Chapter fifteen #2
“I love him,” Michael says, already invested.
“He was a menace and a sweetheart.” I take a bite of pizza, stall for a second. “It feels weird talking about myself.”
“Take your time,” Theo says. “We’re here.”
Jeremy asks about my mom, careful with it. I tell him a little. Single mom, omega who can survive alone because she’s older. We see each other often enough. He asks about my sister. I tell him she’s bonded and pregnant, and so happy it hurts to look at her.
“She bonded right out of the registry,” I say. “First pack she met. They aren’t scent matched, but they had chemistry and she just… knew.”
“Not everyone has to agonize over it,” Theo offers, and it’s not a dig, just a fact.
“Clearly I missed that gene.”
Jeremy never asks about my father. I’m grateful for that.
He doesn’t bring up the suppressants, or the medical file, or my damn headaches and mood swings.
Instead, he asks what I like to paint, so I tell him about my year-long obsession with painting clouds that ended with exactly two decent canvases and a closet full of failed skies.
He asks if I’ve ever been hiking, and I explain about the time my mom took us to a state park, how my sister got stung by a wasp and screamed so loud a ranger came running.
He asks what I listen to in the car and I say, “whatever’s loudest,” and Michael almost spits soda all over the table.
Normal questions. Questions for a person, not a medical file with a ticking clock. The Whitfields didn’t ask me a single real question. These four ask a dozen in an hour.
They’re open, too. Jeremy started a sporting goods store years ago, scraping together savings from construction jobs in his late teens.
Theo was his college roommate and joined next.
Michael came later, after leaving a high school baseball coaching gig he loved but couldn’t afford.
Leo was the first employee, and after three years of shared inventory counts and after-hours beers, he was family.
So they never even had a construction company. Jeremy built his store on the bones of savings from construction jobs. Miles hadn’t even gotten the kind of business right. He was simply out to scare me.
“We added the axe throwing range last year,” Michael says, looking pleased. “It was my idea.”
Jeremy snorts. “My idea. You said, ‘we should throw things at stuff.’ I’m the one who wrote a business plan.”
“Same thing.”
They don’t mention kids. Not once. No questions about nurseries, or timelines, or fertility. They talk about maybe opening a second store, or planning a hiking trip for the fall. Future stuff, but not the kind that makes you feel like a commodity.
After a while Jeremy asks, “Can I ask about your situation? With the Santos pack?” He’s careful.
I tense. But I nod.
“Gabriel told us the basics. That you’re scent-matched but they already have an omega and, well. It’s complicated.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“For what it’s worth,” Jeremy says, “we think what Gabriel’s doing shows real character.
Keeping a promise to his omega, even with biology pushing him the other way?
That’s hard. It’s a crap situation, but he’s not handling it like a crap person.
Seems like he’s trying to make the best of it by seeing that both omegas end up settled by the end. ”
I blink. I guess that’s one way to look at it. It’s just hard to see it from that point of view when you’re the rejected scent match.
“Scent matches aren’t everything,” Leo adds. He hasn’t said much, but when he does, everyone listens. “My parents weren’t matched. They chose each other. Thirty years later, still choosing. The match gives you a jump, but it’s not the only road.”
Hope. Small, brittle, dangerous.
“What would you do?” I ask. “If you found your scent match but already had an omega you loved?”
Jeremy glances at his packmates. They have a silent conversation no outsider could read.
“Honestly? I’d do what Gabriel’s doing,” Jeremy says. “Stay loyal to the omega I promised. A promise is a promise. And the love would be already established.”
“But if we didn’t have one?” Michael says. “If we were unmatched? We’d claim them. No hesitation.”
The others nod. Theo: “We wouldn’t let that go.”
I stare at my pizza. Alphas who would keep their word even at the cost of the bond. It makes Gabriel’s choice make sense. Doesn’t make it hurt less. Only makes it a different kind of pain.
Michael slaps the table. “Enough heavy stuff. Leo, hammock story. Go.”
Leo drops his head in his hands. “Every time.”
“Tell it.”
So he tells it: a pack camping trip, a hammock strung between two trees that turned out to be dead.
Four seconds in, both trunks snapped and Leo landed flat on his back in a creek bed at two in the morning, soaked and covered in bark, while Jeremy stood on the bank laughing so hard he nearly passed out.
“He just stood there,” Leo grumbles. “Hands on his knees, wheezing.”
“I was processing,” Jeremy says, wiping his eyes.
“You were useless.”
“I was entertained.”
I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. For a minute, everything is brighter. I can’t even remember the last time I laughed like this. Weeks, maybe months. Maybe since before the registry, before laughter became something I had to earn.
Michael watches me, and his expression goes soft. “You should do that more.”
“Laugh?”
“Yeah. It suits you.”
They drive me home. Leo puts on something acoustic, mellow. Michael argues with the playlist anyway. Theo is asleep against the window in five minutes; Michael says it’s his superpower.
“He can sleep anywhere,” Jeremy confirms from the driver’s seat. “Airports, cars, once during a staff meeting.”
“That was a boring meeting,” Theo mumbles without opening his eyes.
Jeremy tells me about the store. How it started in a storage unit and the first year nearly bankrupted them. That Theo designed the logo on a napkin they still have framed in the office. He talks about the axe range, the weekend leagues, the corporate team-building events that pay the bills.
I expected rough men and ugly violence. Instead, I got retail guys who sell camping gear, throw axes for stress relief, and frame napkin sketches like they’re priceless.
Miles lied about everything. Every single word. All those stories, designed to make me dread tonight. The Carrs are decent people. I knew the night at the gala and I know it now.
I lean my head against the window and let the music fill the quiet. It feels like rest.
When we pull up to the Santos house, nobody comes inside. Jeremy walks me to the door, and when Gabriel opens it, Jeremy shakes his hand.
“She’s wonderful,” Jeremy says. It’s not a performance. “We’d love to see her again if she’s interested. If not, that’s fine. No pressure.”
Gabriel nods. “Thank you for bringing her home.”
“Anytime.” Jeremy turns to me. “Goodnight, Lily. I had a really nice time.”
“Me too.” And I mean it. “Thank you. All of you.”
Michael gives me a thumbs up from the truck. Leo waves. Theo, awake now, salutes.
They drive off. I watch the lights disappear. There’s no desperate scent-match pull. Only warmth.
Not enough to make me stay.
Not enough to make me leave.
I hold onto it for as long as I can. I know what’s waiting inside.