Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
LIAM
Juggling the phone to my other ear, I slide the grocery list out from under the magnet on the fridge. It’s from our last vacation to Hawaii.
“I know, Chantel. It’s Beckett’s fault Paxton is out injured too.” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Everyone is rabid right now. The Scorpions could totally pull off a win here. We are talking about the cup. Beckett is going to catch flak for it.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Beckett’s agent is fierce, but she’s a worrier and will plan for every contingency.
“It’s a team, it’s not the Beckett show. He’s not responsible for…”
“The podcast bros…”
“Fuck those guys.”
“The podcast bros,” she repeats, “are filling air time with rumors. Good boy Beckett is off the rails some are saying. I’m looking at a promo image with Beckett’s bloody nose and a banner that reads ‘CTE?’. This is the problem with his squeaky clean image.”
I sigh. This has been Chantel’s favorite talking point for a while now. Beckett has been so scandal-free, it’s impossible to keep him in the news. And that matters for his brand deals.
“You want me to send him out to rob a little old lady crossing the street?”
“Liam. Is everything alright? You don’t ever get bitchy with me.”
“Yes. Fine,” I say through gritted teeth.
Nothing is fine. Pierce hasn’t been home in a few days.
Beckett is barely taking the concussion seriously.
He’s embarrassingly giddy about this omega that doesn’t seem to have a digital footprint at all.
And, oh yeah, we’re being blackmailed by the father of my dead first love who my other first love is convinced he killed. Everything is fucking peachy.
The silence from Chantel is telling.
“Alright. What’s the move here?”
“Give the podcast bros something else to talk about.” She doesn’t say ‘duh,’ but I feel it in her voice anyway.
“Announce another summer camp for at-risk youth?” I suggest.
“We’ve done that.”
“A donation?”
“Not unless it’s the GM donating his suspension salary somewhere. The optics will put the team in a good light, not Beckett.”
I rack my brain. “Want me to set up a bar fight with him and Bugrov?”
“That’s not the worst idea.”
“I was joking.” I fish my keys out of the bowl and straighten a stack of mail.
“We need something low-key, low-stakes, but…”
“Gossip-worthy.”
“Exactly.” I can hear the excitement in her tone.
“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? Come up with something, and I’ll work on getting Beckett to agree.” I end the call and pull on my coat.
I take a minute to run my fingers through my hair, checking it in the mirror by the door.
A flash of silver catches my eye. I’m blaming every goddamn gray hair on Pierce.
I flip my keys, savoring the heavy thunk of the fob against my palm.
I set the alarm and flip off the lights before pulling open the door and almost colliding with Ash.
She’s caught in a sunbeam with her foot on the first step.
Her face cycles through startled, alarmed, then lands on neutral.
The black coat she’s wearing is a size too big, zipped all the way up.
She almost looks like a kid wearing a hand-me-down from an older sibling.
Something about that sticks with me, like a post-it note on everything I know about Ash.
“Sorry, I was just…” she starts, taking a step back onto the walkway.
“Hey, Ash,” I say, struggling to be casual. Shit, what now? Beckett mentioned something about a date yesterday, but I sent him off to the doctor with Pierce.
Ash glances over her shoulder at the rideshare car that’s already pulling away.
I don’t love the idea of her being alone in the house. There’s something off about this girl, something I can’t place. But I’m not going to be rude about it.
“I was just about to run to the supermarket. Beckett had a doctor’s appointment. He’ll be back in an hour maybe,” I say.
She looks back over her shoulder again, like she can call the car back.
“You could stay and wait for him, or come with me?” I hear my own voice go up at the end, selling it with a smile I’ve practiced for years. “I just have to pick up a few things for dinner.”
She hesitates, then nods. “Okay.” She steps down from the porch, keeping a careful distance.
“Great,” I say, already regretting it. Do I want to be alone with her? My heart thuds against my ribs. I close the door behind us and walk around her, leading the way to my car.
The Charger chirps as I hit the unlock button on my fob. I pull open the passenger side for her.
“This is yours?” she asks, running a hand along the roof.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling a stupid pride. “Kind of my baby. Always wanted a big muscle car as a kid.”
She swallows, nods, and slides in. I close her door and hurry to the driver’s side.
The car’s engine purrs, like an extremely loud, satisfied cat.
I buckle up, and as I reach across my chest, her scent hits me.
Summer peaches, sun-warmed, sweet and fresh.
Not pie. Or candy. I wipe my wrist across my forehead. Am I sweating?
I put the car in gear, but hesitate before letting off the brake. “You, uh…” My voice cracks. Christ. “You want to put your seatbelt on?”
“Oh. Right.” She laughs, soft and embarrassed, and clicks it into place. “Nice car,” she says, and this time her tone is heavier. It doesn’t seem like she’s impressed with the luxury of it like a gold digger should be.
I watch her for a second. She touches the dash like the car is important to her too. There’s more to her than she’s letting on, and I’ll be damned if I can’t figure out what.
The market is only a five-minute drive. And that’s five minutes too long to be in a car with an omega. With this omega. I unbutton my coat. My dash tells me it’s forty-nine degrees out. At the light, I steal a second to look her up and down.
“It’s cold out.” I kick the heat on and crank it all the way up, angling the vents towards her. “Are you warm enough?”
“I thought Nashville was in the South.” She giggles. “I didn’t know it would be cold like this.”
“Not from Nashville?”
“No. I’m from Florida. Clearwater.” She throws that last part out like it was a mistake.
“Nashville gets plenty hot in the summer. You’ll feel right at home.”
We pull into the parking lot of the upscale market. I usually get groceries delivered or do a big Costco run, but I want to pick up steaks to grill, hoping Pierce will be home tonight.
I glide the Charger into a spot right by the door.
Not my usual choice. I’d rather walk an extra hundred feet than have some yahoo in a Ford F-150 who doesn’t know how to park end up dinging my door.
Ash is out of the car, shutting her door before I even make it to her side.
Wow, okay. My level of instant anger and irritation at that is a wee bit irrational.
I wait for her to fall in step beside me. She’s not tiny, not really, but I shorten my steps to match hers as I snag a cart. The doors whoosh open to soft classical music.
“Wow.”
“What?” I ask, pausing next to a display of hot house-grown cherry tomatoes.
“This place is fancy. And expensive. Papa always says rich people pay extra for pretty things.” She touches a Sumo orange and quickly snatches her hand back like she’s going to get in trouble, jamming them in her pockets.
“Do you cook?” I put the tomatoes in the cart with two of the oranges.
“No, I’m a terrible omega. I usually eat at the diner, or get ramen noodles from the dollar store.”
I remember those days. Buying a pack of ramen and stealing three more when my birth pack decided to buy drugs rather than food. She said she didn’t like broccoli. I reach across that display for green beans. Everyone likes green beans, right?
An alpha is inspecting a display of mangoes.
His eyes graze across Ash, and a smile pulls up the corner of his mouth.
I step in front of her and direct her out of the produce section.
We walk down the cereal aisle, and she flaps her arms a little like a baby bird.
I toss in this high-fiber high-protein brand that no one eats but me.
I hide the Lucky Charms. No one needs to know about my 3 a.m. addiction.
“This is weird,” Ash says, and I’m not sure she meant to say it out loud.
“What is?”
“Walking through a grocery store without a cart.”
“Oh, here.” I shift the cart in front of her, moving my hands to the left-hand side. “We can share.”
As she delicately puts her hands on the handle, her shoulder brushes mine. I unbutton my coat and pull it open.
I pick up steaks and chocolate milk. I know I’m missing things, but her scent is overpowering everything. And it’s way too fucking hot in here today.
There’s only one checkout lane open, and a beta couple is holding everything up, arguing about coupons.
I know the classical music they pump in is supposed to be posh and soothing, but it’s getting on my nerves.
Ash is looking through a display right at the register meant for impulse buying, picking each item up, giving it a sniff and setting it down.
“Are you on the hockey team too?” Ash looks at me from under her lashes.
I laugh. “No.”
“So, what do you do?”
“I help Pierce manage his gym and Beckett with his career. I do some computer stuff.”
“You must be smart.” She’s pretending not to study me, just like I’m pretending not to study her.
“That’s a new brand.” I point to the lip balm display. “FOBO. For Omegas, By Omegas. They’ve got some really cool contests on social media right now.” I take out my phone. “What’s your Insta? I’ll send it to you.”
“Oh, I’m not a…” She cuts herself off and looks down, avoiding eye contact. “Social media is dumb.”
Motherfucker. She was going to say, ‘I’m not allowed.’ I know it. She was going to say it and choked up because she knew it was wrong. My anger and irritation now is very rational. Who the fuck is holding her leash?
The cashier says “next” twice before I actually hear it.
“I’m going to get this,” she says, taking a few crumbled bills out of her pocket.
“Just put it on the belt.” I pull the cart back so she can go in front of me.
“Nah, it’s okay.”
“Ash. Put it on the belt.”
“No. I got this.”
“Ash.”
“How much?” She hands the little tin to the cashier and holds out her bills.
“I swear to god, don’t you dare take her money. Ring everything up.”
The cashier with his pink hair and lip ring looks between me and Ash with a raised eyebrow. Without taking his eyes off me, he scans the tin and hands it back to Ash, and then checks out the rest of my items. A fight with an alpha about money is way above his pay grade.
I pretend to look at something on the phone while my entire system is flooded with emotions I can’t tease out straight. Each beep of the checkout scan seems to punctuate a new piece of information about Ash that is falling into place.
No social media.
Those fake dating profiles.
The second-hand clothes.
Dollar store ramen.
‘I’m a terrible omega.’
‘Papa says rich people pay extra for pretty things.’
‘I’m not allowed.’
She’s jumpy.
Flinches at any little sound or surprise.
She looks for exits.
She freezes.
She fawns.
My hands are shaking, and I can’t get my card in the little slot so I just tap to pay.
“Thanks,” she says, walking next to me as we exit the store. She twists off the cover of the tin and swipes the lip balm across her lips. “You didn’t have to.”
“I did. It’s an alpha thing.” I cringe a little. I hadn’t intended to be that honest. I pop her door open and let her settle in before I nestle the grocery bags in the trunk.
Hiding behind the open trunk, I scrub my face with my hands. “Well, not a gold digger then.” I mumble and slam the trunk shut.
The alpha who was feeling up the mangoes exits the store and raises a hand in greeting like we’re bros. I don’t return the gesture and watch him cross the parking lot and get into his car before I open the door to mine.
Ash’s scent drowns me the second I shut the door and—alpha biology—I feel my heart rate drop as her scent washes over me.
“Here.” Ash turns in her seat, rubs her index finger in the little tin and swipes her finger across my bottom lip.
The spicy scent of cinnamon suddenly mingles with Ash’s peach.
She holds my eyes for a second too long.
Her lips part like she can’t breathe either. I’m going to have a fucking aneurysm.
“Sorry,” she says breathlessly. “That was probably inappropriate.”
“Lip gloss is the least inappropriate thing I could think of right now.” My voice is equally breathless.
“Salve.”
“What?”
“Lip gloss comes in a tube with a wand and it’s sticky.” She holds the tin about two inches from my nose. “This is salve. See? It says it right on the label. It’s supposed to make your lips soft. Gloss just makes you look slutty and your hair gets stuck in it.”
I snort a laugh. “We’ll have to see if it works.” I press start and put the car in gear, stretching my arm behind the passenger headrest and turning to check the rear.
“If what works?”
“If it makes your lips soft.” I check both ways as I pull out of the parking lot.
“Oh, maybe you’d rather have the slutty gloss?.”
She’s smiling, and I’m laughing as I take us home.