Chapter 8 Julian
Wyatt kisses me.
Every thought I have is driven out my head, leaving nothing but a bright white noise behind my eyes. Everything I had been holding flat against my ribs for four days comes up all at once and I am pushing him back against the doorframe with one hand on his jaw and the other on his waist.
He is hot through the flannel and shaking. I can feel it under my hand where I am gripping him, the fine tremor running through his back.
I cannot tell if it is want or something else and right now I do not care. He makes a sound into my mouth. I make one back. I have gone hard so fast it is painful.
His hand is on my chest. I do not register it at first. It takes me a beat to understand that he is not pulling me closer, that the pressure is him pushing me away.
I step back.
The space between us opens. He is still there, against the doorframe, his chest going up and down hard. His mouth is wet and swollen. His eyes, for one unguarded second, are on my face.
And I see it.
Briggs has looked at me with annoyance and with boredom and with careful blankness since the minute I walked up his drive.
Now he is looking at me like a man who has made the worst mistake of his life.
The look in his eyes is pure panic. I have never seen it on his face and now that I have I cannot unsee it.
“Briggs —”
He moves. He ducks past me, not touching me, a sidestep that takes him out of the doorway and into the hall.
A moment later, his bedroom door slams closed.
I stand in the kitchen with my hand still half raised where it had been on his jaw.
I lower it.
I can hear my own heart. I can feel where his mouth was on mine. I can smell him on my shirt, on my hands.
I stand there for probably a minute. I make myself breathe. He pushed me off.
He kissed me and then he pushed me off. That is the fact I have to work with.
I leave the kitchen and go up the stairs. The strip of light under his door is thin and steady.
I stop outside it and knock. He doesn’t answer. I knock again.
“Wyatt?”
Nothing.
“Wyatt. Are you okay?” I am talking to a closed door in a dark hallway. I can hear how the words come out.
Nothing.
I wait. Nothing.
I go to my room and try to sleep. Around four in the morning, I give up on trying.
At some point before the sun is up I hear, through the wall, the faint creak of his bed and then the soft sound of his feet on the boards, and of him moving downstairs.
I pull on pants and a sweater and I go down. Outside the air is very cold and very still. The sunrise is starting to show, just a glimmer of light over the ridge. The stars are still out.
There’s no sign of him in the yard. I walk around the barn. The dog comes out from under the porch and looks at me with one ear up and decides I am not interesting and goes back under.
I finally find him in the west pasture. I’m not sure what I want to say to him.
I’m sorry. For what? I didn’t do anything wrong.
Kiss me again. And then what? He freaks out and runs off again. Great matching, Omega Match Bureau. I have supposedly been given my soul mate, the omega who is meant to be the love of my life.
If I can find him. Or catch him. I imagine spending my life running after an omega who is running away from me. No, thank you.
But I do know that we need to talk. If for no other reason than to explain that I have no intention to push him into anything. The plan is still to leave as soon as the two weeks are up.
He is a hundred yards off, walking the fence line with his back to me.
The grass is wet. I walk out toward him, not fast, making sure he can hear me coming. He does not turn. He does not stop. He keeps walking the fence. I close the distance to maybe thirty yards and I stop.
The wind shifts.
It comes off him toward me and it hits me in the chest and I understand, all at once what is happening.
He is going into heat.
I stand in the wet grass and I feel it settle in, clean and cold, the full shape of what happened in the kitchen last night.
He had not kissed me because he wanted to. He had kissed me because of a chemically-driven compulsion.
He had fought it off. That was what the push had been.
I feel, distantly, something in the region of my sternum that I will think about later. He did not want to kiss me.
I stand in the grass a moment longer. Thirty yards off, he keeps walking the fence, not turning.
I can’t stay. Not while he’s in heat. He will make choices he will regret because they aren’t choices at all.
I go back to the house, back to his mother’s bedroom, and start packing. I’ve mostly kept everything in the suitcase anyway so there’s not a lot to do. I just need to grab my toiletries, my laptop. My jacket, which I left hanging on the back of the door. It takes under five minutes.
There’s a motel in town. I remember it from when I was here years ago. It’s not the most exciting place, but it’ll do until Wyatt’s heat is over and I am safe to come back.
The kitchen phone rings. I let it ring off, ignoring it as I take my suitcase down the stairs but it starts up again.
It might be work. I might have got the Wi-Fi working but I still don’t have a phone signal.
I leave the suitcase next to the porch door, go into the kitchen and pick up.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Duffield. It’s David Sun.” My heart sinks. “Just checking in. How are we settling?”
“Hello David.”
“How are we settling?” he says again.
“It’s been okay,” I say. “Wyatt isn’t keen on having me here, but I’m here.” I don’t say that I’m about to leave.
There’s a pause.
“Is he in heat?”
How the fuck did he know that? I rack my brain trying to find a lie that isn’t a lie.
“Mr. Duffield.”
“Not yet,” I say honestly. “But soon.”
“Ah, right on schedule then. Good. With a match of this quality, the omega’s cycle will pull forward to meet the alpha. Wonderful. Sounds like things are going well.”
A sudden fury envelops me. “No, it is fucking not.”
He barely reacts. He’s probably used to people swearing at him. “Mr. Duffield. It’s two weeks. That’s not onerous.”
“Yes. It is. I am packed,” I say. “I have my case by the door. I cannot stay in a house where there is an omega in heat when he has made it very clear that he does not want me.”
“You have the right to do that,” Sun says, evenly. “But if you leave the residence for the duration of a cycle I will have to report non-compliance and the penalty clauses will apply to both of you.”
I close my eyes.
“David, he pushed me off him.”
“Then don’t touch him.” The voice has gone quieter.
“You do not need to be anywhere near him. You can stay in the house and keep to your room. You can work from the kitchen while he is upstairs. Omegas in heat are not, contrary to the mythology, incapable of looking after themselves. He will have been through this dozens of times. If you are genuinely not a match, then it will be difficult, not impossible.”
I do not answer. The penalty clauses will apply to both of you. I wonder what the penalties for Wyatt will be. They’re always worse for omegas. It’ll probably be something financial that I know he won’t be able to afford.
“Are you still there, Mr. Duffield?”
“Yes.”
“Stay in the house.”
“Okay.”
He hangs up.
Through the kitchen window, I can see that the sun has come up over the ridge. Out past the barn, in the gray-gold light on the pasture, I can just see a dark figure against the fence line, still walking.
Damn it.
I carry the suitcase back upstairs, then I go out to meet him again.
I go out to meet him.
I stop at the gate and I wait. He sees me when he is still fifty yards off. He does not change his pace. He does not look away. He comes on, his hands in his pockets now, his jaw set, and when he is ten feet from the gate he stops.
“Briggs.”
He doesn’t answer, or look me in the eye.
“The Bureau has called. I can’t leave.”
His jaw tightens.
He looks at me. He looks a long time, then he looks away.
“Okay,” he says.
“I will stay in my room,” I say. “I will not come down unless you ask. I can work from upstairs for as long as it takes. I can have groceries delivered to the porch. You will not see me.”
“Right.”
“Donna has the boys.”
“Mmm.”
Wyatt looks exhausted. There is a sheen of sweat at his temple already and the morning is cold enough that my breath is fogging between us.
“If you need anything,” I say. “Any kind of assistance. You know where I am.”
His eyes come up to mine. After a moment he gives me a small nod, then he walks past me to the gate. I watch him go.