Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
Jez
THE FOUR OF US STARED at each other without moving for a long beat. Then Gage raked his eyes up and down Heath’s hunched form, took in the car keys in his hand, and scowled.
“I don’t need a pack bond to tell that you’re about to do somethin’ stupid,” he said, sounding more tired than anything else. “Turn around. March your ass back inside, and we can all pretend you weren’t busy making poor life choices.”
Heath’s lips peeled back in a snarl. “I don’t need a babysitter.” The cracked wall inside my head shifted once more on its foundations.
I was beginning to hate that feeling.
“Don’t you, though? Because it sure looks like you were about to go out and get wasted after staying sober for almost two years,” Gage said, unimpressed. “Where’s Knox?”
“How should I know?” Heath snapped. His green eyes snuck first to me, and then to Tony.
His pupils blew wide as he took in the picture we made, dressed from head to toe in the latest designer fashion.
He jerked his gaze away an instant later, staring past Gage’s shoulder instead. “Buried in work, probably.”
“Fine,” Gage said. “In that case, you three are having that talk now.”
“What?” Tony yelped.
I would have echoed him, but there was a terrible sense of inevitability about the clusterfuck to come. I was relaxed and well-fed, clean and wearing amazing clothes. Maybe having this conversation in the rearview mirror would be better than dreading it in the future.
“Inside. Now.” Gage had the decency not to bark, but it was clear we’d all be doing what he said, or else we were going to find ourselves dragged in by the scruffs of our necks.
“Come on,” I told Heath with a sigh. “Whatever shit you want to pile on me, you might as well do it and get it over with. Plus, you and Tony really do need to talk.”
I trudged forward and shouldered past him, trying to ignore the spark of lightning that thrummed along my nerves in response to the brief contact. After a long hesitation, other footsteps followed mine.
“Where are we doing this?” I asked, not looking back.
“Kitchen,” Gage said.
The kitchen was bright and airy as always. I hadn’t been wrong about the scruff of the neck thing, either. Tony and I slunk inside under our own power, but Gage had Heath by the back of the shirt and deposited him physically in a chair.
I found a spot leaning against the counter and took a deep breath. Might as well get this over with.
“Did Knox tell you about his plan to get me a new identity?” I asked.
For an alpha, Heath seemed to be having an awfully difficult time looking at me.
“Yes,” he said. “He said you intend to get your mating gland removed as soon as it can be arranged.”
“That’s right,” I agreed, ignoring the part of me that wanted to wail and throw things in protest. I was coming to hate that selfish and stupid piece of myself. “I won’t make you put up with my presence in your head any longer than absolutely necessary.”
For some reason, that made him wrench his gaze up to meet my eyes.
“I’m doing my best to keep it blocked,” he said, sounding defensive.
“I didn’t say you weren’t!” I shot back, not sure what I’d said to make him even more upset. Maybe he was pissed that I’d let Knox talk me into using a real doctor? Finding someone in the city would be quicker—
“Because we all know your stance on long-term relationships,” Tony muttered, as though the words had been pulled from him.
Heath’s eyes moved to him.
“What?” he asked, sounding genuinely bewildered.
Tony’s cheeks flamed, and he turned his face away. “Nothing.”
Abruptly, my patience for their cluelessness disappeared like smoke.
“Tony has a thing for you,” I said. “But he’s scared to tell you, because you had a one-night stand with him and then shoved him back to arm’s length as though it never happened.”
“Wh-what?” Heath repeated, at a higher pitch this time.
“Jez!” Tony squeaked, sounding completely appalled.
I stared him down. “Well, it’s not like you were going to say it if I didn’t.”
Heath’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. He snapped his jaw shut and swallowed before trying again. The wall shielding the bond started to shake. The cracks running through it widened, until huge chunks began to tumble free.
“Is this true?” he asked hoarsely.
Tony balled up his fists. “Of course it’s fucking true! I’ve wanted you since the day you showed up at my apartment and cleared away a body for me as though it was nothing!”
Heath made a choking noise and shoved away from the table, staggering to his feet.
His mental wall crumbled to dust as he crossed to a bare section of wall and slid down it, sitting hard on the floor.
His presence flooded into me, unfiltered.
I gasped, clutching at the edge of the counter behind me to keep from following him down.
Gage looked between us, clearly worried and unsure what to do.
A terrible wave of guilt, every bit as strong as what I felt over Knox, slammed against me—threatening to wash me away beneath its force. But... why would Heath feel guilty? I was the one who’d fucked everything up—
“You should both stay as far away from me as possible,” Heath rasped. “You two, of all people...”
Gage was still hovering, unsure who to fuss over.
“Heath, you need to talk to us properly,” he said. “We don’t understand what you’re saying... and we need to understand.”
Heath slammed a fist into the unyielding tile floor. It echoed with a meaty smack.
“I would have raped a kid!” he shouted. “Is that fucking clear enough for you? They injected me with drugs, and I would have become the same kind of monster we fight, if my scent match hadn’t been locked up down the hall!
If she hadn’t broken out and rescued that.
.. that child from me! He was just a child! ”
My fingernails dug into the counter as I gasped for air, caught in the undertow of my mate’s horror and self-loathing. The echo of long-ago hands pawing at me blotted out the pleasant kitchen, and my own moan of denial emerged from Heath’s mouth instead of mine as he felt what I felt.
“Shit.” Gage’s curse barely reached me through the maelstrom. “Stop it—both of you!”
I felt a jolt and peered through blurry eyes, finding Gage crouched in front of Heath and giving him a sharp shake of the shoulders. Amazingly, it helped a bit.
“You wouldn’t have hurt the kid.” Tony’s voice was shaky, but his words had the ring of certainty behind them.
“You don’t know that,” Heath said, still sounding like he’d swallowed sandpaper.
“The hell I don’t.” Tony was gaining strength now, stepping toward Heath and pointing a finger down at him accusingly.
“I saw you afterward! You’d clawed furrows in your own goddamned face!
You’d have torn your own throat out with your bare hands if that’s what it took to keep that poor kid safe!
I know you! You think I’d let just anyone stick their dick up my fucking ass, after what was done to me? Of course you wouldn’t have hurt him!”
I drew in great lungfuls of air, as the force of Tony’s words broke us both free of our spiraling emotions. Tears were streaming down my friend’s cheeks.
“Tony...” Heath said weakly.
“Yeah, I’m with him, actually,” Gage put in, his tense stance easing a bit. “Now, why don’t you talk to him about why you pushed him away after you slept with him?”
Heath looked up at Tony imploringly. “You literally told me that was all you wanted! I figured if a one-night stand was all I was going to get, it was better than nothing!”
Tony gaped at him. “You... would have said yes if I’d asked for more?”
Heath made an awful croaking noise that was probably a laugh. “I would have warned you off, because I’m an emotionally stunted alcoholic asshole, and you deserve better. But... yeah. And then you would have regretted it within a month.”
Tony flopped down on the floor in front of him as though his knees had decided to stop working.
“Oh,” he whispered.
Gage crossed his arms and huffed. “So, can we all agree that the people to blame for putting that omega kid in danger—and for setting Jez up to get bitten without proper consent—are the ones that kidnapped you and injected you with stim shots?”
“Yes,” I said, because despite what Heath seemed to think, there was really no arguing with that.
Gage nodded. “And can we agree that the person to blame for Jez going after Knox is this Adrian character? And whoever else put him up to it?”
“No,” I said.
“No,” Heath agreed. His eyes met mine properly for the first time. “You could’ve looked into Knox’s background more. Not just taken some omega asshole’s word for what was going on.”
“Yes,” I told him, not looking away. “I should have done that, and I didn’t.”
“But we lucked out,” Gage said. “Because nothing that’s happened is permanent. Knox survived, and he’s going to be okay. And Jez, we can get you the surgery, so the mating doesn’t have to be forever.”
“Right,” I said gamely. “Things could have been way worse.”
Now that our mutual PTSD episode had subsided, it no longer felt like I was drowning in the bond. Instead, an echo of the same magnetic pull I’d felt when I was in heat tugged at my insides. I licked my lips.
“You... uh, you don’t have to try and keep the wall up all the time,” I told Heath. “If you can stand having me in your head, I mean. I think having the wall there feels worse than just having the bond.”
His gaze skittered to the side. “Oh. Well, that’s... just as well. I’m not sure I could have kept it up for much longer.”
“Okay, then,” I said.
“Okay,” he echoed.
I wrapped my arms around myself and squeezed, aware of what a pathetic bunch we were, expensive clothes and all. I wondered at what point Tony would realize he was sitting on the kitchen floor in a brand new two-thousand-dollar suit.
At least it was a clean floor.
Gage caught my eye. He looked tired, too... although not as utterly wiped out as the rest of us.
“You and Tony stay here for a few minutes while Heath and I go set something up. Promise?” he said.
I nodded. I was too tired to run anywhere, and Tony was still in shock, from the looks of it. “Sure.”
Gage reached down and grabbed Heath by the upper arm, hauling him to his feet.
“Get off,” Heath said—but there was no force behind it.
He let Gage shuffle him out of the room, giving Tony a wide berth. I kicked off my new red-soled pumps and leaned against the counter again, probably putting creases in the nice cocktail dress I was wearing. Tony didn’t move... didn’t even look up at me.
Eventually, he spoke.
“Was that as bad as I think it was?”
I considered. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Now Heath knows how you feel, and it sounds like he feels the same. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Tony hesitated for a long moment. He stirred enough to take off the expensive suit jacket, looking down at it in his hands like he wasn’t sure where it had come from.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Because now I have to do something about it. Before, I didn’t.”
It wasn’t like I was in any position to give relationship advice, so I just shrugged.
Gage returned a couple of minutes later. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’re sleeping.”
“That sounds good.” Tony accepted a hand up. “I probably shouldn’t try to drive. Where do you want me? A couch is fine.”
Gage took the jacket from him and draped it over a chair back. Then he reached a hand out toward me. I took it without thinking.
“You’re not listening,” he told Tony. “We... are sleeping. Come on.”
He led us deeper into the house, to a room I hadn’t explored before.
It was some kind of big family room. There was a huge TV on one wall, and a sectional sofa pushed to one side.
Someone—Gage and Heath, presumably—had dragged in a couple of huge mattresses and shoved them together.
Piles of bedding and pillows lay all around.
Heath sat crouched in the middle of the makeshift nest, his elbows resting on his knees and his face buried in his hands.
“Down you go,” Gage said, and basically shoved Tony on top of him.
Tony made a strangled noise, and Heath’s arms came around him mostly in self-defense.
The pair sat frozen for a painful moment.
Then Tony let out a strangled whimper and clung to the alpha he’d tried so hard to push away.
They both fell back to lie on the mattress; their bodies tangled together from chin to ankle.
The feelings flooding through the bond made my breath catch. Guilt and regret and fragile hope, all wrapped up with silvery threads of painful yearning. Gage took my hand again, drawing me down with him.
“The dress,” I said stupidly, thinking of stains and sweat and wrinkles.
“Forget about the dress,” Gage rumbled, as I settled into the space between his big body and Heath’s back. A moment later, he shuffled me forward until I was spooned against Heath, with Gage curled close behind me. The electric surge of contact from earlier mellowed into a deep, penetrating warmth.
It should have been hopelessly awkward. A tangle of people who had a list of reasons not to like each other, mired in misunderstanding and bitterness. Instead, something inside me that I didn’t dare look at too closely untwisted itself, relaxing into a kind of security that I’d never felt before.
There was no chance to poke at the feeling, though. Because seconds later, I was fast asleep.