Chapter 28 Remi
My physiotherapist has cold hands and a warm smile. Today she told me my knee is healing ahead of schedule.
I can't stop the tears rolling down my face in the cab, because ahead of schedule means something different when there's nowhere to schedule toward.
I sit in the cab and let the tears come and go, shoulders shaking. But I'm getting better at this. Not at stopping the feelings but at letting them pass through without drowning in them.
The apartment is quiet when I get back. Steele and Crew left for morning practice at six. The kitchen still smells of the coffee Crew made and the French toast Steele made me for breakfast.
I switch on the coffee maker, needing the caffeine and the routine.
Two quick raps on the door make me jump. I wipe my hands on my jeans and open it. Isabella is standing there looking immaculate in leggings and a cream sweater, her dark hair in a braid, and she is smelling of roses and something clean.
"Coffee," she says. Not a question.
"Already on."
She walks in and kicks off her shoes and curls up on the couch with her feet tucked under her, the way she does.
I bring two mugs and sit beside her and for a few minutes we just exist together — two women in an apartment that smells of three alphas, drinking coffee and not talking about anything that matters.
This is my favorite thing about Isabella. We’re both omegas, we’re supposed to hate each other, but she treats me like a sister.
"How was physio?" she asks.
"Good. Ahead of schedule."
"And have they let you know if you'll skate again?"
I look at her. "My knee will recover. But I'm not sure I'll ever skate the way I did. It'll be months, maybe years before I can push myself off the ice for a jump. I'll never be the same."
A tear rolls down my cheek.
"I'm so sorry."
I laugh. It's wet and real. "Yeah. It's fine. I knew. It’s just a little raw today. Tell me something good.”
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a small velvet box. "Look what I got."
She opens it. Inside is a thin gold bracelet with a row of tiny diamonds set into the band. It catches the kitchen light and throws sparks across the ceiling.
"A fan sent it," Isabella says. "To the training rink. No note, just a card that said For the champion."
I stare at it. I've been around expensive jewelry my whole career. I’ve been given sponsorship, gifts, awards, and I know what real stones look like.
"Isabella. That's worth thousands."
"Don't be silly. It's fake. It's from a sponsor."
"Those aren't cubic zirconia. Those are real diamonds. That bracelet is genuine. I bet it cost five, maybe eight thousand dollars. Could be more. I'm sure Uncle Beck bought one for Emmie."
Isabella looks at the bracelet again. "Why would someone send me something so expensive?"
I shrug my shoulders. "And didn't you say you got earrings last month?"
"Yeah. Same thing. There was no name on the card. Just For the champion. Yeah. It must be a sponsor."
"Or it's someone spending serious money on jewelry and sending it to your training rink without a name. Does your brother know?"
She closes the box and stares at me. Tucks it back into her bag. "Knox knows about the earrings. He had someone look into it. They couldn't trace it." She meets my eyes. "Please don't tell him about this one yet. He'll have one of his men follow me everywhere."
"He should know."
"He will know. I'll tell him. Just not today. Today I want to drink coffee and talk about normal things and not be Knox Olivetti's little sister who needs protecting."
I want to push. But her face has the look of a woman who has been managed for her entire life and is trying, desperately, to have one morning that belongs to her.
"Okay," I say. "But soon."
"Soon." She wraps both hands around her mug. "Knox asked me about my heats."
"And?"
"I told him since Helsinki I don't have them. I wouldn't be an Olympic and World Champion if I did. But he thinks I'm sleeping with my doctor because he's dropped me home a few times."
I smile. "Are you?"
"No. Dr. Peters is married. And there is only one man I want to sleep with."
"Tell me more?"
"I can't. Not yet."
I lift my mug to my mouth and stare at her over the rim. “Are you scared to go into your first heat?”
“I don’t know what to expect.” I can hardly tell her I'm excited to feel both her brothers at the same time I will feel Crew.
“But it’s going to be soon,” she says.
I nod. “The warmth comes and goes, like a tide in and out.”
“My first heat was when I was seventeen, alone in a hotel room in Helsinki during a competition. And Knox flew for fourteen hours and sat outside my door for two days because he couldn't be in the room but he wouldn't leave me alone.”
“That’s brotherly love.”
She smiles. "He's not as bad as everyone thinks."
"I know he's not."
"He's worse." She grins. "But he loves harder than anyone I've ever met. He just does it from the other side of a door."
A knock. Single, heavy. One hit.
I open the door.
River.
My brother stands in the hallway in jeans and a hoodie. He looks tired and beautiful and angry in the way that River is always a little angry. His dark hair is longer than the last time I saw him. The rose tattoo on his neck is vivid against his skin.
"Riv."
"Hey."
He doesn't hug me. He stands in the doorway and looks past me into the apartment, taking in the space. His gaze roams the kitchen, the two coffee mugs, the sneakers by the door that belong to Steele, the jacket over the chair that belongs to Crew.
"Can I come in?"
"Of course you can come in."
He walks in. Sees Isabella on the couch and stops.
The air shifts. A tightening of his jaw as the scent of roses blooms stronger, and Isabella's chin lifts slightly. River's jaw now sets, and neither of them says anything for a beat long enough for me to realize something is going on.
"Isabella," River says.
"River." Her smile is easy, bright, the public smile she gives to cameras and reporters. But her hand is gripping the coffee mug tighter than it needs to.
He turns to me. "How's the knee?"
"Better. How's your injury?"
"Fine. I'll be back playing next season." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "How's everything else?"
He means Crew and Steele. He means living in an apartment with alphas who once upon a time would’ve been his pack. His best friends and former teammates.
"Everything else is good, Riv."
"Are they keeping their hands to themselves?"
"No," I say. "They're not. Because I don't want them to."
River's face goes tight. His green eyes, so like mine, darken at the edges. "Remi—"
"I chose them." I hold his gaze. I don't flinch. "Both of them. And Knox. I chose all three."
"Three?"
"Knox Olivetti. Steele's brother."
River stares at me. His mouth opens, closes. He looks at me as if he is waiting for me to tell him I’m joking.
I don’t.
"Three alphas," he says. "No fucking way, Remi."
"Yes, River. All three. They're mine and I'm keeping them, so mind your own business and find an omega for yourself. Maybe you'll chill a little then."
"But three alphas, Remi. Jesus—"
"Don't Jesus Remi me." I step closer to him.
My brother. My protector. The boy who punched a kid at school for calling me an omega-slut just after my designation was revealed.
The man who cheered me on during every competition and every loss, who sat beside my hospital bed and didn't sleep for three days until Uncle Beck arrived to take over.
"I spent my whole life being managed by everything but me.
By my coaches. By the suppressants. By my own body.
These men don't manage me, River. They love me.
And I love them. All of them. And it's bigger than scent matching.
I know they're mine. I feel it in my bones. "
River's jaw is working. His eyes are bright and his hands are out of his pockets now, hanging at his sides, and he looks very much like a man trying very hard not to say the thing he wants to say.
Isabella stands up from the couch, she walks to River and takes his hand. It’s a simple touch. Her fingers wrapping around his.
She's smaller than him by half a foot, her eyes meeting his eyes with a steadiness that doesn't match her age.
"Love is love," she says. "They can't help who they fell in love with. And she can't help who she fell in love with. You're an alpha, River. You know that. If a scent draws you in, you can't help it. But it’s better that she fell in love anyway. Fated mates aren’t as wonderful as chosen mates."
River looks down at her hand in his. Something moves across his face that I haven't seen before. Confusion, maybe. Or recognition. The expression of a man who is feeling something he hasn't given himself permission to name.
River breathes in and out.
His hand hasn't let go of hers.
"If they hurt you," he tells me. Still looking at Isabella.
"They won't."
"If they do."
"Then you can break their legs. I'll hold the door open and let you in."
He smiles. "Three alphas, Rem."
"Uncle Beck shares Emmie. Why is it such a shock?"
My phone dings.
Crew: She's here. Mom. Hide anything embarrassing.
"It looks like I'm about to meet Crew's mom," I tell Isabella, tucking my phone away.
"Oh god. I don’t do parents. I'll see you later." Isabella grabs her bag. "River, can I get a ride?" She looks at him expectantly.
I spend thirteen minutes trying to figure out what Crew considered embarrassing and settle on shoving Knox's cashmere scarf behind the couch cushion because it smells of me but also of the pheromones of Knox, and his mother doesn't need that information in the first five minutes.
The knock comes in the fourteenth minute, and despite knowing she's coming, I still jump.
I smooth my hair before I open the door.
"Remi," she says.
She's smaller than I expected. Maybe five-three. With the assessing gaze of a mother who has been waiting weeks to evaluate the woman her son calls about at eleven at night.
"I'm Remi."