Chapter 16 Beth
Beth
Harper looks spectacular in her green silk jumpsuit.
It’s honestly a miracle, considering that nine hours ago, every single one of us looked like a construction worker.
When we unlocked the front doors this morning, the venue looked less like a party venue and more like an abandoned gymnasium waiting to host a blood drive.
But nothing cures an aggressively beige venue like a highly caffeinated, unhinged dream team.
Ben showed up vibrating with the need to atone for his potato salad slip-up and hauled forty-two heavy plastic folding tables off the storage racks, flipping them open with the kind of grunting usually reserved for CrossFit gyms.
Luna arrived in yoga pants and a messy bun and aggressively started taping down extension cords.
Maren actually closed her bakery three hours early and marched through the double doors at 11 a.m. with two massive bakery boxes of croissants and something she called "stress muffins".
She spent the next four hours climbing a ladder to hang fairy lights while I stood at the bottom, holding the legs and praying she wouldn't fall.
And then there were the alphas.
Mason, Arthur, and Knox descended on the VFW hall like a highly coordinated strike team.
Mason carried full kegs through the front door like they were slightly heavy toddlers.
Knox did algebraic equations on a napkin to optimize the raffle table’s foot traffic.
And Arthur somehow performed a miracle on the sticky, fluorescent-lit bar, transforming it into a high-end cocktail station using nothing but draped fabric, string lights, and zip-ties.
By four o'clock, we were all running on nothing but stress muffins. But the hall looked perfect.
Now, at six p.m., the doors open, Lakeview is pouring in, and the bar is immediately swarmed.
Arthur is entirely in his element. He’s pouring drinks with one hand, making change with the other, and flashing a grin that is actively extracting heavy tips.
I’m currently fishing a rogue cocktail napkin out of a centerpiece when Mrs. Patterson appears at my elbow. She smells like expensive hairspray and Pinot Grigio.
"You all have done a beautiful job," she says, her eyes sweeping over the packed room. She leans in conspiratorially. "I heard about the potato salad situation."
"Ben's never going to live it down," I say.
She takes a delicate sip of her wine. Her eyes track across the room: to Arthur pouring drinks, to Knox collecting tickets, to Mason seamlessly clearing empty glasses from a nearby table. "The three of them have really stepped up. People are noticing."
"Thank... you," I say, because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say.
"I mean it." Her hand, cool and weighted with rings, covers my wrist. "The whole town knows what you did for Harper and Ben. That's the kind of thing people remember."
She drifts away toward the raffle table, and I’m left standing by table four, a strange, tight knot forming in my throat. The sensation is unfamiliar. It’s not pride, exactly. But more like... feeling seen?
Too bad that glow lasts for exactly three minutes before it's completely vaporized by a wave of pure nausea. Grant and Jessica sweep through the double doors at seven-thirty. And I do mean sweep.
Grant is wearing a pristine white polo and Jessica in a seafoam sundress, her blonde hair styled in cascading, flawless waves. They definitely don't look like they spent half of their day hauling tables.
My stomach does a slow, complicated roll. I watch them bypass the crowd, bee-lining straight for Ben and Harper near the entrance.
"We are so sorry we're late!" Jessica calls out, practically broadcasting it to anyone within a fifteen-foot radius.
"We totally would have come early to help," she continues, pressing a perfectly manicured hand to her chest. "But Grant had a tee time at the country club he simply couldn't miss. And I had my final hair-and-makeup trial for our engagement shoot tomorrow."
She pauses to tuck a flawless, seafoam-adjacent curl behind her ear. "I tried to reschedule, but my stylist was booked solid through August."
Harper blinks. There's a micro-pause where I can see her brain physically buffering. Then she seems to manage an awkward "Thanks for coming."
"We wouldn't miss it," Jessica says. She looks around the room. Her eyes snag on the bar, then on Mason carrying a stack of broken-down cardboard boxes toward the back. Her smile widens. "It looks so charmingly DIY in here."
Wow. The woman is a black belt in covert bitchiness.
The draft beer I drank earlier turns to acid in my stomach. I scan the room, but the comment has already dissolved into the noise of the party.
When I look back, Grant is at the raffle table, wallet out, peeling off bills with the theatrical generosity of someone who wants witnesses.
"What can I say," Grant announces to the immediate vicinity, dropping an obscene amount of cash in front of Knox. "I'm feeling lucky. Give me the rest of the roll."
Knox just stares at the money. He methodically counts it, tears off a moderate strip of tickets, and slides them across the table.
"Inflation," Knox says, deadpan.
For some reason, Grant seems offended, his smile tightening into a grimace. He takes his tickets and retreats back to Jessica.
I gloat.
Mason suddenly appears at my elbow. He presses a cold plastic cup into my hand. His rough fingers brush my knuckles in the transfer, sending a sharp, electric spark up my arm.
His free hand settles at the base of my spine, the heavy, possessive warmth of his palm doing absolutely nothing to ground the electricity suddenly zipping through my veins.
"Some refreshment," he says, his voice a low rumble beneath the music.
I look up at him. There's sawdust in his hair. "Thanks."
I take a sip of the lemonade he handed me and let the sweetness cut through the sour taste Grant and Jessica left in my mouth.
Around us, the party is in full, gorgeous swing.
Fairy lights catch the edges of people's smiles.
Maren is dancing with Luna. Ben and Harper are making the rounds, arm in arm.
Someone cranks the speakers, and the DJ — who I'm fairly sure is just Knox's cousin with a laptop — launches into a string of crowd-pleasers that drag people onto the makeshift dance floor like a gravitational pull.
Mason and I drift toward it without exactly deciding to, the lemonade abandoned on the nearest flat surface.
We dance until my carefully pinned hair goes limp with humidity. Then we keep dancing. At some point Maren materializes out of nowhere, brandishing a tube of glittery red lipstick like a weapon.
"Hold still," she commands, and before I can protest, she's drawn a wobbly heart on my cheekbone. She spins to Mason and does the same to him. He takes it with considerably more dignity than I did.
"Maren's love stamps," Luna shouts over the music from somewhere behind us. "She's gotten half the room."
"It's my signature," Maren says, already hunting for her next victim.
I look at Mason. He looks at me. We both have glittery red hearts on our faces. He grins — slow, easy — and something behind my ribs flutters hard enough to bruise.
Then a hand that doesn't belong to me lands on Mason's shoulder.
An omega in her mid-twenties I don't recognizes slides between us with the confidence of someone eight drinks deep. She presses her palm flat to Mason's chest and tilts her face up at him with a smile so wide I can see her back molars.
"Dance with me?" she says. Or slurs. The line between the two has clearly blurred.
Something hot, sharp, and intensely unpleasant twists under my sternum. I take a small step back, giving them room I absolutely do not want to give, while every territorial instinct in my body screams at me to shove her into the nearest folding table. I settle for giving her the evil eye.
Mason catches her hand and eases it off his chest. "I think your friends are looking for you," he says, nodding toward a cluster of women waving frantically near the bar.
His voice is calm and shockingly gentle.
For a guy who usually has the diplomatic grace of a wrecking ball, watching him delicately redirect a drunk stranger is genuinely startling.
Shelby pouts, but she's too drunk to hold onto disappointment for long. She pats his cheek, smearing Maren's lipstick heart, and wobbles back toward her group.
"Your heart's smudged," I say as Mason turns back to me, because it's the only safe thing I can think of.
"Fix it for me?"
I reach up and press my thumb to his cheekbone, rubbing at the red smear. His stubble is rough under the pad of my finger, his skin warm. He stands very still. I realize I've been touching his face for a beat too long and start to pull my hand back.
He catches my wrist gently, his fingers circling the bones of it. "You missed a spot," he says.
"I didn't," I murmur, the words slipping out on a low, involuntary purr that I absolutely did not authorize.
"You sure?" His voice is low, his eyes hungry in a way that makes the venue feel very, very small.
"Pretty sure," I manage.
He lets go of my wrist, but slowly, his thumb dragging over the thin skin on the inside of it, sending heat spilling from my collarbone to my toes. His hand finds my waist again, pulling me back into the sway of the music, and his mouth dips close to my ear.
The song shifts into something slower and Mason doesn't step back. His hand tightens on my hip. I rest my fingers on his shoulder and let myself lean in.
Around us, the lights blur into a warm, gold haze. I can feel his pulse in his wrist where it rests against my side, and for one suspended moment, the party and the noise all dissolve into nothing.
Then Luna crashes into us with a shriek, trailing Maren behind her, both of them flushed and laughing. "Raffle's about to start!" she yells, grabbing my arm.
***
Luna hauls me through the crowd like a tugboat dragging a barge, and I barely have time to glance back at Mason before we're swallowed by the crush of people gathering near the stage.
Knox is behind the folding table they've repurposed as a stage-adjacent command center, a fishbowl full of raffle tickets in front of him and a microphone that keeps feeding back every time he breathes near it.
"All right," Knox says into the mic, with all the theatrical flair of someone reading tax code. "First prize. Gift basket from Lakeview Provisions."
He pulls a ticket. Reads a number. A beta woman three rows back screams.
Second prize goes to Mr. Hannigan, who wins a set of monogrammed golf towels and looks like he might actually cry about it.
Knox reaches into the bowl again. "Third prize," he says. "A weekend getaway package." He squints at the ticket. "Number 0-4-7-7-2."
I look down at the crumpled strip in my hand.
0-4-7-7-2.
"Oh my God," I say.
"THAT'S HER!" Luna screams, grabbing my arm and shaking it so hard my elbow cracks. "THAT'S BETH, THAT'S HER TICKET!"
The crowd around us erupts. Maren is jumping up and down. Somewhere behind me I hear Harper's unmistakable whoop. I'm laughing and holding the ticket up and Luna is pushing me toward the stage like I've just been called to accept an Oscar.
Knox holds the prize envelope out to me, but when I reach for it, he doesn't immediately let go. Instead, his long fingers slide deliberately over mine, his thumb dragging a slow, heated path across my knuckles.
"Congratulations," he murmurs, his voice dropping a full octave beneath the noise of the crowd.
"Happy for me?" I ask. My breath hitches, a sudden, heavy spike of heat pooling low in my stomach at the unexpected, skin-on-skin friction.
"Elated," he says, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
I'm so thoroughly distracted by the lingering heat on my hand that, as I turn to step off the little wooden platform, I nearly walk directly into a solid chest.
"Sorry," I say, steadying myself.
The man I've almost body-checked takes a smooth half-step back. A beta. Maybe mid-fifties, silver-templed, wearing a navy blazer. Nice watch.
"No harm done," he says. "Looks like it's your lucky night."
"Totally!" I wave the envelope. "I never win anything."
"Want to be a double winner?" he asks, handing me an envelope with a golden stamp.