Chapter 7 Nolan
Well, it sure made a change from my room above Mrs Kay’s.
I stand in the doorway of my new apartment and the smell hits me like a fist to the chest. Him. Erik. His scent is everywhere—soaked into the walls, the carpet, the air itself. Rich and dark and so intensely alpha that my knees actually buckle. I grab the doorframe to steady myself.
Get it together, West.
I force myself to breathe through my mouth and actually look at the place. It’s... not what I expected.
One bedroom, small kitchen, living room with a couch that’s seen better days.
The furniture looks like it’s been here for years, solid but unfashionable.
Boxes stacked in the corner, never unpacked.
A thin layer of dust on the windowsill. The afternoon light catches motes floating in the air, undisturbed until I opened the door.
This isn’t a staged set. Someone actually lived here.
I set my duffel bag down and make myself take a real breath.
His scent floods my lungs and my whole body lights up with it, every nerve ending sparking like I’ve grabbed a live wire.
I want to lie on the rug and roll around in it.
I want to bury my face in the couch cushions and breathe until I can’t think anymore.
I want to find whatever piece of clothing holds the strongest concentration of him and wrap myself in it like a goddamn security blanket.
I will not do any of that, because Erik Nilsson has not driven me insane.
Yet.
I’ve always known what scent does to an omega. Of course, I do. I spent years studying biochemistry. It’s the one talent I have. Or had. There is limited biochemical research to be had in making coffee. Or at least, not in any coffee shop with reasonable hygiene standards.
But I couldn’t find work after the Alistair debacle. My name is now out there as a researcher who cannot be trusted not to try steal someone else’s work. I’m a troublemaker and a fraud.
That’s Nilsson’s fault and I can’t help seeing the irony me knowing exactly what it is that his scent is doing to me. I also know exactly how addictive a prime match can be.
That was basic first year biology at college. Every hormone of mine is perfectly matched to be compatible with him.
But that’s all it is: an addiction and addictions can be conquered. I wasn’t expecting the scent, but I can do this. I’ll get a scent blocker.
I force myself to move through the space methodically, opening the windows as I go.
The kitchen is small but functional—gas stove, the kind that takes a match to light.
A coffee maker that’s seen better days. The refrigerator hums in a way that suggests it’s one bad day away from giving up entirely.
None of this makes sense. Erik Nilsson is worth billions. He lives in a penthouse that costs more than I’ll earn in ten lifetimes. Why would he keep this place? Why would he offer it to me, of all people?
The bedroom is smaller than I imagined. A double bed with decent sheets, nothing fancy. The closet is just a closet—not a walk-in, not some elaborate dressing room, just a normal wardrobe with sliding doors that stick a little when I pull them open. And there, hanging in neat rows on one side—
Erik’s clothes.
But they’re not the designer suits I expected. They’re good quality, better than I can afford, but they’re not designer.
Something uncomfortable shifts in my chest. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to think about Erik Nilsson as anything other than the man who ruined my life.
There’s a box on the shelf above, half-hidden behind a stack of old magazines.
Part of me feels like I’m intruding, but I’m not.
Not if it’s Nilsson. The part of me that filed the court case thought that the nightmare of those days has been put behind me, but the last week has made it clear that it has not.
I am still furious and I am still resentful and I don’t give a flying fuck about Erik Nilsson’s privacy.
I pull the box down. Inside I find concert ticket stubs, a cheap digital watch with a cracked face and at the bottom, a photo in a cheap wooden frame—two teenagers standing in front of a Mercedes, grinning at the camera like they own the world.
Erik looks young. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. His arm is slung around the girl beside him, and she’s laughing at something he’s said. I recognize her from the wedding: his sister Anna.
I turn the frame over. Someone has written on the back in faded ink: E & A.
I put the box back on the shelf, my hands not quite steady. It feels weird.
This was Erik’s home. His real home, before the penthouse and the designer suits.
I keep snooping. No, I’m not snooping. I literally live here. It’s now my home. I have a legal contract that says I have the right to be here and that includes opening all the doors.
Someone has been here recently. There are toiletries and a toothbrush in the bathroom and dirty clothes in the hamper which I do not smell.
When I turn on the TV, I find Netflix already set up with two profile options: “Erik” and “Nolan.”
I laugh out loud at that, the sound echoing in the empty apartment. Someone has really thought of everything. I wonder if it was Sara, or if Erik actually sat down and considered what details would sell the fiction of our marriage to Bureau inspectors.
The thought of Erik thinking about me at all sends an uncomfortable heat through my chest.
I push it down, click on “Nolan,” and pick the first option that comes up without really looking at it. I let it play in the background while I finish looking around.
There are business textbooks on the bookshelves with notes in the margins in the same handwriting that signed our wedding certificate. In the kitchen, I find a mug with a chipped handle that says World’s Okayest Brother.
I shove the mug back in the cabinet and slam the door. I wasn’t expecting to be in his space. I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I had known.
Oh, who am I kidding? Of course, I would have agreed. Ellie’s medical bills and the stupid rule that doesn’t let her on the trial if I am single means that I would have agreed to anything, and this would certainly have been included.
I unpack Ellie’s photos first. There aren’t many—I’ve never been sentimental about physical things—but I have a few that matter.
Ellie at her high school graduation, grinning in her cap and gown.
Ellie and me crammed into a diner booth, splitting cheese fries, sauce on her chin because she never could eat anything without wearing half of it.
Ellie sleeping in a hospital bed three years ago, when everything started going wrong.
I arrange them on the bookshelf next to Erik’s textbooks. Then I stick her medical schedule to the front of the fridge with the magnets already there. It’s filled with appointments, treatment dates, medication reminders.
This is the real reason I’m here.
I shove my clothes into the empty drawers—worn flannel next to silk, scuffed boots beside Italian leather. My whole life fits in one duffel bag and a cardboard box.
My sister is dying and I just married my worst enemy and everything I own could fit in a car trunk.
What a fucking life.
The scent is worse when I go to bed. The sheets have been washed. They smell of soap and fabric softener, but Erik lived here for years. It’s saturated into the walls.
I’ve been swimming in it all evening, but somehow it’s stronger now—or maybe I’m just too tired to keep my walls up anymore.
It curls around me and sinks into my skin. My body responds before my brain can catch up: heat pooling low in my belly, skin prickling with awareness, that same relentless pull I’ve felt every time he’s been anywhere near me.
I hate him.
I hate him.
But I’m hard. Achingly, desperately hard, my cock straining against the fabric of my boxers, and it’s because I’m lying in his bed, surrounded by his scent, and some deep animal part of my brain has decided that means something.
I should get up and take a cold shower. I should think about literally anything else.
Instead, my hand slides beneath my waistband.
The first touch drags a groan out of me. I’m already leaking, slick and hot, and I hate myself for it. I hate how good it feels to wrap my fingers around my length and stroke, slow and tight. I hate the way my hips buck up into the touch, chasing more.
I try to think about someone else. Anyone else. A celebrity. That guy from the gym.
But Erik’s scent fills my lungs with every breath, and it’s his face I see behind my closed eyes. The sharp line of his jaw. The ice-blue of his eyes. The way he looked at me across that conference table at the Bureau, like he wanted to devour me whole.
The way he kissed me at the wedding.
I stroke faster, rougher, my free hand fisting in the sheets.
The memory surfaces unbidden and I let it: the press of his lips, the heat of his palm on my jaw, the way he’d made that low sound in his throat when I opened my mouth beneath his.
Almost a growl. Pure alpha, and my whole body had lit up with it, screaming yes and more and please.
I imagine him here. In this bed. Those big hands pinning my wrists above my head while he takes what he wants. That deep voice in my ear, telling me I’m his, and I’d fight him, I would, but god—
I come with his name on my lips, spilling hot over my fist, my whole body shuddering with the force of it.
Afterward, I lie there panting. Come cooling on my stomach. Then I get up and shower, as if I can scrub the need from my skin.
Before I go to sleep, I go online and buy the strongest scent blockers I can find, paying extra to get it delivered first thing the next day.
When the knock comes, I’m barely awake, still in boxers and a t-shirt. He hands me two parcels. One is the scent blockers. The other is a box with my name on it.
Inside, nestled in tissue paper, I find a collection of silver frames containing photos of a wedding that was about as romantic as a business transaction.