Chapter 22 Old Habits #2
The water drips down my chin, pooling on the porcelain, and I brace my hands on either side of the sink and stare at my reflection.
My father stares back.
The same jaw. The same brow. The same hard set to the mouth that comes from years of swallowing emotions instead of expressing them.
The same gray eyes that turn cold when disappointed and colder when furious.
I look like him more every year, growing into the mold he carved for me before I was old enough to understand what I was becoming.
Be the best, Rafe. Accept nothing less. The Beaumont name means excellence, and you will not be the one who tarnishes it.
His voice echoes in my skull, permanent and inescapable. Every time I look in the mirror. Every time I step onto the ice. Every time I feel the pressure to perform, to lead, to prove that I am worthy of the legacy I was born into.
I remember the first time I lost a game in front of him. Eight years old, playing in a junior league tournament, and we lost by a single goal in overtime. I was devastated. Crying in the locker room, inconsolable, the way children are when the world hands them their first taste of failure.
My father walked in, sat down beside me, and said nothing for a long moment.
Then: "Get up. Tears are for Omegas. You are a Beaumont, and Beaumonts do not lose gracefully. They do not accept defeat. They learn from it and come back stronger, or they get replaced by someone who will."
I stopped crying that day.
I have not cried since.
NHL-bound.
That is the trajectory my father mapped when I was eight years old, the first time I showed natural talent on skates.
He hired coaches, enrolled me in elite programs, pushed me to train while other kids were playing video games and having normal childhoods.
Every sacrifice was for the goal. Every decision was calibrated to maximize my chances of reaching the professional leagues.
And I am good.
I am genuinely good at hockey. Fast, aggressive, smart on the ice when I let myself be. I have the skills to go professional, the drive to compete at the highest level, the raw talent that scouts notice when they attend our games.
But underneath all the bravado, underneath the captain's armband and the confident posturing and the arrogant certainty I project to the world, there is a question I have never been brave enough to answer honestly.
What if I am not good enough?
What if all the training and all the sacrifice and all the years of being molded into my father's vision of excellence still leave me short of the mark?
What if I peak at college hockey and never make it to the leagues that matter?
What if I am just good enough to be promising but never good enough to be great?
The fear coils in my gut, cold and familiar, the companion that has shadowed me since I was old enough to understand what expectations meant.
And now Raphael is here.
A walking reminder that the Calder bloodline produces greatness, and I am the Beaumont half scrambling to keep up.
A knock at the door pulls me from the spiral.
I push off the sink, wipe my face with my sleeve, and cross the empty room to answer. The knock was confident. Unhurried. The kind of knock that belongs to someone who knows they will be let in.
I open the door.
Bastien Laurent leans against the doorframe with the casual elegance of a man who has never had to try for attention in his life.
His dark hair is artfully disheveled, falling across his forehead in waves that frame a face that looks like Etienne's but sharper.
More angular. Carrying the kind of beauty that draws eyes across crowded rooms and holds them without effort.
He is smirking.
"Looks like you got kicked out, huh?"
His voice carries the same smooth cadence I remember, warm on the surface with darker edges underneath. The scent that rolls off him is familiar in a way that makes my chest tighten. Dark chocolate and aged whiskey and the faint bite of something forbidden.
I groan, stepping back to let him in and slamming the door behind him with more force than strictly necessary.
"Is it on the down low?" I demand, pacing while he strolls into my empty living space like he owns it. "The situation. Is anyone keeping it quiet, or is the whole campus talking?"
Bastien's smirk widens.
"Nope. It is being spread pretty fast, actually.
The hockey team is having a field day with it.
Something about a clerical error and the captain getting evicted from his own dorm to make room for his brother from Paris.
" He shrugs, examining the bare walls with theatrical disappointment.
"You know how gossip works here. By lunch, they will be saying you cried during the move.
By dinner, there will be a betting pool on when you will beg to be let back in. "
"Fuck."
"Indeed." He turns to face me, his gray-blue eyes glittering with amusement. "But no worries. I can get two people over here to fill the pack problem. Alphas I know, owe me favors, will not ask questions about the arrangement. You will have a functional pack on paper within the week."
The offer hangs in the air.
Practical. Transactional. Exactly the kind of solution Bastien specializes in.
But it is not what I want.
"Well..." I hesitate, and I hate myself for the hesitation. Hate the vulnerability it exposes. Hate the way my voice dips into something softer when I ask, "Can you not just stay? Here? With me?"
The question escapes before I can stop it, carrying a hope I did not give permission to feel. Heat rushes to my cheeks, and I turn away to hide the flush, pretending to examine the empty shelf by the window.
Bastien's footsteps cross the room.
Slow. Deliberate. The predatory pace of someone who knows exactly what he is doing and enjoys watching the effect.
He stops behind me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his chest, close enough that his scent intensifies into a fog that clouds my ability to think clearly.
"What?" His voice is a murmur now, low and teasing, his breath ghosting against my ear.
"You want me again? I thought I was old used goods, hmm?
I thought you were done with my particular brand of distraction.
Moving on to bigger and better things, you said.
Finding a proper Omega to settle down with, you said. "
I say nothing.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails pressing into my palms hard enough to leave marks.
The history between us is complicated.
That is the word people use for relationships they do not want to examine too closely.
Complicated. A catch-all term that covers the nights we spent together during my freshman year, when Bastien was still at Valenridge and still part of the pack that I inherited after he left.
Covers the way he taught me things about myself that I was not ready to learn.
Covers the way he left without warning and I spent months pretending it did not matter while the absence ate me alive.
Complicated covers the fact that no one knows about us.
Not Cal. Not Etienne. Not Vanessa or any of the Omegas I have paraded around since then, using them as distractions, as shields, as evidence that I am exactly what everyone expects me to be.
A straight Alpha with normal desires and predictable patterns.
Bastien was the exception.
The secret I carry like a stone in my chest, too heavy to hold and too shameful to put down.
Complicated.
"I will think about it," Bastien says finally, his voice carrying the casual cruelty of someone who knows he holds power and enjoys wielding it.
"My arrangements are being changed anyway.
Returning to Valenridge requires certain accommodations that the university is scrambling to provide.
Maybe I can mention that I want to dorm with you.
Make it happen. If you miss me that much. "
He puts emphasis on the last three words, drawing them out like taffy, savoring the way they make me tense.
I bite my bottom lip.
A reflex. A tell I have never been able to control when he is this close, when his scent is filling my lungs, when the memories of what we used to do are flooding back with an intensity that makes my skin flush and my blood heat.
Bastien laughs.
The sound is soft and knowing, the laugh of a man who has learned all your secrets and kept them catalogued for future use.
"So," he leans in further, his lips brushing my ear as he whispers, "I guess no one is satisfying that need of yours, huh? Poor Rafe. All alone in his empty dorm. Kicked out by his brother, abandoned by his packmates, without anyone to scratch the particular itch he refuses to admit he has."
I do not respond.
I cannot. My throat has closed around whatever words I might have offered, and all that remains is the thundering of my pulse and the heat spreading through my body and the desperate, shameful want that I have spent three years trying to bury.
Bastien steps back.
The loss of his proximity is immediate and acute, leaving me cold despite the warmth still prickling across my skin.
"I will be back later," he says, his tone shifting back to casual, all traces of the predator tucked away beneath the charming surface. "Be ready to party. Tonight is about celebrating your newfound freedom, not mourning what you lost."
He strolls toward the door, pausing with his hand on the knob to throw one last glance over his shoulder.
"Besides, you are not being dragged down by my loser brother and that follower Cal anymore. Consider it an upgrade."
The door opens and closes.
He is gone.
I stand in the middle of my empty dorm, my heart hammering against my ribs, my body thrumming with an energy I do not know how to discharge. Everything feels wrong. The room. The silence. The ache in my chest that will not quiet no matter how many times I tell it to shut up.
I do not want her.
The thought rises like a mantra, a desperate attempt to convince myself of a truth I am not sure I believe.
I do not need them. Cal and Etienne and their stupid loyalty to some Omega who showed up two days ago and decided to make my life difficult. I am fine on my own. I have always been fine on my own. I was fine before I had a pack and I will be fine without one.
They can have the nerdy hoe. She will not last long.
Five weeks, that is all she has. Five weeks until Valentine's Day when the university reviews pack statuses and she will realize that a temporary arrangement with three Alphas who barely know her is not a real pack.
It is a band-aid on a bullet wound. A delusion they are all sharing to avoid dealing with reality.
In less than five weeks, she will be gone.
She will fail to meet the requirements, or she will get bored, or she will realize that Cal is too soft and Etienne is too quiet and Raphael is too new to give her what she actually needs.
And when that happens, when she disappears back into whatever sad circumstance she crawled out of, they will come crawling back to me.
Begging for me to return.
Admitting they made a mistake.
And maybe by then I will have proved myself to Bastien. Maybe by then I will have earned back what I lost when he left. Maybe by then I will have someone who actually sees my worth instead of constantly comparing me to everyone else.
The thoughts spiral, each one feeding the next, building a narrative that lets me avoid examining the feelings underneath. Anger is easier than hurt. Resentment is easier than loneliness. Convincing myself I do not care is easier than admitting how much I do.
I huff, ruffling my hair with both hands, trying to shake the weight that has settled across my shoulders.
Another laugh filters through the wall.
Mae again. Bright and warm and belonging to a world I just removed myself from.
I cannot stay here.
I cannot stand in this empty room listening to them be happy while I fall apart in the silence. I cannot spend another minute trapped with my own thoughts, my father's voice, Bastien's lingering scent, and the question I refuse to answer.
I grab my jacket from the box I dropped earlier, fishing my wallet out of the inside pocket.
The convenience store on campus is a five-minute walk. They sell the essentials, snacks and energy drinks and the various vices that college students pretend they do not indulge in. Including cigarettes.
I quit smoking a year ago.
It was a New Year's resolution that I actually kept, one of the few promises to myself that I managed to honor.
The coach was happy, said it would improve my lung capacity and my performance on the ice.
My father was happy, said it showed discipline and commitment to the goal.
Even Cal was happy, no longer waving his hand in front of his face and complaining about the smell clinging to my clothes.
But right now, in this moment, with everything crumbling and nothing making sense and Bastien's touch still ghosting across my skin, I do not care about lung capacity.
I do not care about discipline. I do not care about the goals my father set or the promises I made to myself when I was trying to be a better person.
I just need to feel like I am making a choice that belongs to me.
Even if it is a bad one.
Even if it sets back months of progress and opens doors I worked hard to close.
Even if the smoke fills my lungs and reminds me of all the reasons I should not be doing this.
I shove my feet into my shoes, grab my keys from the counter, and head for the door.
I might as well start smoking again.