Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
BECKETT
It’s too late to text her, right?
I didn’t even play in the game and I’m all revved up. The flight back was only an hour. Normally, I can drop right into a nap on the plane, but I kept checking my phone. I got the normal post-game texts from Liam and Pierce. But not from Ash, and that feels profoundly wrong.
My phone is practically burning in the cup holder. I pull over and hit the hazards. The roads are nearly empty at this hour. I drum my fingers against the steering wheel.
Fuck it. It’s 3 a.m., she’s probably sleeping, and a text won’t hurt.
Beckett:
I know it’s late. I just landed and all I can think about is kissing you and telling you we won.
I press send and tip my head back on the headrest. I don’t care anymore if I sound pathetic and desperate. I spent half the plane ride imagining coming home and finding her in the kitchen with Liam and Pierce waiting with a late-night snack.
No. What am I saying? She should be tucked into her nest, all cozy and sleeping, not waiting up in the middle of the night for me.
A nest. We have a guest bedroom and Liam’s office. We’ll have to move. She’ll need her own space.
The high-pitched trill of my phone makes me jump. I fumble it and have to dig around the wheel well blindly for it.
Ash:
Congratulations!!! Liam and I watched at your house
My heart does this stupid little flip. She was with Liam. At our house. Watching my game. I’m typing again before I can help myself.
Beckett:
You were watching me? I mean, the team?
Ash:
did you get another concussion. you weren’t on the ice
I snort.
Beckett:
Can I call you?
I hit send before thinking about it. There’s a pause that feels like forever. I watch the dots appear and disappear twice before her message comes through.
Ash:
Ok
I dial immediately. When she answers, her voice is low, almost a whisper.
“Hey there, hockey star.”
“Hey yourself,” I say, grinning stupidly at my dashboard. “Did I wake you up?”
“No, I’m just… being quiet.”
Something in her tone makes me sit up straighter. “You have roommates?”
A beat passes. “Not exactly.”
I let it go, not wanting to push. “So, you really watched the game? What did you think?”
“Liam had to explain everything. I had no idea there were so many rules.” There’s a smile in her voice now.
“Hockey’s pretty straightforward once you get into it. You just try to get the puck in the net while avoiding getting smashed into a wall.”
“How do you not get a concussion every game?”
I laugh again, louder this time. “Well, I’m usually the smasher not the smashee.”
“Hmm. Not sure I believe that.” Her voice gets softer. “You seem too nice.”
“I’m nice to you. To Liam and Pierce if he’s behaving. Anyone else is smashable.”
“I think I’d like to see that sometime.”
“I’ll probably get cleared to play next week. We’re getting really close to the end. If all goes well, we’ll make the playoffs. Will you come to a game?” I sound like a teenager asking a girl out for the first time.
“Maybe.” There’s rustling on her end, like she’s settling into bed. The mental image doesn’t help my concentration. “What do you wear to a hockey game?”
My jersey and nothing else.
Thank god I don’t say that out loud. I press my hand to my chest and look down at my lap. My dick is hard just at the mere thought of her in my jersey. I clear my throat before I continue.
“It can get pretty cold in the stands, but I’ll get you a VIP box so you’ll be warm and cozy.
“VIP? You don’t have to make a fuss.”
“You are a very important person.”
“Hardly.” She snorts.
A comfortable silence stretches between us, and I make an impulsive decision.
“I could come over,” I say quietly. “Just for a little while. I miss you.”
The silence that follows is different. Shit. I’m like a giant puppy slobbering all over her.
“I…” she starts, then stops. “I don’t think that’s a good idea tonight.”
“Oh.” I try not to sound disappointed. “That’s fine. No pressure.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to see you.” Her voice has that whisper-quality again. “It’s just… my father might come home, and I don’t think…”
“Your father?” I frown. “Would that be a problem?”
“No, no,” she says quickly. Too quickly. “It’s just late, and he gets, um, protective sometimes.”
My grip tightens on the phone. “Protective how?”
“It’s nothing. He’s just old-fashioned about… I don’t want drama, you know?”
I don’t know. But I also don’t want to push her away by pushing too hard.
“Rain check, then,” I say, trying to sound light. “Tomorrow maybe?”
“Tomorrow would be better. I’ll text you when I’m free.”
Alarm bells are going off in my head, and I don’t know why. I haven’t dated many omegas before and Ash isn’t just any omega. She’s… mine. I want to storm over there and fix whatever is making her seem nervous, but I say instead, “I should let you sleep.”
“Yeah.” Her voice softens again. “Beckett?”
“Mm?”
“I’m really glad you called.”
The simple admission warms me from the inside out. “Me too. Sweet dreams, Ash.”
“Night.”
The call ends, and I sit there for a moment, the phone still pressed to my ear like I might catch some echo of her voice. The unease lingers as I pull back onto the empty highway. Something about her father, about her home situation, feels wrong.
The house is dark except for the porch light when I pull up. I drop my keys in the bowl by the door, the soft clink echoing in the quiet space. It almost hurts that my fantasy of her waiting for me in nothing but my jersey doesn’t match the dark house.
My footsteps are muffled by the carpet as I make my way down the hall. No sign of Pierce. His door is closed, no light visible. Maybe he’s asleep, or maybe he’s out doing whatever Pierce does when he disappears these days. I don’t knock on Liam’s door, just turn the handle slowly and slip inside.
He’s propped up in bed, the blue glow of his laptop illuminating his face. His hair is slightly mussed, like he’s been running his fingers through it, a sure sign he’s been working on something complicated. He glances up and gives me that small half-smile that always feels like coming home.
“Hey. Good game,” he says, closing his laptop.
“Not me. I just wore a nice suit.” I shrug out of my jacket, draping it over his desk chair.
“The suit was doing important moral support work.”
I laugh softly as I kick off my shoes and pull my tie loose. Liam shoves his laptop onto his nightstand, on top of a stack of books. He shifts over without being asked and pulls the covers back, making room as I climb into his bed still wearing my dress shirt and pants.
The sheets are warm from his body heat as I curl myself around him. And then the scent of peaches hits me. It’s mixed with his scent. My brain goes offline for a minute as I take it in.
“I slept with Ash tonight,” Liam says quietly into the darkness.
My eyes snap open. I wait a beat. I wait for that jealousy of someone else’s hands on her to come flooding in. But it doesn’t. I turn to look at him, propping myself up on one elbow.
“Really? That’s awesome.” My enthusiasm is immediate and real. “Was it good? You didn’t have her stay over?”
Liam looks slightly taken aback by my response. “No, she went home. And yes, it was… good.”
I fall back onto the pillow, grinning at the ceiling. “This is perfect.”
“You hoped I’d sleep with your girlfriend?” I can’t read into the emotion behind his voice.
“She’s not…” I start, then pause. “I mean, we haven’t had that conversation yet. But yes, that’s how a pack works, right?”
Liam is silent for a moment, processing this. “You want her to become part of our pack.”
“Obviously.” Well, it’s not obvious until just this second. I turn to face him again. “She’s amazing. And the way she smells—”
“Beckett,” Liam interrupts, his voice taking on that careful tone he uses when he’s about to say something difficult. “We need to talk about Ash.”
The shift in his tone makes me tense. “What about her?”
“I’m worried.”
“If this is about you thinking she’s after my money or fame again…” I sit up, suddenly defensive.
“No.” Liam sits up too, facing me. “I was wrong about that. This is something else.”
“Like what?”
“Have you noticed how she behaves sometimes? How she flinches when someone moves too quickly?”
The questions hit me like physical blows because, yes, I have noticed. I just hadn’t pieced it together as something coherent.
“She’s just… careful,” I say, but even to my own ears, it sounds weak.
Liam shakes his head. “It’s more than that. It’s learned behavior. Defense mechanisms.”
I think back to the science center, how she’d been so lost in the light display until that kid interrupted, and how quickly she’d folded back into herself afterward. How she’d reacted when the paparazzi photos appeared online, her genuine fear. How she mentioned her father being old-fashioned.
“So? Pierce is like that sometimes too.”
“Yeah? And why is Pierce like that?”
I open my mouth and then shut it.
“Exactly,” Liam says, scanning the expression on my face.
When I first met Pierce and Liam—and Reed—in Florida before my rookie season, I thought they were, as my dad put it, “pack kids who grew up with economic disadvantages.” He and my mom never liked Pierce.
They tolerated Liam. And they never knew Reed.
When Reed died, and they moved in with me and I got traded to Nashville, I learned that they weren’t just poor kids from the wrong side of town.
There had been some serious childhood abuse.
They downplayed it, for sure. But half the stories they told about growing up involved broken bones and beatings. I thought it was normal boy roughhousing. But it wasn’t that at all..
Like the time Pierce was eight and one of his birth pack alphas caught him stealing a candy bar; they spanked him with a belt in front of his little brothers and sisters.
“I wasn’t in trouble for stealing, but for getting caught and shoving the whole bar in my mouth and not sharing it.
” They had laughed, like it was a big joke.
Liam told me about the day Reed became an alpha, and his father beat him so hard he pissed blood for a week.
Or the time Liam came home from school to find a twenty-dollar bill and a note saying his pack was going to Universal Studios without him.
When we first got together, Pierce had nightmares. He rarely slept. That’s when Liam first mentioned childhood trauma.
“What exactly are you saying, Liam?”
“Look, don’t be mad, but—”
“I think we’re past that point.” I cut him off.
“I’ve been trying to find out more information about her. And it doesn’t paint a great picture.”
“You’re spying on her?”
“Yes. And don’t be fucking naive. You’ve had people trying to get close to you in the past who don’t have good intentions. Rochelle and Marcus?”
I cringe at their names. It was my third year in the league. I hadn’t known they were pornstars with this PR stunt of trying to sleep with a celebrity in every state.
“OK. Point taken. What are you trying to say about Ash?”
“Remember what Pierce was like when we first moved in with you? How he’d go from zero to nuclear over nothing? How he couldn’t accept kindness without suspecting an agenda?”
“Because his childhood was a nightmare.” The realization dawns on me. “You think Ash…”
“I think she’s dealing with something similar. Maybe worse, because Pierce got out. He left. He had us.” Liam’s voice drops lower. “I think she’s still in it. Whatever ‘it’ is.”
A knot forms in my stomach as everything clicks into place. Her vague answers about her past. Her constant alertness. I’d mistaken some of it for omega traits, or just quirks. But viewed through this lens, it becomes a pattern.
“She lives with her father.”
Liam just nods at that.
“You think her father is… what?”
“I don’t know anything for sure.”
“So, we go get her.”
“Take a breath. We don’t know anything for sure. And we don’t want to spook her or put her in a more dangerous situation.”
I do take a breath. And another. A dozen more.
“I think I love her, Liam.” Another thing I didn’t know was true until it came out of my mouth.
He lets out a long breath and sinks back into the pillows.
“Let’s take this slow. What’s that thing about hearing hoofbeats and thinking zebras? This could all be, I don’t know, my imagination. Pierce…” The rest of that sentence dies in his mouth.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
I throw the covers back and pull myself out of Liam’s bed.
“Becks. Don’t…”
I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “What may or may not be happening in Ash’s past is not the only problem we have, Liam.”
I snatch my coat off the back of his chair and shut his door. My headache’s back, almost like my head is too full of unwanted information. I don’t even flick the lights on in my bathroom as I get the hot water going. A long shower might be the only thing to help me sleep tonight.