Chapter Twenty Five
My knuckles were bone white as I gripped the steering wheel of the SUV while we hurtled down the interstate toward the Cape.
Every nerve in my body was shot as I did my best to dodge drivers who refused to use their turn signals and adhere to any sort of speed limit. But really, it wasn’t the driving that was making me feel that way.
No, the feeling was the responsibility of the omega currently whimpering in the back seat.
We’d made it through the first forty-five minutes of the drive in relative peace and quiet, Lennon napping thanks to the sedative her grandmother had suggested we give her to help ease the ride, but about ten minutes ago she’d woken up and things had started to kick up in the back.
I was no prude, but the sheer number of noises coming from the back seat of the SUV would have made a porn star blush and give a nun a heart attack.
And to make matters worse? I couldn’t even really watch because my dumb ass had offered to drive.
Brooks, however, had cranked his head around from the passenger seat next to me and was busy rubbernecking with glee at whatever the hell was happening back there while all I could do was listen to and smell the utterly fucking delicious cherry-wine scent of an omega—my omega in heat.
…even though I hadn’t fully surrendered inside of my head that I was allowed to consider Lennon mine yet.
I really hated being such an indecisive bastard sometimes.
It was never something I had been able to work out in the therapy that I’d forced myself into after we’d finally gotten on good health insurance and tried as the well-meaning therapists had, I was pretty sure I’d be a contrarian until the day they put me in the damned ground.
When Lennon told us that we were her scent matches, the first thing my brain had done was immediately denied it. There was no way that could be true even though my own nose and instincts had been telling me the same thing for ages.
As cliche as it sounds, it was like there was an Angel Dallas and a Devil Dallas on both of my shoulders and Devil Dallas was a fat asshole who always held the weight of my childhood trauma, so anything that Angel Dallas had to say was drowned out and Devil Dallas always got to speak first.
Then after I had denied the connection to her out loud and seen how much my words had hurt her, I’d gone into panic mode and was too embarrassed to walk back my words… so I ran.
Now here we were and I hadn’t even apologized to Lennon yet for being such an asshole that day when she’d confessed her feelings to us. How the hell was I supposed to ask her to let me be with her now when she was in such a vulnerable state when I’d rejected her like that?
I didn’t fucking know and I wasn’t even sure if I had a place in their so-called pack at this point anyways.
While I was distractedly beating myself up in my head, the moans from the back of the SUV started to grow and I heard Brooks growl next to me at whatever he was seeing.
Then they were cut off abruptly as the vehicle shook.
“Is that better, baby?” I heard Zeke whisper.
“Yes,” Lennon answered, her voice barely above a breathy exhalation before the sound of lips meshing together filled my ears.
I had half a mind to pull the entire damn SUV over to the side of the road, but the GPS was saying that we were only twenty minutes out, so instead I just pressed harder on the gas pedal and cracked my window so I didn’t accidentally get thrown into a rut and crash the whole car.
Soon we were pulling up to the ornate front gates of the coastal community where the Holloway cottage was and I was rolling down the window for the gate guard.
“Code?” the man asked suspiciously, his nose flaring as he probably got a whiff of what was going on in the car.
I turned to Brooks who was scrolling through his phone.
“010669,” he supplied, reading off of his phone.
The guard typed it into the tablet he had with him. “And ID?”
Brooks handed him Lennon’s ID along with his own.
Lennon, who looked more put together than I thought she would be considering what I had just been listening to, peeked in between the seats to smile at the officer.
“Ms. Holloway,” the guard said, immediately recognizing her. “Your grandmother said you’d be taking ownership of the cottage eventually. Good to see that finally happening.”
“Thank you?” Lennon replied, her cheeks a bright cherry red color as the guard nodded and gestured for us to pull through the gate.
“How often do you come out here?” Maverick asked once Lennon flopped back into the middle seat between him and Zeke.
“Not much anymore, we used to come out sometimes for the summer but their house in upstate is much bigger for the family. This place only has three small bedrooms and it’s pretty old school.
It was my grandparents first house after they got married,” she answered, her voice sounding suddenly nostalgic.
Holloway cottage was situated on the edge of the gated community, backed up against the ocean which was barely visible in the dim light of the late evening, the sun long having set, leaving the last bits of twilight in the sky.
The house was already lit up and waiting for us as I pulled the SUV into the half-circle driveway and parked, throwing my door open so I could get out of the ridiculously cloying scent of Lennon’s heat.
“It’s cute,” Brooks commented as we all got out and stared up at what could best be described as something between a beach house, an English cottage, and a doll house standing proudly in front of us.
The facade was made up of white cedar shingles that looked like they had been recently redone because there was not a single one out of place.
It looked like a sloped two-story structure with a warm beige flag-stone porch leading up to a front-door that was painted a bright pastel yellow color.
“That’s weird,” Lennon said as she leaned on Maverick for support while the rest of us unloaded the suitcases from the car.
“What’s weird?” he asked, glancing from her to the house.
“The house looks different, newer almost. The front door also used to be blue—that’s my grandma’s favorite color.”
“Why would she change it?”
I knew the answer to that. “Because yellow’s your favorite color, isn’t it?”
Four sets of eyes turned and looked at me like I had grown a second head.
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “What? I notice things. Your tablet cover, phone cover, and most of your lounge wear that no one picks but you are yellow.”
Not wanting to be stared at anymore, I shuffled past them with a few of the suitcases and climbed up the steps. “The door code should be the same one as the one at the gate, right?”
“Dallas,” Lennon called after me but I was already putting in the code, my ears burning.
Stepping inside of the house, the first thing I smelled was fresh paint.
Then I saw the shiny hardwood floors and the brand new side table with the quirky yellow bowl that looked ready to catch keys at a moment’s notice and I realized that this was nothing like the house that Lennon had described a few minutes earlier.
The way she had been talking about it in the car, I had half-expected one of those grandma-esque beach houses you see in magazines full of wicker furniture and blue gingham print pillows with far too many ruffles.
But all of this looked new.
And Lennon’s gasp from behind me only cemented that fact.
“Oh my god,” she said as Maverick helped her inside behind me, her eyes wide with wonder as she took in the front entry way. “What did they do?”
“Is this not how it used to be?” Zeke asked as he filed in behind them, Brooks bringing up the rear.
Lennon shook her head. “No, not at all.”
She stepped away from Maverick, who looked reluctant to let her go, and hurried forward and immediately through an archway that led into what looked like the living room and gasped again.
“What?” I asked, thinking something was wrong as I followed her into the living room.
The lights were turned on in here as well, and even though it was nearly pitch black outside now, I could tell the large floor-to-ceiling windows opened out into what was probably a million dollar view of the ocean.
Directly in front of the windows was a sunken sitting area with fluffy yellow couches and a superfluous amount of fluffy pillows tossed all over.
“It’s…” Lennon trailed off as she stared at it before skirting around the sitting area and gripping the latch of the large windows and lifting it. The entire wall slid open and the cool ocean air from outside filled the living room.
Lennon hugged herself tightly and glanced back at us, her flushed face looking more vulnerable than I think I’d ever seen it before. “I think this is my board.”
“Your board?” Brooks asked as he snagged a nearby blanket out of the sunken conversation pit and hurried to wrap it around her shoulders.
She nodded, swallowing hard. “We’ve never really lived in our own house.
We’ve owned one, sure, but for as long as I can remember we’ve lived in governor’s mansions or the White House and you can’t really do whatever you want in places like that.
So I got mad when I was sixteen and made a board out of all of the things I’d want to do in my own home when I was a grown up and could do whatever I wanted…
and I think my grandparents did it here. ”
Lennon turned away from the open windows and hurried into the kitchen, staring at the robin’s egg blue countertops and open glass cabinets for only a moment before she was gone again, opening every door she found and peeking inside.
We followed quietly behind like ducklings trailing their mother.
The bathrooms were bedecked and brightly colored with deep tubs built into the walls. The linen closets filled similarly with blue and yellow linens that seemed to scream Lennon’s preference.
Two of the bedrooms had comfortable, neutral furnishings. Probably guest bedrooms.
Then we came to the final bedroom that was up a narrow flight of stairs, and Lennon paused.
“What are you waiting for?” Brooks asked as Lennon rested her hand on the brass knob.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “It feels like I’m living in some kind of fever-dream that the heat is causing.”
“Then we’re all having the same dream then,” Zeke pointed out. “What do you think is behind the door?”
Lennon turned to look at us, her teeth pulling in her bottom lip and nibbling nervously on it for a moment before she answered.
“I had a very specific vision about what my ideal nest would look like and it’s kind of embarrassing.
I couldn’t even find magazine clippings of anything like it so I had a drawing… ”
We glanced at each other and I saw the same curiosity I was feeling reflected on the faces of the rest of the guys.
“Well now I’m curious,” Maverick said, his voice low as he reached under Lennon’s arm and twisted the knob, pressing a quick kiss to Lennon’s flushed cheek as he pushed the door open behind her.
Lennon turned and made a noise, her earlier hesitation forgotten by whatever she was seeing as she stepped inside.
“Is this what you drew?” Maverick asked as they filed in after.
I was last to step inside, trying to see around the bulk of their shoulders in order to get a look at what they were talking about.
“Yes,” Lennon croaked, her voice full of tears. “I can’t believe they would go this far for me.”
Finally managing to skirt around Brooks’ bulk, I finally saw what they were looking at. The room was the largest in the house—definitely the primary suite—but the majority of the room was taken up by the hulking structure of what I assumed was Lennon’s nest.
It was a large circular structure that rose up from the floor and was padded all the way around. The mattress sat inside of it and it looked wide enough to fit at least ten people comfortably.
There were thick curtains pushed against the wall on either side and when I looked up I could see heavy duty railings circling around the structure of the bed that allowed them to be closed or opened and the panel on the plush headboard told me that it was all electric so it could be done while lying down.
“Your family loves you, Len, why wouldn’t they do all of this for you?” Brooks asked with a frown as he reached out to hold her face in his hands, brushing away a stray tear that had trickled down her cheek.
“It makes me feel…” Lennon trailed off, looking almost confused by the rush of emotion she was feeling.
“Seen,” I finished for her, my own voice hoarse as feelings that I couldn’t quite name welled up in my chest. “It makes you feel seen.”
I thought about my first impression of Lennon Holloway. I’d assumed she was a spoiled princess who had everything handed to her since she’d been born. That everything had come easy to her and she’d never faced hardship ever in her life.
But I’d quickly learned that not everything was as it seemed with the Holloway family.
They presented a seriously strong front for the public, and yes they loved each other, but they were struggling under an absurd amount of pressure.
And Lennon seemed to be taking on the brunt of it without asking for help.
From the moment she’d nearly passed out in Arizona I’d kept a closer eye on her and noticed how she struggled to take care of herself because she was so focused on making sure everything else was perfect for her mother’s campaign and that her brother was keeping on the straight and narrow.
It was too much like me and that had made me angry at first because she should have had the same problems because she should have been a spoiled princess.
I hated the idea that my scent matched omega, even if I was still in denial about admitting it, had to go through any sort of hardship.
Lennon blinked at me, her gray eyes full of surprise. “Yes. That’s right, I think I feel seen.”
Then she immediately burst into tears.
Maverick, Zeke, and Brooks rushed in to comfort her, wrapping her in a hug that I didn’t feel confident enough yet to join.
Turning, I headed back down the stairs to organize our suitcases. There would be time to talk to Lennon later, but for now there was no space for me up in that room with that nest.