36. Resa
Chapter 36
Resa
E ven nestled in a space I never believed I would ever have, it doesn’t take long for my nightmares to rear their ugly heads.
I leave my nest, am halfway up the stairs when the light spilling out from a downstairs room makes me pause. I know that room. The den. And I think I can guess exactly who I will find sitting in an armchair in front of a fire.
Garrison.
Does he ever sleep?
I walk back down the stairs and I couldn’t tell you whether it’s biology or if it’s something else driving me. I just know it’s getting harder and harder to stay away from him.
Garrison gives no indication he knows I’m in the doorway until…
“If you take the red pieces, I might see myself finishing sometime this century.”
“Just fling it in the fire.” I hide my smile as I cross over to him. “If it’s stubbornness stopping you, you can always pretend you tripped.”
The muscles in his cheek pull, a sign he might be smiling, though he doesn’t lift his head. “Ah, the accidental trip. Good idea.”
I take the armchair opposite him. Despite my determination to watch him, I gather a small handful of red puzzle pieces into my lap and start figuring out where they go.
We spend the next ten minutes figuring this puzzle thing together. Or at least I do. Garrison puts down three pieces as I’m still working out whether the piece I’m holding is upside down, someone’s elbow, or a piece of a desk.
“You didn’t have to do what you did.” I stare at the puzzle in my hand. “I’m sure it was a lot of work.” In fact, I know it was. I had plenty of time out there to really take in the details I had missed when I first entered the room.
The smell of paint was very faint. The closer I moved to the wall, the more I got the sense they hadn’t just emptied out towels, storage boxes and whatever else they’d been keeping in the pool house. They’d painted.
Someone had hung one of those hanging hammocks from the ceiling, and I’d promptly tipped out of the thing onto the cushions beneath when I’d climbed into it wrong.
After I’d stopped laughing at myself and checked to make sure no one had seen, I found a small wine cooler filled with more of that addicting apple juice and a hamper with bags of chips, candy, and chocolates to snack on.
It was perfect. I couldn’t have made a better nest for myself.
“We’ve been meaning to clear out the pool house for years.”
“And turn it into a nest for an omega?” And not just any omega. Me.
“Work has been quiet recently.”
I look down, fighting my smile, which isn’t easy. I hadn’t thought I liked dry. I like cheeky and charming, but I’m learning to appreciate a dry sense of humor and quiet kindness just as much.
“Whose idea was the music?” I ask, thinking I already know the answer.
“Vaughn. Of course.” He lifts his head for the first time, and I was right to think he was hiding a smile. Hazel eyes flecked with amber sparkle with mirth. “He wanted to drag his drum set outside to serenade you.”
The smile I’ve been desperate to keep hidden sneaks out. “With drums ?”
His gaze dips to my mouth.
A slightly hungry look makes heat coil in my belly as he refocuses on my eyes. “Count yourself lucky I told him I wasn’t helping him carry it out. Blaine also opted out.”
Try as I might, I cannot imagine someone serenading me on the drums.
“That would have been some experience,” I say wistfully.
A log in the fireplace crackles.
I only meant to stop in here for a moment to thank Garrison for a nest I never could have dreamed up for myself. Yet here I am, making no move to leave.
“You need to explain the pink flamingo to me, because I cannot imagine why you would have that.”
His response steals the air from my lungs.
Garrison Brewster knows how to grin, and he looks good doing it. He shakes his head. “You don’t want to know about the pink flamingo.”
“See, now I have to know everything about it.”
“If you tell anyone, no one would hire us. The Lucas Security reputation would be ruined,” he warns. “Though it might take some time before they stopped laughing.”
It sounds so juicy I nearly fall out of my chair. “Tell me everything.”
Garrison studies me for a beat, as if he’s not sure he can trust me to keep my mouth shut.
He’s welcome to come after me for running my mouth. I won’t, because I need to know this thing that put a grin on Garrison’s face. I have to.
“It was the day we became a pack,” he says, still smiling. “Officially. We’d talked about it before. But we… gelled. For the first time, I felt like I belonged. We all did. We were pack. Family.”
I get it.
I don’t know how common it is for alphas to share a scent match, but since there are more alphas than there are omegas in our world, it makes sense that it frequently happens.
“And that day just so happened to involve a pink flamingo the size of an elephant?” I ask dryly.
He nods. “It did.”
I wait. “And?”
His amusement grows. Probably because I’m not doing a damn thing to hide my impatience.
“And,” he says firmly.
“What about Roman and Frost?” I ask, figuring I can circle back to get my answer another way because I suspect he’s drawing this out on purpose to drive me crazy. “Are they not pack?”
He shakes his head. “Roman is married with a daughter your age and a son a couple of years older. He has his own pack.”
“And Frost?”
His smile dims a little. “Had his heart and his mind set elsewhere. I’m sure he will find his own way.”
I’m tempted to shake him and hope answers spill out like sweets from a pi?ata. “You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?”
He tilts his head, his brow wrinkling in confusion. “Doing what on purpose?”
“Telling me just enough to stir my interest, then slam the door in my face.” I scowl.
His brow smooths. “Not on purpose. Though I can’t say I’m not pleased that you want to know more about us.”
Alarm bells ring.
It sounds an awful lot like I do want to know more about them. Wanting to know more about an alpha is stepping on a path of liking him. That path is mired with thorns and stones that will trip me, causing untold damage when I inevitably fall.
Garrison clears his throat. “The pink flamingo?—”
“ No .” I cut him off, more sharply than I intend. I’m interested, don’t get me wrong. Learning about an important moment like that is too intimate. Henry has moved on with his life, but I don’t have a future with an alpha. “I don’t need to know.”
He nods once, and then bows his head, returning to his puzzle.
I watch him for a bit, conscious I still haven’t thanked him for my nest. It’s getting late, and I should go to bed, but I make no move to get up.
“One day, years from now, my child is going to grow up and ask me who their father is, and I don’t know how to tell them they don’t have a father.” I clear my throat. “I keep thinking of what I would say and I don’t know. This is probably a stupid question, but what would you say if you were me?”
Garrison reclines in his seat, paying me the same focused attention as he does to his puzzles. “It’s not a stupid question. It sounds like a very difficult one. Can you leave it with me to sit on it before I give you an answer?”
I almost smile. “You never blurt things out like the rest of us, do you?”
A flicker of amusement warms his hazel gaze. “Not often.”
“Because you had a detective neighbor?”
He tilts his head, his expression thoughtful. “A little. My father walked out on my mother when I was five. Lucas was the only father figure I had in my life, and he taught me a lot. One of those things was to think before you speak, especially when talking about things that are important.”
“And to never sign things you don’t understand?”
“Yes.” A smile softens his face. “Though that lesson took a while to sink in. Becoming a business owner is what solidified it.”
We fall into silence, and it’s not the uncomfortable kind that I want to escape.
“I’ve been battling with myself today. Justice for me and the omegas in this city, or keep my head down and protect my baby,” I say.
“Those two do not have to be mutually exclusive.”
“Prosecutors are appealing for witnesses. Sloane Eddiswood’s trial is ending soon and I think they want an omega to give a victim impact statement or something. I don’t know if anyone would even believe me, but I want to tell the world exactly what alphas like Sloane have been doing. Nothing can change if no one knows what needs to change.”
Garrison nods. “Then you will say what the world needs to hear, and we will protect you—and your baby—when you do.”
Quiet words. A promise. No. A guarantee .
This man has a way of saying things that makes me want to believe every word.
I return my small pile of puzzles to the table and slowly get to my feet. I’m not ready to go to sleep, but I’m ready for this day to be over. It has been one of the most painful in my life, and strangely enough, also one of the sweetest.
“Goodnight, Garrison.”
“Goodnight,” is his somber response. “And Resa?”
I twist to face him. “Yeah?”
He nods at the window. “We have sensors and cameras on the back hedges. If you ever want to sleep in your nest, you’ll be safe.”
I almost tell him that most of the time, sleep isn’t guaranteed or even an option.
My nest was perfect. But it didn’t take away all my pain.
Knowing Henry has moved on and built a new life with another woman when by now we could have been married, maybe even had kids, still hurts.
It’s going to be a long time before it stops hurting.
So I just tell Garrison, “Okay. I’ll remember that.”
I’m walking out when a thought hits me.
Jerome Walker. Maybe seeing all the reports on TV and recalling how suddenly my life changed makes something click.
When I turn around, Garrison is still watching me instead of his puzzle. “I think Jerome Walker’s roommate was lying.”
His brows knit together. “Lying about what?”
“In his interview, Tobias said Jerome’s heat was starting, and he had to rush off. But they both had the same free period and Jerome didn’t even take his car. If Jerome was in a hurry, why wouldn’t he take the thing that would get him to a clinic the fastest? And why would Tobias let Jerome go alone and stay on the couch watching TV?”
Garrison sits up taller in his seat. “Keep going.”
“If I was with someone when my heat started, they would always ask if they could take me to the heat clinic so I wouldn’t have to drive distracted. Even my boss, who hated me, offered once. I’m sure he knew I would never accept, but if I’d said yes, I think he would have. Tobias and Jerome were best friends and roommates. If Tobias had a class to get to, I’d understand, but he was just watching TV.”
Garrison stares at me.
He’s been doing this job for years—decades, probably. My amateur sleuthing is making me look like an idiot. I shake my head. “Anyway, it’s just a thought I had. Goodnight.”
I leave him staring after me, his brow deeply furrowed, like he’s thinking hard.