Chapter 13
Pace
I have to work to keep my smirk in check the moment I catch the widening on Silver’s gorgeous, gray eyes and somehow hear her muttered, “Ah, fuck.”
Funny how the world works, isn’t it? Because moments before Silver rounded that corner, my thoughts had been centered around her. And then, the moment she came into view, I smelt her. The deliciously mouthwatering scent of sugary bubblegum, fruity and slightly creamy, setting off every one of my alpha instincts like only Silver can do. I catalogue every inch of her like I tend to do when she’s near, staring intently at the omega as she awkwardly stands near the bookcase lined with history literature.
Not that history is included in my courses, it’s just the only spot in the library that tends to go ignored, thus providing the perfect spot for me to work without interruptions. With my old laptop open in front of me, several software’s that I use for audio engineering open, the history books are the last thing I’d be paying attention to here.
And now that Silver has appeared like a pastel, bubblegum goddess before me, even my attempts at mixing and mastering the current song I’m producing ends up the furthest thing on my mind, Silver taking up all of the space in my head. The small spike in her scent, a leak of her perfume, sends me into a spiral of thoughts of nothing but the blonde-pastel-haired beauty with glittering silver eyes.
Not that she would know it, because on the outside, I’m a blank canvas. I keep my emotions and feelings bottled tight as a rule, the only exception being Silver. As much love as I have for my brothers, Juno, and all of pack Baines, not one of them has managed to make me relax enough to chuckle, catching me off guard enough to actually find something funny. The only one I’ve smiled at is Juniper, and that felt awkward and uncomfortable on my face even as I tried to comfort her back when I first met her. Silver, though? It takes only a few cheeky words or a dry delivery of a sentence to have me smiling or laughing. A feat no other has accomplished and further proof that there’s something special about this omega.
Not that I’ve shown as much to the omega, opting to keep my distance. Something I regret after her reasonable outburst last night. We haven’t exactly been the most courteous, grateful, or polite bunch since Silver graciously offered us a place to stay, and I can only put it down to being so off kilter with the omega who looks, sounds, and smells like heaven. I mean, she’s a pack’s dream from the top of her pastel-infused hair to the tips of her skater-shoe-covered toes. She has her life together, isn’t strapped for cash, and has a vibrancy for life that not many would have after all she’s been through with her pack, something Aero disclosed when I checked on him last night.
But us? Hell, we didn’t even have a place to stay until she offered her home to us. We’ve barely been scraping by. The twins are already overworking themselves between their engineering program and part time jobs at the mechanic shop five minutes away from Gabby’s Diner. I’m holding down two jobs as a lifeguard at the school’s swimming pool and a part time gig at the hardware store in town while I attempt to pass my own classes and produce music I’m hoping will find discovery online through different media apps. Only Munro and Aero aren’t currently working, and that’s not for lack of trying. With Munro taking two different courses for photography and architecture, his plate is already overfilled with his workload and assignments. Aero is very much the same, his days usually spent working on his computer science and engineering degrees, all in the hopes that he can infiltrate the gaming development career field. It’s all he would focus on before Silver entered the picture, and now, based on last night, it’s clear our omega has grown attached to the new omega still standing awkwardly in front of me.
Gesturing at an empty seat at my table, I say, “Take a seat.”
She eyes the offered seat before promptly shaking her head. “No, thanks. I’m hiding.”
Then she frowns as though she said something she shouldn’t have, shakes her head, and does a funny little U-turn before scuttling away without so much as another uttered word.
I don’t know what it is about Silver, how she seems to contain a magnetic pull that lures me in more and more with every encounter, but the sight of her walking away from me again sends a pang through my chest. I don’t like it, and I like the sight of Silver disappearing from view much less, so, with an impulsive decision cementing in my mind, I grab my backpack and laptop and hurry after her.
It feels completely alien chasing after the omega, especially since I haven’t dated a single woman since I turned eighteen. There’s no time for a girlfriend, no time to offer the energy it would take to look after her while trying to keep a roof over my pack’s head and food in their bellies. I’ve only offered Juniper Baines the time of day because she’s grown into a sister role for my pack and me, and after the incident that almost got her killed on my watch, I will always have time for Juno.
And yet, here I am, quietly chasing the woman that has wiped her hands of us all after only a weekend. It has to be a record or something, repelling a woman so thoroughly in only two days. I’ve spent weeks on end watching the omega, enjoying the sound of her laughter, and bottling every smile in a vault in my mind, and the moment we move in and end up sharing the same space, it all goes to shit. Had I made a move like I was beginning to want to, then I’d have been shot in the foot just like the others.
Although, the only one to really make any kind of move is Aero, and he’s made it beyond clear that we either fix what has been broken, or he’s going after the girl by himself. That thought alone sends prickles of unease through me, and not because I’m worried for the omega I’ve known since we were teens in the same school together. There’s unease because the idea of Silver only belonging to one of my pack and not all of us has a pit forming in my stomach that I never would have paid attention to before I saw those tears in her eyes last night and felt gutted to the core.
It was the deciding factor that what I was secretly feeling for Silver wasn’t something that was going to disappear if I ignored it. That it would simply go away the longer I pretended there was nothing there despite how she makes me laugh and smile. I might feel like our pack doesn’t have much to offer, that there are better suited packs for her and could give her what we can’t, but the moment I saw the first drop of liquid fall from her eye, I decided that those packs can’t have her. Those tears snapped something inside me, and I spent the whole night trying to figure out how to make things right. Because I meant what I said last night. Silver might very well be worth any kind of risk bonding an omega could bring, something I never would have thought before her. If we manage to fix what we broke and, later down the line, Silver agrees to courting and possibly decides that bonding with us is what she wants, then I’d do it. I’d give her the world on a rusty but still usable platter, because we might not have known each other long, but I’ve spent enough time watching the kind of person Silver is. And I know that, without a doubt, she’s something rare. Something special. And something that I don’t plan on letting get away.
It doesn’t take long to find her in the large room, my nose leading me in her direction. I find her tucked away in the back corner, the heels of her shoes resting on the lip of her seat as she peers out of the large, stained-glass window with a bar of chocolate in her hand and a frown on her face, highlighted by the sunshine that streams through the window.
My boot scuffs along the floor, announcing my presence, and she barely flinches. Seems she could smell me, too. Without looking over at me, her gaze captured by the outdoors, she quietly asks, “Are you lost, Pace?”
“Nope,” I answer seriously, steadily walking toward her even as my heart starts beating a little erratically. Seems the norm when Silver is around, so I pay it no mind as I pull a chair opposite hers out and take a seat, placing my laptop on the desk between us. “Figured I’d join you if you won’t join me.”
“Ever thought that I didn’t want company?” she mildly quips, biting into her chocolate bar in a way that has me entirely enraptured.
“It crossed my mind,” I answer, my lips twitching when she rolls her eyes in answer and continues to stare outside instead of bestowing her gaze to me. I don’t try to evaluate why that bothers me so much, simply acknowledging the feeling exists and leaving it alone after that.
Deciding to work in Silver’s presence, even her silent one, I open my laptop and go about editing and tweaking the file I’ve been working on for the past couple of days. At least, I try to. But, apparently, sitting in Silver’s space has me distracted enough that I can’t focus enough on anything but the scent that surrounds us, the way she holds her chin up to the sunlight and closes her eyes as if she’s soaking in every bit of the sun as she can, and the small smile that tugs at her full lips.
My gaze is darting between my laptop and the omega, lingering on Silver much more than my laptop, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that working when there are things to be said, things to be fixed, that hang between us, isn’t going to happen.
So, with a defeated sigh, I close my laptop and stare at Silver. As though she’s as attuned to my presence as I am to hers, she quietly informs, “I can feel your eyes burning a hole in my face. Tone it down, would you?”
I don’t, not that I know how to tone anything down. I’m only looking at her, etching the adorable slope of the tip of her nose to memory, committing the fullness of her lips and the beautifully sharp angles of her jaw and cheeks to my mind. It’s no wonder Juno calls her Pixie. Silver Gage looks like she belongs in a fairytale with pixie dust, lost boys, and a captain with a hook for a hand. She’s astonishingly beautiful, and I can’t help but stare any time she’s in the room.
“Dude. Knock it off,” she gripes, and my gaze lifts from her mouth to her eyes that are now glaring at me.
Lips twitching, I offer an apology, the first of many. “Sorry, can’t help it. Has anyone ever told you that you look like a prettier, pastel version of Tinkerbell? You’re beautiful.”
Surprise flickers in those gorgeous, gray eyes before she barks a laugh, slapping a hand over her mouth as her eyes widen from her outburst. Grinning at her now, the action feeling weird on my face, we remain quiet for a long moment, waiting to see if anyone will round the corner to provide a warning on our volume.
No one does, so Silver drops her hand and lowers her voice as she asks, “Are you okay? Have you received a bump to the head between last night and now?”
I shake my head, openly enjoying Silver’s theatrics for the first time since I saw her with Juniper, and I watch with rapt attention as her eyebrows pinch and she eyes me as though I’ve been body snatched when, in reality, I’ve simply decided to stop trying to shut her out. The weeks and weeks of observing are over, constantly watching while wanting and not allowing myself to have forgotten.
I want Silver Gage, and I want her to want me, too.
“Are you unwell? Is there some mutant disease hijacking your body or something?” she continues. “Are you even Pace Larsen?”
Shaking my head, I ask her, “Is it so hard to believe I’d pay you a compliment?”
Silver gives me a look that screams ‘well, yeah, dumbass’, before eloquently pointing out, “Uh, no shit. Before Juno asked me for a favor that shafted me harder than my lovingly used dildo, you spent your time either ignoring my very existence or watching me like I was a criminal. Since you moved in, you’ve continued that pattern. I’m finding it very difficult to associate this Pace with the guy I’ve had very minimal interaction with.”
Wait, I haven’t ignored her at all since we moved in.
“When have I ignored you?” I ask, genuinely curious, because there hasn’t been a time where I’ve been around Silver since we carried our old shit into her lavish home that I’ve pretended she wasn’t there. Before moving in, yeah, because it was easier to do that than obsess over her and the feelings she keeps bringing to the surface.
“Saturday night. I knocked on all of your doors and invited you for pizza,” she answers quickly, as though the words were already on the tip of her tongue.
Narrowing my eyes, I think over the weekend. After we carried our things in, I went to my designated room, showered, and made a few calls and sent emails to change our address from the old house we were living in to Silver’s home, ensuring our mail wouldn’t get lost. That took longer than I would have imagined, and once that was done, I went to work at the hardware store. I wasn’t home until just before midnight, crashed, and didn’t wake until early morning on Sunday. Since Aero and silver were gone for hours, I spent my time in my room on my laptop and fiddling with music before Rage and Haze dragged me downstairs to watch a movie. My focus was on Silver the moment she came home and remained on her until she left. I haven’t ignored her at all. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even if I tried.
“I don’t remember you knocking for pizza,” I answer honestly, narrowing my eyes on her when she does the same to me. Before she can continue, I tell her, “I was at work most of the evening. Could that be when you knocked?”
Silver opens her mouth, then closes it, peering up at the ceiling with a contemplative expression that makes me smile. Then she cringes, and those sparkling, gray eyes are back on me. “Okay, so maybe you haven’t ignored me. But what’s with all the intense watching?”
I shrug, never having realized my gaze was considered at all intense, and opt for honesty. “I like watching you. As I said, you’re beautiful, but I like watching your expressions. I can tell a lot about how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking, because you wear your emotions across your face. When you disagree with something, your nose wrinkles. When you’re relaxed and happy, your lip twitches right before you smile. When you find something funny, you’ll run your tongue over your lower lip and then laugh. When you’re dealing with Munro, you’re either raising an eyebrow when you’re unimpressed with him, scowling when he says something stupid, or your expression falls completely and you turn blank when he hits a nerve.”
Mouth parted in shock, Silver stares at me with raised eyebrows before she blurts, “Okay, I don’t know whether to be impressed by that or creeped out.”
“I’d go for impressed, personally, but it’s your choice to make,” I quip, my heart stalling when she snorts and shakes her head with a dubious look in my direction before she turns her face to the sun once more.
“Alright. Fine. Consider me impressed that you can suss out my emotions. Now do I get to ask why you've studied my face hard enough to develop that ability?” she wonders, tone slightly less hostile than it was when I first sat down. That’s good, right? That means progress.
Since honesty is winning me favors, I continue on that path, crossing my arms over my chest as I sit back in my seat and divulge, “Because I want to know you. I want to understand how your mind works.”
“And you couldn’t just ask?” she asks with a pinched brow that displays her confusion.
“I could have, sure, but then I wouldn’t have grown into my superpowers,” I tease back, and it feels good., so fucking good, to be joking with anyone that isn’t my pack. To feel the same level of ease with her as I do them. That alone should tell me that my choice to stop holding back was the best one to make. The only choice, really.
“Oh god,” she groans, dropping her head back before slapping her free hand over her face and rubbing hard. She isn’t wearing makeup to smudge, and I note that she usually goes without it unless she’s going to work, ringing her eyes with dark liner and staining her lips a deep red. Not that she needs it. She’s breathtaking without any added cosmetics. “Don’t sit there being funny. It confuses me.”
“Me being funny is confusing?” I ask, entertained beyond belief.
“Yes, Pace Larsen, serious alpha and silent sentinel who watches people like it’s his job. You being funny is muddling my head,” she retorts like a smart-ass, glancing at me from the corner of her eyes. “I’m supposed to be pissed at you.”
“Why?” I ask, because I’m pretty sure it’s Munro she’s angry at, and Munro only. I haven’t done anything to warrant her ire, and I know Aero was already in her good graces if she took him to meet her cousin and his pack. The twins are also ahead of me in the race for Silver’s affection, since they decided to chase after her at work and stayed long enough to soften the omega into forgiving Rage’s snotty comments about her money.
Once again, Silver opens her mouth to respond, only to slap it shut just as quickly, that pinch between her brows deepening as she thinks about it. I leave her to ponder for a moment, watching every expression and noting each detail of her face, before she finally but reluctantly murmurs, “I thought I had an answer, but it turns out you haven’t actually done anything wrong, so now I feel stupid.”
I jump on that particular opening, leaning against the desk that separates us with my elbows as I drop my smile and tell her seriously, “Maybe I haven’t done anything to you to receive your anger, but I feel like I should still apologize. If for nothing more than allowing Munro and Rage to speak to you the way they have been. I guess I got so lost in trying to figure you out that I didn’t stop to realize that they were being punks. I should have stepped in, so I’m sorry.”
I can tell by the expression on her face that I’ve surprised her again, her glittering, silver eyes watching me just as intently as I usually watch her. It takes a moment for her to reply, and when she does, her voice is hushed and a little cautious. “As much as I appreciate that, you realize you’re not responsible for how those shitheads speak to people, right?”
Shrugging, I nod and explain, “Sure, they’re their own people, but they’re still my pack. My brothers. And it’s certainly not how I’ve raised them for the past six years. I should have put a stop to it before it escalated to what it did.”
“Wait, raised them? What does that mean?” she asks, bypassing everything else.
Since we’re having an actual conversation, I feel obliged to answer, hoping she might garner some understanding about the guys if I divulge a few things about us all. So, I nod, and tell her, “Aero and Munro are foster kids.”
Silver nods, and I deduce that Aero might have shared as much.
“Munro phased out first, but they let him stay so long as he got a job in the year Aero had left there. When Aero turned eighteen and phased out, they both came to live with me. They were already friends with Rage and Haze, and the twins and I have been friends since they were in fourth grade. Their old pack were wastes of space, and they were always on the verge of starvation with nothing to their names, so my mom took them in like they were her own. The twins and I grew up together, and when Aero and Munro joined our school, they slotted in perfectly and we’ve been together ever since. When my mom passed away from a car wreck the day after my eighteenth birthday, I promised to look after them all. They’re all the family I have left. So, we took Munro and Aero in and became a pack of our own. We’ve not had much in the way of nice things, but we’ve always had the essentials, and we’ve had each other,” I explain, watching her as closely as she’s watching me, enraptured by her face while she clings to my words.
I shrug, and continue, “The twins were always mocked growing up for how little they had. It eased when they started staying with mom and me, but then mom passed and I was forced to grow into a caretaker to two alpha seventeen-year-olds, a seventeen-year-old beta with a bad attitude, and a sixteen-year-old omega. Not many jobs would hire an eighteen-year-old alpha with four charges, but we made do.”
Silver blows out a harsh breath, eyes filling with sympathy as she stares at me. “I’m sorry, Pace. About your mom, about your struggles. And the others.”
“Thank you,” I accept, smiling softly, because Silver’s heart is showing again and it’s the size of all of North Five University.
“So, you raised four boys while being a boy yourself,” she deduces, nodding slowly as though a few things are coming together. “Foster care, shitty parents, and a tragedy, along with struggling to pay to live. And here I am, bitching about my own life and troubles, the omega who was raised with a silver spoon in her mouth.”
I already know those troubles, and I can’t say they’re any lesser or more than ours. After all, she still suffered years of neglect, even if it differed to the neglect the twins suffered. Years of being a pawn, a puppet to be controlled, is still suffering. Living a life that’s not yours is still a mark on the soul. She didn’t ask for that spoon, nor did she get to choose the type of spoon it was. She was as much a victim to her parents as the twins were to theirs. So, reaching out a hand for hers, I damn near combust when she allows the touch and hears me when I say, “Don’t diminish what you went through based on other people's life experiences. We’ve all been dealt shitty hands. My pack just seems to handle ours with less grace and dignity than you do.”
Silver huffs a laugh, mindlessly rubbing her thumb over the back of my hand, and says, “A trait I got from Meemaw, I guess. Gods know the only thing I’ve inherited from my parents is my genetic makeup.”
And I’m glad for it, because her parents sound horrible, and I would hate to discover something as stunning as Silver turned out to be the same.
Smiling back at her, I finish my sad, little tale and say, “We’ve all got baggage, some more than others, but if you’d be willing, we’d really love the chance to prove to you that we’re not the assholes you think we are.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” she confides in a hushed tone, trepidation filtering through those gray eyes.
I get it. I would, too. But I’m a determined fucker when there’s something I want that’s worth chasing. “One more chance, Tink. A do over so we can start this thing right, that’s all.”
She goes quiet for a long moment, eyeing me, then peering outside, before looking at me again. It’s almost like a thought reel that crosses her face as she thinks about it, before she finally says, “Munro isn’t getting a do over. I told him to enjoy being a punk toward kittens and children with ice creams just before I came here after he tried to sucker me into a conversation I wasn’t willing to have.”
Surprised, I blurt, “Munro spoke to you?”
“Well, he tried, but I shut him down,” she murmurs, her cheeks growing a little red. “I’m regretting shouting down the hallway that he kicks kittens and steals children’s ice cream after pushing them over, now, though. It seems like it was in poor taste, given what I know now.”
I can’t help it. The laugh bursts out of me in an explosion of hilarity, the sound much too loud in the otherwise quiet library. She’s worried about what she said after all the shit Munro has given her over the past few months. This fucking girl.
“Ssh, you’re going to get us in trouble,” she admonishes, snickering along with me, even as she tries to hide it with her hand.
It takes me a moment for me to recover, and I’m still chuckling as I teasingly demand, “You give that guy all the shit he slung at you. You have my full support. Just think about the rest of us, okay? We really would like to start over, get to know you, and you us.”
Smile still in place with her free hand only partially covering it, Silver’s eyes roam all over my face before she finally nods. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”
Excitement and sheer relief bursts through me like little lit sticks of dynamite, but I tame it enough to grin at her and whisper, “Let me know what you decide. For now, I’ll let you finish your lunch and I’ll see you at home.”
She softens entirely at that, her face growing warm and wistful, but she nods. “See you later.”
With that, I pack my things and head out of the library before I decide to stay and bask in Silver’s presence and scent. As I’m slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I pull out my cell and group call Aero, Haze, and Rage on Haze’s cell. He answers quickly, and asks, “Yo, where have you been?”
“You won’t believe me if I told you,” I answer, lips twitching with another Silver-induced smile. “But we all need to talk about Silver. I think I just got us a shot to get out of the dog house and start over. She said she’d think about it, but I have no idea how long that will take. So, I need to know if you guys are on board with courting her, and whether or not you’re all ready to do some crazy grafting to get that omega to consider us as a pack.”
Silence answers me for all of five seconds before Aero rushes, “You were with her? You dirty bastard. You could have called. We’ve been looking out for her in the cafeteria for ages.”
“Good thing I didn’t, because we have a chance now,” I counter, shutting him up quickly. “Munro is a whole other ball game, but he went to talk to her, too. She shut him down, but if our boy is willing to make amends by going to talk to her, I have high hopes that we could be what Silver needs. We just need her to give us that chance and earn that forgiveness, and I have the best idea on how we’re going to do that. You guys in?”
“Absolutely. Don’t even have to ask,” Aero answers enthusiastically.
“I just got out of the dog house, only for that knucklehead to throw me back in it with him. If she’s offering do overs, then I want one. I’m in,” Rage agrees.
And when Haze gives me his answer, I’m grinning wildly and anticipating Silver’s choice. “Let’s win our girl over.”
Our girl. Fuck yeah, I like that. I like that a whole lot.