly. “I wasn’t even there, either. When she passed.”
Her face twists into something like sympathy. Honestly, I’m just glad it’s not pity. I hate the look of pity people give me whenever I talk about Gloria.
“What happened, Eli? I mean, if you want to talk about it. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
I just shake my head as the memories drag me back to a moment I’ve done a terrible job of moving past.
“It… was just one of those things, you know? She had pre-eclampsia. It wasn’t like it was a shock or anything when she went into labor early.
We knew it was a risk. I got a call at the school from her mother telling me what was happening, and I left my classroom and raced home to pack things up.
We hadn’t even packed our hospital bags, you know?
And then her father called me and told me to drop everything and get to the hospital. She was gone before I even got there.”
“Oh, Eli.”
I don’t even realize my eyes are watery until I see Lia’s hand moving to my face. My hand beats her to the punch, and I lift my glasses to wipe my eyes.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
“No, no, no,” she says as she scoots a bit closer to me, her thigh against mine. “Don’t you ever be sorry for something like that. I’m sorry, for what you guys had to go through.”
I sniffle a bit before turning my head toward her. “I don’t talk about it much.”
“You should. It helps the healing process.”
I nod softly. “I talk about it when Amber wants to talk. But…”
Her hand falls to my knee. “Does Amber ask about her much?”
“She’s been full of questions lately, especially with her Omega status emerging early. She wonders if her mother was the same way. What her mother’s scent was. When her mother’s first heat was.”
“Pretty normal questions. I remember having those same ones when I emerged early.”
My mind is bouncing in so many different directions. There’s so much I wish to tell her. But I have to get something off my chest.
Lia needs to know where I stand with her.
I take a chance and place my hand on top of hers. “I want you to know that I feel a connection brewing with you.”
She searches my face. “Yeah?”
I nod as I gaze into her beautiful eyes.
“Yeah. I just—I don’t want you to think I’m not interested in you.
I am. I’m just more deliberate with the connections I make, especially with Amber going through what she’s going through right now.
It’s a vulnerable time for her, and I don’t want to rock that boat anymore than it’s already been rocked. ”
She smiles softly at me, and I feel like I’ve won the lottery. “I like deliberate.”
I gaze down at her for a while before I pull myself out of my trance. I need to lighten the mood. We are supposed to be hanging out and getting to know one another, not having a cry-fest over things in the past that we can’t change.
“We should eat before the food gets cold. Cheese grits are never good when cold,” I say.
Her hand moves away from my knee, and I almost regret ever mentioning the food. But she’s hungry, and she needs to eat. We sit in silence for a while, nothing but the scraping of silverware against plates to keep us company.
Until she finally opens up a little bit.
“My ARS almost killed me,” she says softly.
My chest tightens painfully as I snap my attention to her. “Seriously?”
She nods slowly, still looking down at her food. “I mean, I’m still here. Obviously. But it was rough going for a while. Did a stint in the hospital. Not sure I’ll ever dig myself out of that medical debt.”
I don’t even know where to start with my questions. “You don’t have health insurance?”
She scoffs. “What freelancer does?”
My food is long forgotten about, even as she still picks at hers. “Is that why you haven’t put away any money for your own bakery yet? You’re still paying all that off?”
Her shoulders sink a little bit, like something akin to defeat. “My credit score is about all I have now. I’ll need a good one if I’m ever going to secure a loan to open a bakery of my own.”
I take a chance and reach out, tucking a rogue strand of hair behind her ear so that I can see her a bit more clearly. Her hair curtains off her face when she bows her head like that.
I crook my finger beneath her chin and lift those gorgeous eyes to mine. “I can’t understand why a pack would let you go. What happened?”
She swallows thickly. “Nothing bad. We were just young and stupid, you know?”
“Want to talk about it, Alley Cat?”
She sighs and removes her chin from my grasp, and I don’t stop her. She opened up this conversation, but I don’t want to push. She takes a few more bites of her food and I follow her lead, focusing on my own since it’s already getting lukewarm.
But eventually, she speaks again. “They didn’t do anything wrong, if that’s what you’re asking.
It’s not like they tossed me out on my butt or whatever.
We just… my heat cycle was already erratic to begin with, you know?
It slammed into me during one of my deliveries, and I did my best to get home.
But I had to pull over on the side of the road and… well…”
“The rest is history?”
She snickers and takes another bite, so I do as well.
“Something like that. I don’t remember much from that heat.
Only that I woke up in a bed squished between two other Alphas with marks on my neck, and I figured, this is it, you know?
But you can’t make a pack that way. You can’t just bond like that without knowing someone.
Instincts alone don’t protect you. Logic is what protects you.
So, it went pretty much the way anyone figured it would go: as we learned more about one another, we figured out that neither of us were compatible with the other. And eventually, things just dissolved.”
I place my half-eaten plate off to the side and thread my arm against the back of the couch behind her. I cross my leg over my knee so that I can tilt my entire body toward her, so she knows she has my full attention.
“I’m so sorry, Lia.”
She shrugs and takes another bite. “I honestly didn’t know what was happening to me until about four days in.
The shivering. The lack of appetite. Unable to sleep.
Once the pain at my mark sites set in, I knew I needed to be somewhere.
I walked into the local ER, told them what happened, and they had me hooked up to IVs before I could even finish my story. ”
I reach out and slide my fingers through her hair. “Family didn’t come by to help take care of you? Or a friend, or anything?”
She shrugs. “I’ve always been sort of a loner. I’m an only child and my parents have already passed on. So, it’s just sort of me trying to figure things out. I’m doing the best I can, you know?”
So much loss for such a bubbly, vibrant woman. I want to scoop her into my arms and never let go. But before I can even think about such a thing, a scent wafts beneath my nostrils. They flare greedily, the sickly-sweet smell of cinnamon rolls drowning my lungs.
I already see the sheen of sweat beading against her brow.
“You okay?” I ask.
She takes another bite of food, but grimaces when she swallows.
I know that look. Her appetite is gone.
“Yeah, just…” She places her fork down onto her plate and sighs. “You can smell it, can’t you?”
“Your pre-heat? I can.”
Her cheeks blush. “I’ve been okay these last few days. I figured I’d be okay for another afternoon.”
I move from the couch and crouch in front of her, taking her hands within mine.
“Tell me what you need. A hot shower? I’ve got fluffy towels ready to go.
I’ve got a bathtub in my bathroom if you’d rather take one of those.
We can sit outside on the back porch with the nice, cool breeze. Whatever you need.”
She watches me, and I notice her pupils are larger than normal. Very large, in fact. The black is practically swallowing up that vibrant green I’ve come to adore.
Oh, I know what she needs.
I need to hear her say it, though.