Chapter 33 Deacon
Deacon
PAST
She’s standing outside near my car, her tits almost falling out of her top. She’s absolutely beautiful, with blond hair and lovely blue eyes. Exactly the kind of omega everyone dreams of having.
This omega smells faintly of strawberries, and when she twirls her hair and bites her plump lower lip, all I want to do is knot her until she comes.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Hey, yourself.”
“I’ve seen you around,” I purr.
“I love the game. Love watching.”
“Just watching?”
Her eyes glimmer with amusement. I catch Vae waving out of the corner of my eye, but I ignore her.
“Not just watching, sometimes I like to play rough, too.”
“Oh, really?” I purr up at her.
“Mmhmm.”
“Well, we’re having a party tonight, why don’t you drop by…”
“Indy.”
“Indy. Come to the party, and we can discuss how much you like playing.”
When I look at Vae, her face is closed off.
“What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head and smiles, though it doesn’t look quite right.
“Nothing, Deacon,” she says and turns away. “I have to get ready for work, so I’ll see you later. Good game, though.”
“Now, what did I do?”
PRESENT
I sit on Indy’s couch and bounce around. “This isn’t going to work for me. We’re going to need to get a new couch.”
“Fine,” Indy snaps.
Seeing her face when we rocked up on her doorstep and told her we were moving in was my favourite Indy moment, but I suspect I’m going to be having a few of them in the coming days.
I open up my phone and send a message to a friend I met at the pub. He sells weed and has the most disgusting couch I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s stained and stinks. He’s waiting downstairs.
I am an alpha fully prepared for war.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Indy snaps. “Don’t touch anything.”
I glance at Malcolm. “You heard her. Don’t touch anything.”
Malcolm goes and starts to cook his favourite dish; stewed meat and veggies with dumplings and fruit cake with homemade ice-cream. Vae used to make it for him every winter. It’s a family favourite.
Mal has no chance in hell of cooking it.
Raynor plugs in the amp and starts learning to play his bass, while I invite everyone I know over for a party.
I hear the doorbell and open the door, smiling as Indy’s present arrives.
“Thanks, man.”
He winks. “Anything for Vae.”
The couch goes in, and Indy’s expensive, cream, low-line couch that probably cost ten grand gets donated to my friend. He is ecstatic.
I start exercising and bump into walls, leaving marks. Then I go to the kitchen and deliberately piss off Malcolm. It doesn’t take much before he’s charging me into the walls. The first hole in the wall goes to him; the second and third are mine.
The smoke alarm goes off, screaming into the apartment when his stew boils over. The noxious fumes really start to worry me. Indy rushes out, her cheeks red, hair a mess, and, wow…I pause and look hard, really hard. I’ve heard of this phenomenon. I believe they call it catfishing.
“Indy, you look so different,” I say and look her up and down.
She shrieks. “What did you do to my house?”
“What did you do to your face?” Malcolm shoots back. When she steps towards him, he throws a cushion at her head. “Stay back, foul creature!”
“Where’s my couch?”
“Where are your eyebrows?” Raynor asks in horror. “And are you missing teeth?”
“My kitchen is ruined,” Indy snarls, ignoring us. She puts the burning stew in the sink and turns on the water.
“So is my dinner,” Raynor says dryly, putting away his bass. “How are you so pale? Have you heard of the sun? Are you a vampire, or maybe a ghoul?”
She shrieks again, louder this time. “Get my couch back.”
“I can’t, I sold it,” I say, bored. “But you should really consider going for one of those catfishing videos on social media, you know, the reveals and how people get famous off those; you would do so well. Seriously, you’d make a fortune.”
Her eyes narrow. “Get my couch back.”
“No can do, girlfriend.”
“Clean my kitchen.”
I burst into laughter. “Not happening.”
“I don’t clean,” Malcolm says. “That’s Vae’s job.”
“Are you telling me Vae cleaned, cooked, and took care of your ridiculous little house without you decorating it like that?” She throws an arm at the couch.
“Yep.”
“Did you insult her, too?”
“Oh, all the time, but Vae was used to it. I mean, you saw, you weren’t nice to her either.”
“Because it’s unnatural for you all to be living like that.”
I squint and purse my lips. “Nah, she just promised our foster mum she’d take care of us, but now that’s your job.”
“Are there holes in my drywall?” Indy shrieks.
“Goes with the holes in your crater face,” Mal says under his breath. It’s all I can do not to laugh.
Mal throws himself onto the couch. “Indy, finish cooking for me. I’m tired. I’m going to have a sleep.”
“Cook your own food.”
“Vae always does it!” Mal says petulantly. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m not Vae!”
I cock my head to the side. “No, you’re not. You’re our girlfriend. Vae was never that.”
“I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.” Indy declares wrathfully. She lifts her head, nose in the air.
“It won’t?” I ask in amusement.
“No.”
She turns, slips in her puddle of water, elbows the wall hard, and knocks off a ceramic cat before she rights herself and stalks out.
I go and grab my phone, lean into the shot, and smile at the camera. “Phase one: complete.” Then I end the live stream.
The party rages all night; it is an epic success. Indy doesn’t enjoy it as much as she enjoyed our parties, and that is indeed so very sad. Plus, you know, she got to clean up the mess. I’m not sure she was amused by the vomit on her stilettos or the pair fucking on her bed.
She never cared at our house. Funny, that.
The next day, she disappears, and when she comes home, she glowers at us and retreats to her room with a vicious order to clean up our mess.
We don’t clean. We do, however, take over a whole bedroom each, leaving Indy’s room alone. I pull out all the gloves I’ve borrowed from the team and dump them on the kitchen bench and quietly go off to bed.
I get up in the morning and drink the last of the orange juice, while I tip the milk down the drain. The coffee follows suit, and I put the tea in the yogurt.
Indy walks out and gags. “What is that smell?”
“You didn’t wash our gear for practice?” I say reproachfully. “The team is not going to be happy, Indy.”
“Wash your gear?” she asks blankly; her face is back on today, small mercy.
“Isn’t that what girlfriends do?”
“No!” Indy fairly vibrates with rage.
“Vae did it.” I flip my hand over casually and accidentally on purpose knock over the only coffee she has left in this shithole.
“Vae was a saint,” Indy spits venomously.
“No argument there.”
She opens the fridge and gawks at it. “Where’s my protein shakes?”
“Mm, was good,” Mal says from the couch. He belches and then throws a tennis ball at the ceiling. Leaving dirty marks that I have no idea how someone will get off.
“My green tea smoothie?”
Raynor holds up a hand. “Oh, I loved that. I couldn’t stop drinking them, though, fair warning, it came out, and you’re going to need a nuclear warhead to clean the porcelain throne.”
Indy goes green, her mouth gaping open. “You did not.”
“What goes in, must come out,” Mal sings.
“Oh, grow up!”
Her temper is becoming even more frayed. I’m really enjoying seeing her lose the plot, but there’s a deep satisfaction in knowing that, as she unravels, we get closer to Vae.
Raynor walks past scratching his crotch.
Indy follows him, her mouth open wide in horror. “You’re going to wash your hands, aren’t you? Oh, my God, what are you doing? Don’t wipe them on my curtains. They cost me a fortune.”
Raynor doesn’t answer. He just groans and goes back in again.
“Did you touch anything else?” she shrieks.
I wince at the harsh sound. Perfect.
I sigh and scrape the entire packet of very expensive tofu into the bin. “That cheese is off.”
She does a double take. “That’s my imported tofu. I had to go to five stores to find it.”
“It tastes terrible. I’ll buy you a cheeseburger.”
“Indy, I need you to drive me to the store,” Mal whines.
“The store?”
“Yep. We need to get food.”
“You didn’t eat your food you cooked last night.”
“It didn’t taste good.”
“The store? What do you need? I can order online?”
“Noooo,” Mal draws out. “We have to go together because you love me. You are our girlfriend, after all. You want the perks, you have to deal with the rest.”
“I said I would date you and Deacon. I never said I would date Raynor.”
“But, baby, we’re a packaged deal. We come together.”
She growls and stomps out of the room. “Be ready in five minutes.”
I lean into my phone camera, smile, and whisper, “Who wants to go to the shops?”
I get into a massive fight with Malcolm in the shops. We knock over a giant stack of cans. Indy shouts at us, but we ignore her and keep wrestling.
“Indy, pick them up for us,” I hiss when I have Mal in a headlock.
“What?”
“Well, you’re our girlfriend, we’re famous, we can’t be seen to do it.” I whisper it to her and then walk away.
People watch her until she bends in her teeny-tiny skirt and starts re-stacking the cans.
Raynor, meanwhile, has filled three trolleys full of groceries and is currently standing by the checkout on his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Signing Indie up for Hot Daddies Looking For A Creamin’ Good Time. Car insurance quotes. Omega Match Prisoner Pen Pals. Beta Baddies and Alpha Age Gaps. All those creepy ads where they call your number day and night.”
“What?” I ask, choking on a laugh.
“Indy! I want to get some meat. Let’s go look at the meat,” Malcolm whines.
Indy’s face is bright red. “No, let’s go-”
“How can I cook you a romantic meal if you won’t even communicate with me? I try so hard, but you won’t meet me halfway,” Mal says loudly.
Indy looks around at all the people watching and mutters but walks off with him.
“Oh, here’s a good match for her. He likes long walks, drinking tea, and golden showers. Perfect, just messaged him her number.”