Chapter Seven #2
My grand plan to claim a table and the room is ruined by the fact that everyone in this city decided that tonight is the night to eat in this restaurant.
I have no choice but to take a seat at the bar and order a drink and pray that no one tries to take two of the three miraculously empty seats beside me.
Just as the bartender puts my drink down in front of me, the same messenger from before clears his throat behind me.
“Ms. Miller and Mr. Williams invite you to join them at their table.”
Fuck. “Alright.” I pick up my drink and stand up.
“This way, please.”
I follow him through the spaces between tables to a round table in the back corner.
The woman is most definitely an Alpha, and it looks very much like Laz belongs to her.
She's curled around him possessively, stroking his cheek and tucking his unruly hair behind his ear when I arrive at their table.
She smiles at me, her bright red lips flashing a satisfied smile.
Laz doesn't look up from where his hands are clasped on the table.
“We don't meet many Valla,” she purrs. “Are you new to the area?”
I take a moment before I answer. There's no chance that she doesn't know that Laz and I have a past after what happened tonight.
“No,” I tell her firmly. “I'm here on business.”
“And what business is that?” She runs her finger along Laz's sharp jaw.
“None of yours.”
“Ah,” she smiles. “That must be the Valla temperament.” She lowers her voice to an exaggerated whisper. “Valla have a bit of a reputation for their surly dispositions, if you haven't heard.”
“I have heard that mentioned a time or two. Ms. Miller, is it?”
“It is. And you must be the infamous Brooks Lockwood. Lazarus has told me so much about you.”
Laz doesn't look at me, but his eyes shift to her for a brief moment.
“All good things, I'm sure.”
She smiles again and sits up, unraveling herself from Laz and propping her elbows on the table to rest her chin on her steepled fingers. “Mostly. You like watching the fights?”
She's fishing, and I don't know why. “I haven't decided. What about you? Do you enjoy the fights?”
“I enjoy the people who enjoy the fights.”
I don't have a response to that. It's such an odd thing to say that I don't know what the best response would even be. But I know for a fact that she wants me to feed into whatever it is.
I just have no intention of feeding into anything, and I'm starting to suspect that she has a specific goal for this meeting.
“I'm sorry you had to wait at the bar,” she continues. “This place is always busy on fight nights. This is my table. I have a standing reservation. Perks of having a close relationship with the owner.”
“Perks are nice.”
She turns to smirk at Laz. “You weren't kidding. He's a hard nut.”
He looks at me then. Just for a moment. But that moment is enough for me to take in the full-faced spectrum of his situation. No one on this Earth knows Laz better than I do. No one. He isn't well.
If he's her Omega, why has she allowed him to fall into such a stressed state?
Anger begins to tighten the muscles in my neck, and I have to fight to stop myself from rolling my head from side to side to loosen them.
I am well aware that could be seen as a sign of aggression, and my Valla temperament has already been mentioned, so I'm not trying to give her anything to react to.
“How have you been, Laz?” I ask, not looking away from his pallid face and the dark smudges underneath his eyes.
“Fine,” he mumbles and slouches further against the back of his seat.
I give a flat look to his Alpha. “He isn't—“
“How do you and my Lazarus know each other?” she interrupts.
I run my tongue over my teeth. I'm so close to not caring what anyone thinks of my temperament. “We used to be close.”
“Would you like to be close again?”
I blink at her. Then I blink again. “Pardon?”
“It's a simple question, Mr. Lockwood. Would you like to be close to Lazarus again?”
“Why?”
“I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to rekindle your... friendshi—“
“No,” I interrupt her this time. “Why are you asking me?”
Her mouth slides back into that easy smile. “Because I'm a sucker for old flames and reunions. And I think Lazarus would enjoy getting reacquainted with you.”
“He doesn't look like he enjoys anything anymore. What's wrong with him?”
Laz finally speaks. “Nothing's wrong with me.” He sighs heavily and tips his head back against his chair. “I'm fine.”
“Do you want to rekindle anything?” I ask him directly.
“Of course he does,” Ms. Miller answers for him. “He told me so.”
“I don't understand.”
“You will. Just think about it,” she says, then she turns to Laz and puts her hand on his forehead before standing up and kissing it. “I think I should get him to bed. He's had a very long day. We'll be in touch. Order anything you like, it's on us.”
Then she leaves, and Laz lets her pull him away without so much as a backwards glance.
There is definitely something wrong with him. I'm sure he's still using. He looks very much like he did back then when he would be lost to me for days on end. But there's something else. More than just the fog of whatever substance he's currently favoring.
Laz isn't a man to simply be led away by the hand.
Even at his weakest point, he still stood tall and strong; he still had fire within him.
The man who sat at this table was dull. Gray.
There was no fire. The way he looked at me, stared at me, across the arena was nothing but fire.
What happened between then and just now?
I have no intention of ordering anything, but I sit down in the chair he was sitting in. It's the closest I've been to touching him in so many years that I can't help myself. I sit for a few moments and breathe in the air that still carries his scent.
His muted scent.
His tainted scent.
I can pick his scent out from every other one in this room, including the overbearing scent of his Alpha.
His crisp cardamom is as intoxicating as it ever was, but it's tainted with the sour notes of the aftermath of a spoiled heat.
A heat when everything was perfection, until it wasn't. The moment it goes from bliss to bad, the scent changes, and that smell is tangled up with his natural scent in such a way that it almost seems, for lack of a better descriptor, stale.
That's what it is. Laz smells like stale heat.
“Can I bring you a wine list, sir?” a server interrupts my sad epiphany.
“No,” I tell him, rising. “That won't be necessary. I'm not staying.”
I put my forgotten drink on the table and pull out a few bills to toss next to it.
I don't really see anything on the journey from the restaurant to my suite.
I'm lost in an ocean of too many thoughts and worries to care about the passing cityscape.
I never should have met with Laz and his Alpha.
It was a mistake that I'll be paying for for a while.
I never should have come back here. Shane would have won this fight without my physical presence.
The only things that will come from this doomed excursion are endless sleepless nights and the new car my therapist is going to buy with the money I'm going to have to pay him to help me work through this disaster.