Chapter 16
“ I made sure the contract has as much as possible in your favor,” Miles told me as I pored over the paperwork in front of me.
While I was considerably more human than I had been the last couple of days, I still wasn’t all there. Miles went over each section with me, explaining the terms and conditions. It didn’t seem like there was anything drastic to worry about, and the other alphas listened carefully through the spiel. I didn’t know them well enough to assume they would speak up if there was something wrong with the contract, but I didn’t think Miles would actively let me get screwed over.
I signed my name everywhere he told me to and initialed the rest. He blew out a relieved breath when I got to the last page. “I’ll get this filed and then we can be on our way.”
I cringed internally. On our way back to Los Angeles, where my fiancé—my ex- fiancé—was probably snuggled up in our apartment with his new wife.
Even if I wasn’t sure about a permanent move-in with these alphas, I sure as hell couldn’t stay at my old apartment anymore. Unless of course we got there and found it empty because he was mooching off his new partner instead of me.
“The moving van in LA will meet us there in six hours,” said Diego. “I had the kitchen pack us up a lunch and cooler for the drive.”
What the fuck was I supposed to talk to these men about on a five-hour road trip? I didn’t know the first thing about any of them, and for the last few days the only real communication we’d had was about sex or making sure I didn’t shrivel into a raisin during the heat. Talk about awkward as hell.
I had dressed in a pair of booty shorts and a tank top with flip-flops to accommodate the heat, the rest of them dressed similarly, albeit with longer shorts.
Kai took my hand in his as we departed the suite to head down to the van. It was so weird to crave touching him the way I did when I knew nothing about him. Why was sex easier than talking?
Miles slid into the driver’s seat and Amir was next to him, which put me in the back seat between Diego and Kai. Amir passed the cord back so I could plug in my phone and control the music. Jerry had never let me play what I wanted to in the car… My music taste was so varied but I hoped at least one of them liked something that popped up over the next five hours.
Diego offered his upturned hand on top of his knee, and I took it. Touching them made the entire situation a little easier to bear somehow. I really hoped Jerry wasn’t home when we got there. I could only imagine what he might say about me showing up with four men, one of them my new mate.
As soon as we got out of Vegas, the silence grew to an unbearable level. Diego was the first one to break it. “Have you always lived in LA?”
“I moved there about four years ago. I grew up in Seattle.”
“We just missed each other,” Diego replied. “Kai and I went to high school and college together before we moved out to Vegas around the same time you moved to LA.”
“You moved to Vegas for work?”
“Sure did,” answered Diego.
“I…moved for my fiancé. Ex- fiancé, fuck. I’m sorry; it hasn’t been long enough for me to get used to that.”
“Don’t apologize, precious. He was an important part of your life for a long time. None of us expect you to forget him.” Diego squeezed my hand, lifting my knuckles to his lips.
That was a bit of a relief, even though I wished I could just forget Jerry.
“Where are you two from?” I asked the ones up front.
“I’m from Seattle, too,” said Miles.
“Oh my god, shut up! Really?”
“I moved around a lot, but that was the longest stint. Born there, stayed until kindergarten, and back briefly for college.”
“Army brat?”
“Unfortunately. I hated moving. Every time I felt settled somewhere, we’d get notice it was time to go.”
“That’s so hard on kids. I’m glad I got to stay in one place growing up.” I poked Amir’s arm. “What about you?”
“New York,” he replied.
“NYC or the state?”
“Albany, but I did go to NYU.”
“Okay, this is fucking weird. I went there too.”
Kai leaned over and nuzzled my hair. “Red thread.”
“What?”
“The red thread of fate. It’s a folklore tradition that fated partners were connected by a red thread the gods tied to them so they would remain connected until it was time for them to meet.”
I couldn’t exactly deny it. Trading home cities with Kai and Diego, being born in the same place as Miles, studying at the same place as Amir. “That just makes me want to check all the dates to see how close we got without ever meeting. Amir, what did you study?”
“Physics.”
“Okay, we probably didn’t have any intersecting classes then. I was there for cinematography. How the fuck did you go from physicist to live sex show performer?”
Amir snorted. “I don’t know how much you know about physicists, but it’s not the most highly paid profession in the world.”
“I guess that’s fair.” I nudged Kai and Diego. “What about you two?”
“I made a go of med school but decided I liked sleep and sanity a lot better. It was absolutely not for me,” said Kai.
“Honestly, same for me,” Diego replied, “but with pharmacy. By the time I got close to finishing my first degree I was about ready to have a panic attack every time I walked into a pharmacy. Kai and I dropped out at the same time, decided to fuck around in Vegas like two little dumbasses who weren’t even old enough to drink. Rang in our twenty-first birthdays there and decided to never leave.”
“And how did you all end up doing the shows? Do your families know?”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Amir said with a snort. “I got a job right out of college, recruited by a company in Vegas, and my parents still think that’s what I do for work. I started escorting when I realized I hated my socially acceptable job, and that’s where I met the others.”
“Escorting ? I need everyone to back up. There’s a lot going on in these backstories.”
“After I graduated university,” said Miles, “I moved to Vegas. Mostly I just needed to get away and Vegas seemed like a good place to lose myself. I was the first one of us to get recruited into escorting. Did that for about four years before I ran into Kai and Diego.”
“We were both working miserable retail jobs,” added Kai. “We escorted for about a year before Miles got his job in recruitment for the company that does the shows and he dragged all of us with him so we could have way better paychecks.”
“I guess I’m kind of ruining that.” Guilt sat like a stone in my stomach.
“You’re not ruining anything, little dove.” Kai draped his arm around me. “The point is that we’ve all pivoted in our careers pretty hard, so it’s not the end of the world if we have to do that again.”
I leaned into Kai, getting as comfortable as I could with the seatbelts in the way of me draping myself across his lap. “I wish that red thread thing would just tell you you have fated people out there so you could avoid all the stupid ones before that.”
“In fairness,” said Kai as he traced patterns on my arm, “we never would’ve met you at all if your jackass of an ex hadn’t insisted you come to Vegas to begin with and then fucked off. Things line up a certain way and a million building blocks go into creating the unique circumstances. If we all knew beforehand, the world would just be at a standstill. And to answer your earlier question, none of our families know exactly what we do.”
I wouldn’t want mine to know either, so I didn’t blame them for not telling their loved ones. People could get so weird about sex. I had mostly been intending on just forgetting the heat had ever happened when I started. I knew things on the Internet didn’t disappear, and obviously there was no going back now that I was bonded, so my original plan was out the window.
I stared at Kai, still trying to figure out how I felt about him in a way that wasn’t influenced by all the hormones. He had been nothing but kind to me from the start, so I could at least be somewhat reassured that liking him wasn’t purely hormonally based. I just didn’t know him, but that would change with time. Warm sweetness flowed steadily down the bond from him, little flickers of worry in the background that were all but drowned out by surges of that sweetness whenever I touched him or he looked at me.
Through the rest of the drive, I learned more bits and pieces about them. They had been an official pack for a little over three years, had a pack house on the outskirts of town in a district I could never hope to afford. Their families knew they were a pack, but never came out to visit.
At some point I would probably have to meet their families and they would have to meet mine, but right now I was not remotely emotionally equipped for any of that.
I fell asleep on Kai shortly after our mid-trip snack and woke when the vehicle stopped in front of my apartment building. I groaned, half-ready to indulge myself in a full petulant tantrum as if I were a child. I didn’t want to go in there after everything that had happened, even though I had to.
“Deep breath, precious.” Diego helped me sit all the way up. “You’re starting to smell like burnt sugar.”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“We won’t be here long,” said Miles, checking the time on his phone. He passed back a pair of skin patches to cover our fresh bite marks. I didn’t want to answer unnecessary questions if Jerry saw the bondbite. “The moving company is only about fifteen minutes out. Let’s go start grabbing your essentials.”
I pouted, using the fob to let us into the building, and the four of them followed me with duffel bags slung over their arms. When I got up to the actual apartment, my door code didn’t work, and neither did my key that I tried afterward. “Motherfucker.”
Locked out of my own apartment was not how I’d expected this to go. Jerry always left the tasks to me, but maybe his new woman had thought of this and done it for him. He’d been good at the start, competent enough that it hadn’t raised too many red flags, at least until I’d moved here with him, and then that had all changed.
One of my neighbors, Mrs. Frisk, poked their head out across the hall. “Hello, Callie dear. I never expected to see you again. Jerry said you moved out.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but he changed the locks before I could get any of my stuff.”
Mrs. Frisk chewed her bottom lip before dipping back inside for a second and returning with a key. “He gave me this for emergencies. Try to be quick.”
“You’re an absolute angel. Thank you so, so much.”
“You are so welcome, dear. You were such a lovely neighbor to have and I’m so sorry things didn’t work out.”
My bottom lip wobbled as the realization of everything struck me again. An eight-year relationship down the drain. Meeting Jerry when I’d started university, latching on to him immediately, never taking a chance on anyone else, and following him across the country had been the biggest mistake I ever could have made. My family hadn’t liked him, but they’d tolerated his frat boy attitude. I’d been trapped with rose-colored glasses, so in love I’d ignored all the issues, and then I was in a new city and reliant on him until I got a job. At that point he’d pushed more and more bills onto me, and at first it had felt like I was just making up for him having to support me those first couple of months, but…then it had never stopped.
“Who are these lovely gentlemen?” Mrs. Frisk asked, startling me out of my thoughts.
“Friends,” I said before any of them could tell her otherwise. “They’re helping me move out.”
“How sweet. Be sure to say goodbye before you head out.”
“I definitely will. Thanks, Mrs. Frisk.”
I could do this. I could face this. I’d built a life in this apartment and just because Jerry had lit it all on fire didn’t mean I had to simply let him push me out. I didn’t want him anymore, not really, but I was still nervous about what I’d find on the other side of the door to what had once been my home.
I shoved Mrs. Frisk’s emergency key into the lock, both relieved and terrified when it turned.