Chapter 25 Remi
"I'm going to The Obsidian Club."
I say it standing in the kitchen doorway with my jacket on and my phone in my hand and the cab already ordered, because if I sit down to have this conversation I will talk myself out of it, and Crew told me to own my choices, and this is me owning one.
Crew looks up from the couch.
The apartment holds its breath.
"No," Steele says.
"I'm not asking."
Steele turns from the stove, sets down the spatula that now sits at an angle on the counter, dripping something onto the surface. "You're going to Knox's club.”
“To Knox. Yes."
"After what I told you. After everything he said in that hallway." He stops. His jaw works. "He's manipulating you. He's using the scent match to—"
"He's not using anything." My voice is steady.
It surprises me. "I feel him, Steele. I've felt him since the night in the labyrinth before I knew his name.
I've felt him through the blanket and the t-shirt and the scarf.
I felt him in The Stave when he held my hand and didn't ask for anything except to sit across from me.
" I hold his gaze. "He's your brother. Whatever happened between you two, that's yours to work out.
But you don't get to decide who I go to. "
"She needs this." Crew's voice from the couch. Like on the ice, he deploys calm. A man who sees the whole picture and is ready to stop avoiding the inevitable.
Steele turns on him. "Don't—"
"She needs this, and we need this to happen in order to go forward.
" Crew stands and walks to the kitchen. He grips Steele's shoulder, firm and grounding, the physical language of two alphas who have been communicating through touch for six years.
"If she doesn't go, the wanting doesn't stop.
It compounds. Knox told you that, and he was right, and you know he was right because you watched it happen to your mother. "
Steele flinches.
"I'm not choosing him over you," I say. "I'm choosing him and you. That's what I told Crew. That's what I'm telling you. The pack is four, Steele. It's always been four. I just didn't know the fourth until now."
Steele looks at Crew. Crew holds his gaze. Something passes between them that I can feel. I don’t know if we’re at a strong enough place for this yet, and the decision is one we might not recover from if I get it wrong. But to go forward, I have to be brave.
"If he hurts you," Steele says.
"He won't."
"If he hurts you, I will end him. He's my brother and I will end him."
"I know."
The cab notification chimes on my phone.
Steele turns back to the stove and picks up the spatula. Crew comes to me, holds my face in his hands. “Do what you need to do, but come back.”
I smile. “I promise.”
He kisses me on my lips. When he pulls back, his eyes go to Steele.
I nod. Knowing what he is asking.
I go to Steele, stand in front of him and kiss him.
He turns and stares at the pan rather than at me as I walk out of his apartment to meet his brother, because looking would mean stopping me, and stopping me would mean proving Knox right about everything.
Crew walks me to the door.
He kisses my forehead. His warm and steady scent is grounding. I glance to the kitchen and see Steele still standing there, spatula in hand, watching me go. He doesn't look angry. He looks like he's trying to memorize my face.
"Call us," Crew says, taking my face in his hands, kissing me once, pulling back. "If you need us."
"I will."
"And Remi?"
I look at him.
"Own it."
I close the door behind me. Walk to the elevator, press the button.
And just when I think this is a bad decision, the door opens and Steele is there. He lifts me by the waist until we're face to face. His gray eyes on mine.
"I love you," he says. “Just come back.”
He sets me down before I can answer. Goes back inside. The door closes.
The elevator arrives.
The city falls away until I’m traveling the dark stretch along the Cumberland where the trees grow close and the limestone cliffs rise on either side of the water like walls.
Iron gates emerge from the fog.
The house sits in the mist the way it did the first time I came here. Gothic stone and jagged iron, Nashville architecture crossed with something older and darker that doesn't care about charm.
The cab driver glances at me in the rearview mirror when we stop on the road outside the gate. He has the look of someone who recognizes where I am and is assuming why I'm here, and perhaps has opinions about it, but he keeps them behind his teeth.
"Here?" the driver says.
"Here."
I pay him and leave the car.
Tonight I have a choice, and I'm making it.
The gate opens before I reach it. Someone is watching. Cameras, probably, or the man in the shadows who recognizes my scent or my face or both.
The path to the door is gravel and fog and the sound of the river somewhere below the bluff.
The door opens.
A woman in black looks at me with the polished neutrality of someone who works in a place where discretion is the primary service.
"I'm here to see Knox."
She doesn't ask my name. She doesn't check a list. She steps aside and gestures down a hallway lined with dark wood and low light. My pulse throbs with every step.
The hallway ends at a door. The door is open.
The room behind it is not the labyrinth. It's an office. Private. A desk, a window overlooking the river, bookshelves lined with volumes I can't read from the doorway. A glass of something amber. One lamp shimmering in the corner.
Knox stands at the window with his back to me.
He's not wearing a suit tonight. Black jeans, dark shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearms. It’s the first time I've seen him in anything other than the armor of his tailoring. His hands are in his pockets. His reflection in the glass watches me enter before he turns.
"You came," he says.
"I came."
"The Stave would have been easier."
"The Stave would have been hiding." I step into the room. "Crew told me to stop hiding."
"Crew Banks," he says.
"Yes."
"He's smarter than I gave him credit for."
"Everyone is smarter than you give them credit for. That's your blind spot."
The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile but the precursor to one.
"You came to my home," he says.
"Yes."
"Why?"
I consider lying. I consider the diplomatic answer, the careful answer, the answer that protects me from the full weight of what I'm about to do. Then I remember Crew's voice.
Own it.
And I let the diplomacy go.
"Because this is where I found you the first time.
In the dark, and I left here with my scent all over your hands and your scent all over me.
I didn't know your name. I didn't know you were Steele's brother.
I just knew that something in my body recognized something in yours, and it hasn't stopped since. "
Knox is very still.
"I've been fighting it," I say. "Not because of the biology.
Biology is easy to dismiss. It's just chemistry, instinct, just my omega doing what omegas do.
I've been fighting it because of who you are.
The way you watch instead of asking. The way you left materials on a table instead of walking through a door.
The way you sat in a hospital corridor to hold me.
" I hold his gaze. "I've been fighting it because men who want things that badly scare me.
And then I realized I want you just as badly, and I scare myself. "
He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. He lets it land.
"I'm choosing you," I say. "Not because my biology is making me.
Not because three notes outweighs two. Because I want you, Knox.
Specifically, I want the man who sat in a hospital chair for three weeks.
The man who left nesting materials on a café table.
The man who named a club after me before he knew my name. "
His hands come out of his pockets.
"Steele told me to stay away from you," he says.
"Steele doesn't get to make that decision."
"No," Knox says. "He doesn't."
He crosses the room. Three steps. The space between us collapses, and when he's close enough I smell the bourbon and chocolate and orange.
I smell my alpha. I smell him. The man with all three notes, and my knees nearly buckle because the scent is so concentrated here, so complete, and my omega responds with a force that makes me gasp.
My whole body opens. I’m accepting this.
There are no other words for it. His scent hits my limbic system, my skin flushes, my pulse triples, and the bonding gland at my neck swells and pulses. The slick response is immediate and overwhelming and I grab his shirt with both hands because if I don't hold onto something I'm going to fall.
"Remi," he breathes.
"I know." My voice shakes. "I feel it."
"I've been carrying this since the night I nearly made you mine.
" His hand rises to my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone with the careful precision of a man who has spent months imagining this exact touch and is discovering that the reality is here.
"Every night in the hospital while I waited for you to wake up.
Every cup of coffee I drank in the café, waiting for you to come in. I gave you my t-shirt because I knew."
"I know you knew."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure."
He leans down and kisses me. It’s controlled, precise.
I should have expected it. His hand is at my jaw tilting my face up to his.
But underneath the control something shakes.
It’s in his fingertips. In the fine tremor running through the hand at my waist. In the way his breathing fractures when my scent hits him at close range.
Only then do I realize that control is not a lack of feeling, it's the dam that stops the full weight of it.
And the dam breaks.
His mouth opens against mine, the kiss deepens, and his arms pull me into him until I'm pressed against his chest and his scent envelops me entirely.
I make a sound against his mouth that is not dignified and not small.
"Upstairs," I say.