Chapter 7 Jamie
The apartment is dark when I let myself in. I'm hoping Akari is asleep. Maybe I can slip past her door and into my own room and pretend none of this ever happened.
No such luck.
She's sitting on the couch with her laptop open, the blue glow illuminating her face. She looks up when the door closes, and I watch her expression shift from curiosity to concern.
Then her nose wrinkles.
"Oh my god." She sets the laptop aside and stands. "You reek of alpha."
I freeze in the doorway, keys still in my hand. "It was a crowded subway."
"That's not subway smell, Jamie." She crosses toward me, and I resist the urge to back away. "That's on you. In your clothes. Your hair." Her eyes widen. "That's sex smell."
"Akari—"
"Who?" She's in front of me now, studying my face with an intensity that makes me look away. "Jamie, who did you—"
"It doesn't matter."
"It clearly matters. You look like you've been hit by a truck." She reaches out and touches my collar, and I flinch.
I push past her into the apartment, dropping my keys on the counter with more force than necessary. I need a shower. I need to scrub Carter Crane off my skin and out of my lungs and pretend the last two hours didn't happen.
"Jamie." Her voice follows me down the hall. "Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Bullshit." She's behind me now, blocking the bathroom door. "I've known you for four years. I've seen you through bad dates and worse hookups and that disaster with the guy from the coffee shop. I know what you look like after sex. This is big. When did you start hiding things from me?"
I meet her eyes. She's not going to let this go. I can see it in the set of her jaw, the way she's planted herself between me and escape.
"It was Carter Crane," I say.
The words fall into the silence between us and just sit there.
Akari blinks. Opens her mouth. Closes it again.
"Carter Crane," she repeats slowly. "I hope you mean the third Carter Crane and not the old one. That Carter Crane."
"Yes."
"The one you had a very public scent match with on Point of Contention."
"Yes."
"The one who's engaged to Georgia Mitchell."
"Was engaged." I don't know why I correct her. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. "She ended it. After the interview."
Akari stares at me for a long moment. Then she steps aside, clearing the path to the bathroom.
"Shower," she says. "Then we're talking about this."
The water is scalding. I stand under it until my skin turns red, scrubbing at myself, trying to wash away every trace of him.
It doesn't work. I can still smell him underneath the lavender of the soap.
I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my hips, his mouth on my neck and the weight of him pressing me into the wall.
I scrub harder.
What the hell was I thinking? I told myself I could handle Carter Crane. I couldn't even handle looking at him.
The moment that door opened and his scent hit me, every rational thought I've ever had evaporated. I became exactly what they've been calling me online: a desperate, needy thing that spreads its legs the moment a powerful man shows interest.
The bite on my shoulder throbs under the hot water. I press my fingers against it and hiss at the pain.
He marked me. He fucked me against a wall like an animal, marked me, and then walked out without saying a single word.
I turn off the water and stand there dripping, staring at my reflection in the fogged mirror. The bite is visible even through the steam. A dark bruise is already forming around the indentations of his teeth. I'll be wearing high collars for the next week.
I should be angry. I should be furious. At him, for treating me like a convenient hole to fuck. At myself, for letting him.
Instead, all I can think about is whether he'll text me again.
Akari is waiting in the living room with two cups of tea. She's changed into her pajamas, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, and she looks tired. She was waiting up for me. She wanted to tell me something.
"Before I grill you on Carter Crane, there's something you need to see," she says as I sit down. "I was going to show you the moment you walked in, but then..." She gestures vaguely at me. "The alpha smell. If you haven’t seen it yet, I wanted you to hear about it from me. Not someone else."
My stomach drops.
"What is it?"
She picks up her phone from the coffee table and swipes through something. Then she hands it to me.
It's a clip from a talk show, the kind that trades in celebrity gossip and manufactured outrage. The host is a blonde woman with too-white teeth and a fake sympathetic expression.
"...reached out for comment on his son's incredible success," she's saying. "And Ray Dean had this to say."
The camera cuts to a man I haven't seen in twelve years.
My father looks old. His hair has gone grey and thin, and his face has that weathered quality that comes from too many nights sleeping rough. But he's cleaned up for the camera. He’s shaved and wearing a shirt that looks new.
"Jamie was always ambitious," he says, and his voice is the same. It’s that gravelly tone I used to hear through my bedroom wall, raised in anger or slurred with drink. "Always chasing something bigger. Too good for his family, I guess."
The interviewer makes a sympathetic noise. "That must have been hard."
"I tried to reach out over the years. Wanted to be part of his life.
" Ray shakes his head sadly. "But he never had time for his old man.
Always too busy with his career and making money.
I used to tell him, family comes first. But Jamie.
.." He trails off with a shrug that's meant to look heartbroken.
I watch my father lie on national television, and something cold settles in my chest.
"I don't blame him," Ray continues. "I know I wasn't perfect. But I'm proud of him. What he's accomplished. I just wish we could have been closer, you know?"
The video ends.
I sit there, staring at the frozen frame of my father's face.
"Jamie?" Akari's voice is gentle. "Are you okay?"
"He never reached out. Not once."
"I know."
"He was supposed to have visitation every other weekend.
He showed up the first couple of times and then he was drunk.
He stopped bothering after that." The words are coming out flat, factual.
Like I'm reading a report. "He stole money from my mother.
Took it right out of her purse while she was sleeping.
She caught him once and he called her a paranoid bitch. "
"Jamie—"
"He called her the day after her diagnosis. Not to see how she was. To ask for money." I set the phone down on the coffee table. "She was dying of cancer and he wanted to borrow five hundred dollars."
Akari doesn't say anything. She just moves closer on the couch and puts her hand on my arm.
"I haven't seen him in years," I say. "People are going to believe him."
"People who matter won't."
"People who matter don't watch shows like that." I lean back against the cushions and close my eyes. My mother would have hated this. She never said a bad word about Ray to me—let me figure out what he was on my own—but she would have hated seeing him profit off my work.
She should be the one who’s here. Instead, she's been gone for three years and my father is giving interviews about what a disappointment I am.
"I'm sorry," Akari says quietly.
"Don't be. He's always been like this." I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. "Opportunistic. That's the word my mother used. He sees an opportunity and he takes it, regardless of who gets hurt."
“He’ll be forgotten soon enough.”
“I hope so,” I say, but I’m not sure. I guess it depends on how well I do in the next few years. If I do become an award-winning journalist like I dream about, then he’s not going to go away. There’ll always be someone wanting to hear something bad about me.
Akari reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“I don’t know if changing the subject is a good idea or a bad idea,” she says with a laugh.
“And do you want to talk about what happened with Carter?” She holds up a hand before I can interrupt.
"I'm not judging. I'm asking. What on earth possessed you do that? "
I don't have an answer. "I don't know," I say. "I don't know what I was thinking."
"Were you thinking at all?"
"No." The admission tastes bitter. "He said we should meet and I should have said no. I walked in and I should have walked away. But I just smelled him and I just stopped thinking. I should have left."
“That’s a lot of ‘shoulds’.”
“Yeah.” I should have done a lot of things.
Akari is quiet for a moment. Then: "Do you think it's a prime match?"
The question has been crawling around in the back of my mind since Point of Contention.
"I don't know," I say again. "Maybe. It felt like—" I stop, trying to find the words. "It felt like I’m suddenly addicted. I’m craving him. He’s all I can think about. And I can’t admit it because then it’ll look like all that gossip is real."
"It sounds like a prime match."
"Prime matches are insanely rare."
"So is bringing down a three-generation political dynasty with a single article. Rare things happen to you, Jamie."
I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Lucky me."
We sit in silence for a while.
"What are you going to do?" Akari asks finally.
"I don't know." It's becoming a refrain. I don't know anything anymore. "Nothing. Pretend it didn't happen. Focus on my work."
"Can you do that?"
I think about Carter's scent and the way it clings to me even now, even after the shower. The way my body responds to just the memory of him, heat pooling low in my belly.
"I have to," I say. "I'm not going to let Carter Crane ruin everything I’ve built."
Akari nods slowly. "And if he reaches out again?"
"He won't."
"But if he does?"
I think about the way he walked out. No words, no backward glance. Just the click of the door closing behind him. He got what he wanted. Why would he come back for more?
"He won't," I say again. "It was a one-time thing. A mistake. For both of us."
Akari looks at me with something that might be pity. She doesn't argue.
I don't sleep that night. Instead, I think about my mother. She would have liked this apartment. It’s small but clean, good light, close to the subway. She spent the last years of her life in a hospice room that smelled like antiseptic and flowers.
"Promise me something," she said near the end, when the morphine made her drift in and out of clarity, and made her a lot more blunt than she’d ever been when she was well. "Don't end up like your father."
"You know I won't."
"He had potential, you know. When I met him." Her eyes were cloudy but focused. "He just never knew what to do with it. He chased every shortcut. He never wanted to put in the work."
"I'm not like him."
"No." She smiled, and for a moment she looked like herself again. "You're like me. Stubborn. Principled." The smile faded. "But you've got his hunger, Jamie. That need to prove something. Be careful with that."
I pull the blankets tighter and try not to think about what she would say if she could see me now.
Principled. She called me principled.
I just fucked the subject of my own investigation. I let him pin me to a wall and take whatever he wanted without a single word of protest. I compromised every ethical standard I've ever claimed to have, and the worst part is that I'd do it again.
I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I told Akari I wouldn’t, but if Carter suddenly appeared right here in front of me, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d beg for it.
My phone sits on the nightstand, dark and silent. He's not going to text. I know he's not going to text. There's no reason for him to text.
I check it anyway.
Nothing.
The next morning, I make myself get up and sit down at my laptop like a functioning human being.
I have work to do.
The Crane exposé was huge, but it can't be my only story. I didn't spend years in the tabloid trenches just to become a one-hit wonder. I need to think about what comes next.
My email is flooded with interview requests and speaking invitations—all of it Crane-related.
Buried in the noise, there are other things. I have a couple of job interview offers from three different outlets, along with a literary agent who wants to discuss the book deal. And hundreds of tips from people who saw my work and think I can help them too.
I scroll through the tips, sorting automatically. Most are obvious cranks. Read through conspiracy theories about government mind control, personal grievances dressed up as public interest, the usual parade of people who think their neighbor's loud music is a federal crime.
But some might be real.
A state senator with suspicious real estate deals. A tech company burying
I open a new document and start taking notes.
This is what I do. This is who I am. A journalist. An investigator. Someone who digs for truth and doesn't stop until he finds it.
Not an omega who loses his mind over an alpha's scent.
Not the desperate, needy creature the smear campaign is painting me as.
Not my father's son.
I'm better than that. I have to be better than that. By mid-morning, I've sorted the tips into three categories: cranks, probably not worth investigating, and worth investigating. The third pile is small but promising. I've drafted emails to two of the tipsters asking for more information.
I'm doing real work. Moving forward. Putting the Cranes behind me.
Then I remember the drop.
It's been a couple of days since I checked it. The secure folder where Wren used to leave encrypted anonymous documents. They went silent before I even published the article, which makes sense. They gave me everything they had. There's no reason to think there's anything new.
But I check anyway.
I log in through the VPN, navigate to the folder, enter the password. The interface is plain and functional, designed for security rather than aesthetics.
Empty.
Nothing new since October. The last file Wren uploaded was the final batch of financial records, the ones that confirmed the offshore accounts. I'd thanked them through our secure channel, told them the story was going to print, asked if there was anything else.
No response.
I understood. Whoever Wren was, they’d taken an enormous risk. I hope they're safe. Whoever they are, whatever their reasons, I owe them everything. Without Wren, the Crane exposé would have been speculation and rumor. With them, it was airtight.
I close the folder and sit back in my chair.
The Cranes are yesterday's story. Warren and his smear campaign are a nuisance, but they can't undo what I've done. The documents are public. The investigations are proceeding. My work speaks for itself.
It's time for me to move on.