43. Arlo
Chapter 43
Arlo
Beckett:
We are getting on a plane right now
How close are you to Seattle?
Arlo:
2ish hours out
Beckett:
Perfect
Grab us a hotel room, and we can all go see Meadow together now that shit has been sorted out here
W hile I had assumed I would get to our omega first, I forgot about the utterly abysmal state of the roads. There had been detour after detour, thanks to road construction, and unexpected snow once I’d hit the mountains, so now we were all going to be arriving around the same time. The other shit thing was the nausea and headache that had been building since she’d bolted. It forced me to go slower, when all I wanted was to speed and get to her sooner. The bond needed us close, but more than that, I hated being apart from her.
I pulled into a gas station, throwing on a baseball cap to conceal my identity as I filled up my car and grabbed a snack. As I got back into the car to eat, I picked up my phone to message Clover.
Meadow had been pointedly ignoring us. I had the distinct impression that she had blocked us to avoid the barrage of calls, so I had to get creative in my attempts to contact her.
Arlo:
Please let us talk to Meadow
We’ll be there soon
Clover:
She has her phone
If she wants to talk to you, she will
Arlo:
She’s ignoring my calls
Clover:
Well, then, she’s ignoring you
Arlo:
Look, I’ll do whatever it takes
We love her
We’re on our way there now. I just don’t want her to slam the door in our face when we get there, hence recruiting your help
Clover:
Hmm
Arlo:
Please? I’ll buy you all the ice cream!
Clover:
Haha
I don’t want ice cream. I want a sports car
Arlo:
I can do a sports car
Clover:
*eye roll emoji*
Uh-huh, sure
Make it a McLaren F1 and we’ll talk :P
Oh, and make it bright pink with SPARKLES
I laughed to myself as I shoved the rest of the gas station hot dog into my mouth. She’d learn as fast as Meadow that I couldn’t be presented with a challenge like that and not take it. If a nearly two-million-dollar car was what it took to talk to our omega again, I’d pay it in a heartbeat. I placed the order with the company, pushing for a rush on the delivery and the paint job, just to prove a point.
Arlo:
Done
Clover:
Bullshit!
Arlo:
See you sooooon
At least I knew Meadow was in good hands. Clover reminded me a bit of myself? chaotic, but willing to maul when necessary. She’d keep Meadow safe until our omega was willing to come home with us again.
The rest of the drive was easy, after I had passed most of the road construction and managed to find a decent hotel not far from where Clover lived. The entire drive, I had been watching Meadow’s location like a stalker. Once I’d figured out she was on a train, that made following her a lot easier, though I seriously regretted having to lose time to sleeping so I wasn’t a danger to anyone on the road.
Thankfully, once her dot had hit Seattle, she’d stayed mainly in one place.
Mere moments after I checked into the hotel room, the rest of my pack arrived.
“Did you only just get here?” Phin asked, taking in my unwashed state.
“Yeah, I thought driving would be faster,” I grumbled.
Hendrix looked rough as he sank down onto one of the beds. Poor guy had been detoxing from all the crap Gary had been giving him, and while I didn’t know what that would feel like, if it made Hendrix look like that , it couldn’t have been fun.
“Go take a shower. We need to talk as a pack before we go see Meadow,” Beckett instructed.
“But it’s already getting late,” I pouted.
Beckett shrugged. “Then we will have to go see her in the morning. We have shit to discuss, and she hasn’t answered us once. We’re not going to knock down her door and force her to talk to us.”
I nodded. He had a point, even if I was unhappy that I couldn’t run straight to our omega and beg her to snuggle with us. I could suffer a while longer through the early phases of bonding sickness so Meadow didn’t get overwhelmed.
Twenty minutes later, we all sat around the hotel room, freshly showered and with a couple of extra large pizzas in front of us for dinner. Exhaustion weighed on all of us.
“We need to figure out our next steps.” Hendrix sighed, running his hand over his hair.
Beckett nodded. “We do. Gary and Ellie shouldn’t be problems anymore. Our lawyers are confident they can get enough evidence together, and we’ve got emergency restraining orders in case they make bail. Though, given some of the crimes were against a pregnant omega, the odds of either of them being granted bail are pretty slim.”
“All the band’s accounts are being investigated,” Hendrix added, presumably for my benefit, since I’d been all by my lonesome while they were sorting all this shit out. “We’re expecting embezzlement to be added to the list of charges.”
“So, how do we ensure this never happens again?” Beckett asked. “There’s no point in us going to see Meadow if we don’t have a plan. This happened because of us, because of our careers, and it’s our job to make sure she’s never in danger like that again.”
Phin sighed, his leg jiggling anxiously as he spoke. “Look, I’ll be real with you guys. I love making music, but I’m happy to walk away and never look back. This whole situation is fucked.”
“I agree.” I nodded. “It’s been fun, but if the cost is Meadow’s safety, I’m done.”
Beckett and Hendrix both agreed. It was a somber thought, leaving the band behind, but there wasn’t a single person in the room who wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat for Meadow. We could always look at it again in a few years if Meadow felt safe enough, and we could make music for ourselves without needing to go on tours or put out records.
“Can we back out of any company Gary was involved with?” I asked. “If we don’t quit the industry outright, I don’t want to work with anyone who’s been working closely with him.”
“I’ll get a list,” replied Beckett. “That’s going to be a lot of people and companies, but I’m not opposed to severing our contracts with all of them over this.”
“Also, we can’t keep treating Meadow like she’s our dirty little secret. I’m fucking proud of her and want to scream from the rooftops that I love her,” Phin said.
“I do want people to know about her, but in a way, I’m glad we kept it a bit quiet, so she never had to deal with having the paparazzi up her ass every time she tried to go outside. If we give the world her name, they’re going to harass her.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but that also meant all those women thought we were single. The VIP gals wouldn’t have been trying to climb all over us if they’d known we had an omega.”
Beckett pursed his lips. “I’ll add extra bodyguards to the list, so we can be doubly sure Meadow is safe once the world knows she’s ours. Assuming she wants us to tell them who she is.”
“That sounds fair,” Hendrix agreed. “They’ll find out who she is, eventually, and we all have to be prepared for that.”
Beckett nodded. “I…I may have asked our realtor about a property in Lakelyn Fields.”
My eyebrows shot up. “That place is fancy , one of LA’s best neighborhoods . Are you trying to woo her with pretty houses? I’m not sure that’s Meadow’s vibe.”
Beckett snorted. “It’s not, but when she sees the nests—plural—she may think otherwise. I picked it because it has the best community security in the region, short of us hiring a full team ourselves.”
“Damn, that place is like a fortress!” Phin was scrolling through his phone, turning it to me so I could snoop easier. “That’s where Hunter and his pack live, right? We needed to show ID last time we visited, and even then, the security dude frisked Arlo.”
Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that. Security had clearly decided that I looked shifty. In fairness, I did have a glitter bomb in my pocket to christen their new house…
“That is some damn good security,” I said as I towel-dried my hair between inhaling another slice of pizza.
“I’m down for a house in the fancy-pants neighborhood,” Phin said, grinning. “Can we afford that?”
Beckett nodded. “It would be a bit of a stretch, with us forfeiting all the profits for the remainder of the tour, but we can do it.”
They didn’t need to know I’d just dropped two million on a car for Clover as a bribe to coax Meadow into talking to us again. I might spend a bit recklessly, but the others didn’t, and I could make it up to them later.
“I imagine we’ll be getting back most of what we’ve paid Gary over the last few years as well, once the lawsuit hits,” Hendrix pointed out. “If he had a house in Malibu on the down-low, he probably had a lot of other hidden assets, and we didn’t pay him enough for that .”
The cogs in my brain slowly turned, as I ran through the last few minutes of conversation in my head. “Hey…speaking of Hunter—Beck, doesn’t he own his own record label now?”
Beckett turned to me, a surprised look on his face. “I’m pretty sure he does.”
“Maybe, once the dust settles, we should give him a call?” I suggested.
“I’d be up for that,” Hendrix agreed. “He’s a cool dude.”
“Okay—” I hopped up, pacing the room. “—let’s run down the list. A new house with better security, disappearing into the night on all our sus contracts, and giving Meadow all of our attention. How do we deal with the press? They published those nasty photos of Hendrix getting snuggly with Ellie in rehab.” I made an overdramatic gagging sound at that idea. The very idea of touching that woman made my stomach turn.
I was surprised Hendrix hadn’t showered in bleach after her little grabby hands moment.
“I have an idea on that front,” Beckett told us. “In all the chaos, we still haven’t been clear with everyone about the cancelation of the concert, and we have a lot of shit to clear up. The easiest way to do that would be to hold a press conference.”
“Been a hot minute since we’ve done one of those,” Phin said with a laugh.
“The press has been climbing the walls, wanting information,” I added. “They’ll be all over it.”
“So we’re agreed?” Beckett asked.
A round of nods followed.
“All right. I’ll reach out and get it organized, so we can set the record straight.”
I laughed—that was a ballsy move, but I fucking loved it.
“Hell yes!”
And I wasn’t going to rely on luck to make sure she saw it. I made my own with some hefty dollars and a direct line to her bestie. Meadow was going to see us tell the whole world how much we loved her.