Chapter Sixteen
Emery
The house is dark when we get in.
Not silent—Beau’s boots thud, and my pulse is doing its own Olympic routine—but it’s still dark enough that it feels softer than the arena, the bus, the tunnel, the crowd.
Softer than the fifty-eight minutes spent packed elbow-to-rib with a group of hyped-up alphas in an enclosed metal tube, and certainly softer than the fifteen minutes spent in the truck afterward, where neither of us talked much.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad silence, though.
Beau unlocks the door and steps inside first, shaking off a thin sheet of frost from the walk to the porch.
The truck had been frozen stiff when we left the Icebox, and he’d scraped the windshield with the edge of a credit card because the scraper was missing.
We’d sat in the cab breathing clouds of our own heat until the vents finally wheezed to life, and though we didn’t say much, I kind of felt like we didn’t need to.
Something in him had been humming, loud and alpha and bright from the win, and every instinct in me said: do not poke this.
Even if the air between us did feel electric.
He flicks on the main light, filling the entryway with warm orange glow. It’s a huge relief after hours of fluorescent misery, and I close the door behind us and toe off my boots.
“Good game,” I say, because anything louder feels like it might break the moment.
“Yeah,” Beau answers.
That’s all he says, but I swear, his tone is almost warm.
He’s still riding the high from the win. I can see it on him: the way his shoulders sit lower and his jaw is less set. Even his scent is different; not sharp steel or cold air, but having deepened into something heavier and steadier, something borderline dangerous.
And something an omega should not breathe too much of if she wants to remain upright.
It coils around me anyway as he pulls off his beanie, his dark curls rumpled from the heat of the game, frost melting at his temples.
“Least the truck heater decided to work,” he mutters. “Thought we were gonna freeze to death before we hit Main Street.”
“You should have said something if you were cold.”
He scoffs. “I’m not cold.”
Though it comes across as bravado, he’s probably being honest. After all, he was still radiating heat twenty minutes after the final whistle, his whole body no doubt running on post-game adrenaline.
It filled the cab and thickened the air, making it press against my skin; and the whole ride home, we managed to walk that whole fine line of not talking and not touching and not acknowledging a single thing neither of us is prepared to say out loud.
I hang my jacket on the hook and swallow down the way my pulse spikes.
“I saw you out on the ice,” I say, keeping my voice as neutral as I can manage. “You looked… good.”
He tilts his head, a slow, assessing shift of his attention, and then—very faint, barely even there—his mouth twitches, as if he almost wants to smile.
“You were watching?”
His voice drops half an octave, which is completely unnecessary, and my stomach flips.
“I was working,” I say, crossing my arms because I suddenly need the barrier. “And you were in my direct line of sight. Would be kind of hard not to notice.”
He hums: a deep, resonant alpha sound that rolls through my spine before I can block it, and my instincts flare so fast and sharp I nearly choke on them.
Nope. Not tonight.
Not in this house, not with him looking like victory and heat and barely-leashed dominance.
I clear my throat.
“How’s the shoulder?”
He lifts and rolls it experimentally, and I watch the muscles shift under his shirt. The movement is careful, but he doesn’t hide the test.
“Better,” he says. “Feels… looser. At least, it doesn’t feel like it’s catching as much.”
“That’s good,” I say. “Just: make sure you don’t overdo it.”
He looks at me for a moment too long, and there’s something in his blue eyes that I just can’t read. Something hot, something… hungry? No, not exactly—
He nods toward the stairs, a jerky movement that snaps me out of it.
“I’m gonna go shower.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
He pauses before heading upstairs, and I swear the air around him turns warmer. It’s the kind of shift you feel more than see, the kind that makes instinct rear its head with interest it absolutely shouldn’t have.
He asks, quietly, “Long day?”
The question catches me off guard, but I try not to show it.
“Busy,” I reply. “But… good. Your guys are easier than most teams.”
“That’s because they’re idiots.”
I laugh, and he watches my mouth when I do. It’s only for a moment, but long enough that my breath catches.
He notices, then looks away immediately; his jaw tightening as though he wasn’t supposed to let that happen.
He moves, then, every step away from me radiating that same post-win alpha energy that is absolutely, unquestionably, a threat to my peace of mind.
I stay rooted to the spot for another five full seconds, breathing through the tension he leaves behind.
I press my palm over my sternum as if that’s going to steady the stupid flutter beneath it, and tell myself that he’s just an alpha, like all the others I’ve worked with before.
It’s just that he’s… well, Beau, and I’m not used to him being in a good mood.
That, and I’m tired.
I head upstairs, and hear the shower in Beau’s en-suite turn on just as I reach my bedroom. The pipes rattle in the walls as water hisses to life, and my skin prickles at the sound, at the memory of his scent thickened with sweat and adrenaline.
God, I need sleep.
(Sleep, and maybe a frontal lobotomy.)
I grab my pajamas from the top drawer and slip into the main bathroom down the hall.
My reflection in the mirror looks as flushed and windswept and exhausted as I feel.
I change into my pajamas, brush my teeth, wash my face, and head back to my room.
The shower is still running as I close my door, and as I crawl into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin, I exhale into the darkness.
Tomorrow will be another long day. Another chance to pretend my instincts aren’t humming in the direction of one particular alpha down the hall, and another chance to convince myself I can do solitude just fine.
...Even if solitude doesn’t feel the same as it used to anymore.