Chapter 19 #2
Then I take a bite of pancake, and the taste hits me harder than expected, too sweet, too familiar.
Banana walnut. Warm, soft center. Just like the ones my grandmother made the one time she visited us at my parents’ place.
She had come to fix things between my parents, I think.
She cooked breakfast for everyone and tried to make us act like a real family.
For one morning, it almost worked. No yelling, no deals being made, no guns on the table.
Just pancakes. Even I got to eat as much as I wanted.
Didn’t last.
The pancakes remind me of shit I haven’t thought about in years.
My father, when he was between jobs, which meant between crimes, sometimes tried to play house.
Made breakfast like normal families. Except normal families probably didn’t have weapons in the cereal boxes or use breakfast conversation to plan drug routes.
I started running packages when I was thirteen, small stuff at first. Then guns. Then worse things.
Mom vanished when I was ten. Tuesday morning she was there; Wednesday she wasn’t.
Dad said she ran off with some Beta from her work.
The Russians he owed money to said different.
Amazing how people can just disappear when someone needs to clear a debt.
Never did find out which version was true. Never really wanted to know.
“You okay?” Cindy’s voice pulls me back. She’s looking at me with those eyes that see too much, catch too many details.
“Fine. Just remembering why I usually don’t eat pancakes.”
“Bad memories?” she asks, and her foot bumps mine under the table. Not accidentally.
“Something like that.”
Her foot stays against mine, just that small point of contact, and it settles something in my chest I didn’t know needed settling.
Cindy’s phone buzzes. She glances at it, eyes widening. “Shit. I’m going to be late. Work. I need to—” She’s already moving, grabbing the last sip of her juice like it might buy her time.
I’m on my feet before I’ve even made the decision. “I’ll drive you. Need to hit the hardware store anyway.”
She stops halfway to the stairs, eyes flicking to me. There’s hesitation in the wrinkle between her brows, like she wants to accept but isn’t sure she should. “You sure?”
“Already getting my keys.”
“Let me grab my bag.” She heads upstairs.
The second she disappears, Arrow leans back in his chair like he’s been waiting for this moment. That smug grin spreads across his face like oil. “Hardware store?”
“Fuck off.”
“That was smooth, jumping up to drive her,” Luke adds, voice dry. “Worried we might get there first?”
“Worried you two idiots would make her later than she already is.” I down the rest of my coffee. It burns, bitter and sharp, and I welcome it. “Someone’s got to be responsible.”
Arrow’s lips twitch “Responsible, huh? Interesting choice of word.”
“After last night,” Luke mutters, voice dropping like a stone, “game’s officially on.”
“What game?” Arrow asks, all wide-eyed innocence.
“The one where we all try not to lose our minds and fail spectacularly.” Luke snorts, but his jaw is tight. “My money’s on Holt. He’s been wound tighter than a garrote wire since she walked in.”
I don’t respond. Can’t. Cindy’s footsteps echo down the stairs, and then she’s there.
And I forget how to fucking breathe.
She’s changed into work clothes for a business meeting today.
Shouldn’t be a big deal. But the sexy, pencil skirt clings to her like sin, and that button-up blouse is doing its best but barely managing containment.
The top button is undone. Maybe the second one too.
Just enough skin to tease, just enough leg to cause my cock to throb.
She’s pulling her hair into a loose ponytail, baring the soft column of her neck.
“Ready?” she asks, and I realize I’ve been staring so long that she’s started to shift, uncertain.
“Yeah.” My voice is low, rough. I don’t clear it.
Two minutes later, we’re in my truck. The engine hums, tires crunching gravel as we head toward the mountain road. Her scent hits me before I even shut the door. Clove-studded orange, sugar brittle, and pumpkin spice loaf. But there’s more to it today. Deeper. Sweeter. Ripe.
Her heat is getting closer. I feel it in my bones. In the way my hands itch on the steering wheel. In the curl of something primal inside me that wants to turn the truck around, drag her back inside, and make her forget what time is.
She shifts beside me, adjusting her bag, and her thigh presses against the seat in a way that’s fucking indecent.
She crosses her legs. Uncrosses. The skirt rides up.
A sliver of skin flashes, pale and soft, and all I can think about is how warm she’d be if I touched her there. How fast she’d come undone.
The silence stretches. Only the radio hums quietly, playing some moody song neither of us is listening to. I know she’s thinking about it too. I sense it in the air, charged and dangerous, like the moment before a storm breaks.
“We should probably talk.” Finally, she speaks.
I glance at her.
My grip on the wheel tightens. “About what?”
She doesn’t look away. “You saw.”
Not a question.
I don’t answer.
“I didn’t plan it. That wasn’t—” She cuts herself off, breath hitching like she’s sorting through thoughts that don’t want to line up. “It just happened.”
I exhale through my nose, keeping my eyes on the road. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“I know I don’t,” she says quickly. Then, softer: “But I want to give you one anyway, as it’s your home too and we had kissed and…”
There’s silence between us, but it isn’t empty. It’s full of everything we’re not saying.
“It felt like more,” she whispers. “Even with you. Especially with you.”
Those words hit harder than I expect. Not because she was with someone else last night—I can live with it being Arrow. We all can. That’s the whole damn point of our pack sharing an Omega.
But because it meant something.
Because she’s saying what I felt too. What I still feel every time she glances my way like I’m already hers. As if there’s space for all of us and a one-off thing.
“I meant what I said,” I murmur. “You come first, and we all want to share you. However this plays out. However long I have to wait.”
“I guess I was embarrassed, and this is all so new to me,” she says.
“I’m not hurt,” I say, and this time, it’s not a lie. “I just… want more of you. We all do.”
Her breath catches. Her thighs press together. She doesn’t respond, but the silence now thrums like a struck wire.
We’re both trying to be patient.
We’re both failing.
She makes this small sound, not quite a gasp. “I was caught off guard.”
“But you enjoyed it. I could smell it. Every second of it.”
Her face flames. “God, that’s—you could—” She groans and rolls down her window like she needs the cold air to keep from combusting. Wind rushes in, whipping her ponytail around.
“This is torture,” she says breathlessly. “My body is completely out of control around you three. Moving in was probably a mistake.”
“No,” I say, voice low. “No mistake.”
My hand moves without permission, finding her bare thigh just above the knee. Her skin is soft, warm, so fucking tempting. She inhales sharply at the contact.
“You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
She turns toward me, eyes wide. “You say that like you believe it.”
“I do.” I glance at her, jaw clenched. “You’re ours, Cindy. Already ours. I’d burn the whole fucking world to prove it, and I’d do it with a smile if it meant getting close enough to breathe you in. Deep. Like I’m starving.”
Her scent spikes, and my cock responds instantly, pressing hard against the seam of my jeans. I shift in my seat, hand tightening on the wheel.
“I need to take it slow,” she says, voice unsteady. “My body clearly isn’t listening, but my heart—” She swallows. “I need to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“That this is real. That you want me , not just this heat or whatever bond is making everything feel so intense. I have baggage, Holt. My family…” Her voice dips. “They ruin whatever they touch.”
“Then they can try and see what happens.” My voice is pure gravel now. “Your mother doesn’t scare me. I’ve stared down men twice my size with guns to my head and walked away smiling. I’ve seen what real monsters look like, gorgeous. And I became one of them just to survive.”
She flinches but doesn’t look away.
“When I was younger, I believe my father traded my mother to cover his debts. When I was seventeen, I lit a match on a building because that’s what loyalty meant back then.
No idea if anyone was in there. When I was nineteen, I left someone in a dumpster, bleeding a lot, for touching a girl who’d said no.
It didn’t matter who he was. He learned not to do it again. ”
She stares at me.
“I’ve done things I’ll never come back from,” I say, parking the truck and cutting the engine. “But I’d do them all over again, every one of them, if it meant keeping you safe. If it meant earning even a piece of whatever you’re giving out so freely and still calling a mistake.”
She swallows hard, blinking like she’s trying to hold back something sharp and real. “You make it sound so simple,” she says, voice low. “Like protecting me wouldn’t come at a cost. Like you know what you’re signing up for.”
I reach over, thumb brushing her cheek.
“Let your family come for you,” I murmur. “Let the whole goddamn world come. I’ll still be here. Standing between you and whatever storm hits. I’m ready.”
Her expression softens. Then she leans across the console and kisses me.
It’s not desperate.
It’s not even hungry.
It’s soft, like she’s afraid that wanting me too much might shatter something between us.
My forehead drops against hers, breath shaky.
“I think about you,” I whisper. “Constantly. In every room. In every silence. When I touch you, it feels like the universe is holding its breath. Like I’ve been waiting a thousand lifetimes just to taste the stars on your skin.”
Her lips part. No words. No breath.
Just that look that says she feels it too.
The one that might just undo me.
“I don’t know what I did to earn any of that,” she says finally. “But I’ve never wanted anything more.”
She stares at me as if I’m the only steady thing in a world that’s always spun too fast.
When she pulls back, we’re both breathing hard.
“I should go,” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
“Tonight,” she says. “The festival. It’s a date?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be.”
She smiles, small but real. “It’s a date. With all three of you.” Then she disappears into the brewery, and I sit there like an idiot, watching her go. Her taste lingers, her scent drowns me, and my cock is so hard it hurts.
I think about what Luke said. The game. Who’ll crack first.
Looking at where she disappeared, tasting her on my lips, I know I’m fucked. Completely, thoroughly fucked.
But as I drive away, window down to clear her scent, I realize something: I want her to ruin me. Crave for her to take everything I am and reshape it into something that deserves her. Desperate to mark her skin.
The game isn’t who cracks first.
It’s whether any of us survive her at all.