Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
I have to admit, there are worse things I could be doing on Valentine’s Day than watching movies with my new roommate while we eat anything and everything under the sun. Not only am I happy to finally have a cheat day from my food regimen, but it’s good to not be alone for once. Especially tonight.
Not that I’ll ever say that out loud, but still. It’s nice.
I’ve come to learn that Opal loves peanut butter pretzels on an extreme level.
Like, don’t take one of her pretzels from her, or your hand will get slapped.
Her little omega yap as she scolded me made me laugh, which earned me another surprised expression at my genuine amusement.
I guess most people don’t hear me laugh, especially not outside my pack, but she has now heard me laugh several times, and I don’t feel weird about that one bit.
Another thing I’ve learned about the redheaded omega is that she loves anime.
We’re watching something right now about a moving castle.
I’m having a bit of a hard time understanding since the female character keeps switching from old to young, the firepit is talking in a mildly threatening tone, and the little boy is wearing a fake wizard’s beard.
“I don’t get it,” I say while tossing another kernel into my mouth. “His heart is… in the fire that talks?”
Opal laughs and the sound swirls around like sunlight. “He’s a demon,” she says, like it’s supposed to make sense all of a sudden. She puts the knife back in the Nutella jar and sets it on the coffee table. “You don’t have to understand it to appreciate the cinematography.”
“Yeah, the visuals are nice, I guess.” I tilt my head to the side, appreciating the colors. Kit has tried to explain composition and animation to me before, but I’ve never really taken to it. This is something they could bond over, I realize, since Kit’s dream is to be an animator.
“What do you study?” I ask, suddenly curious.
She smiles wide, which highlights the freckles across her nose. “I’m going to be a teacher, so I’m getting my BA in education.”
My brows shoot to my hairline. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it’s such a direct answer that I’m taken aback. “High school?”
“No,” she answers while shaking her head. “Elementary school. I’m doing my preparation program with a first-grade class this semester.”
Ah, that makes more sense. I can’t picture her being around snotty teenagers, but early education fits her image way better. “And that’s going well?”
“Yes, very well. You know how some things only sound good in theory?” I nod. “Well, I was afraid that being a teacher might be one of those things for me, but if anything, I’ve fallen even more in love with it. Seriously, it doesn’t feel like a job to me. It feels right.”
“That’s rare nowadays,” I respond. “I’m really glad it’s working out for you.”
She gives me an inquisitive look. “Now it’s your turn. What are you studying? I haven’t heard Atlas or the others mention if you entered the draft.”
The urge to smile is foreign, but the sentiment does just that. I didn’t expect her to remember me in that regard, but I guess she’s an observant friend. I haven’t had many of those. Kit is one, for sure. I’m always surprised by the things he remembers about me.
“Sports management. I want to be a coach or work in the NHL wherever I can. As long as I’m still close to the sport, I don’t mind,” I admit.
Hockey has been an outlet of mine for a long time, but I don’t see myself playing it forever.
Sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits, and I think one more year or two is plenty of experience for me.
Atlas is a star. I knew from the second I met him in my freshman year that he would be going pro, but I also knew that it was never in the cards for me.
My goal of coaching is flexible. What I really want, more than anything, is to have a family.
Being a father, being supportive like my parents’ pack was for me, that’s the dream.
It’s just not one I’ve said out loud yet.
Not while Kit and I are still struggling to connect and definitely not while Sam’s childhood is still haunting him.
Opal is smiling transparently at my career choice, but she doesn’t get to comment on it because a small black furball suddenly jumps between us and meows right in our faces.
I groan, thinking Jemma’s about to pester me for her early dinner (because she’s not supposed to have it for another two hours, goddamnit) when she shocks me and hops right into Opal’s lap.
“What the hell?” I ask, astonished. “You certainly won her over quickly. What kind of treats did you bribe her with?” I’ve been looking for the right ones, and she has yet to take the bait. I have a million uneaten treats in my room.
She just laughs. “I haven’t given her any special treats. I’ve barely seen her since I moved in.”
I nod. “She does love to hide. She normally stays in Kit’s room even though he barely sleeps there. She probably thinks it’s her own room by now.”
“Aw, a little introverted kitty.” Opal coos at the feline now lying in a circle in her lap. She gives her some chin scratches, and when the purring starts, my mouth gapes open. This omega is blowing my mind right now.
For a second, I wonder what it will be like when I purr for the first time.
A tiny, cynical part of me is doubtful that it’ll ever happen or if I’ll ever meet someone who can pull that reaction out of me.
I absentmindedly scratch my chest, wondering how it would manifest under the skin and bone that I feel there.
“You’ve been living with her for a long time. Has she not warmed up to you yet?” Opal asks.
My eyes meet hers, and it brings me back to the moment. I answer with a shake of my head, glad to be rid of the depressing thought. “No, not at all. To Sam or me. Watch this.”
I reach out my hand like I’m going to let Jemma sniff me, but it never gets that far.
She senses me right away and pulls up her tiny neck to look at me.
As my finger gets closer, she gives a calm but warning hiss that I’m not surprised by in the slightest. When I pull my hand away, she rests her head once again on Opal’s pant leg like the great offense never happened.
I look back at my couch companion and see her hand covering her mouth, trying not to laugh. It’s infectious in a way I don’t expect, and my lips twitch in response. “I told you,” I say.
“She’s a girl’s girl,” Opal smiles, petting the cat’s head lovingly.
When the movie ends, it’s my turn to choose, so I put on a biopic about a wrestling family that I’ve heard good things about. Just not anything horror, since apparently that’s Opal’s Achilles’ heel.
I’m not a big fan either, to be honest, so that’s something we have in common.
“So, you’re a history buff, right?”
My head whips to her, brow raised. “Huh?”
She gives me another casual smile. “I met your pack mates at the game in Connecticut. Sam said that you and Kit enjoyed historical landmarks, and you guys were going to check out Mark Twain’s house while you were there.”
I take that in, shocked to be reminded of that great weekend in Hartford. It was one of the first times where we really felt like a pack, where I had felt included in their budding romance.
It was the first time I had looked at Kit and felt something toss around in the pit of my stomach.
His fingers felt so much smaller than mine the first time I had the courage to take his hand and lace our fingers together.
Sometimes, I can still feel the smooth ridges along my calluses, the way it made me giddy with untapped potential and excitement, the way his scent lit up whenever his skin was touching mine.
The way he looked at me with heat, and I finally had the urge to return it.
But when we got home, things seemed to go back to normal, so my habit of overthinking returned.
I couldn’t stop wondering if it was a sincere desire or if I just wanted it so badly that my body mimicked the feeling.
How would I know if I was mistaking our newfound close friendship for something more?
What if I had those feelings one day and they were gone the next?
That’s not something our omega should have to go through.
Before Kit, I normally didn’t have time to think about the things that made me different.
For years, playing hockey kept me busy enough that anything social had been an afterthought.
I’d hear guys in the locker room or my friends in high school talk about the hottest girls, and it was like listening to them speak an alien language.
I just never had anything to contribute to those conversations.
I honestly felt like I was the only person in the world who didn’t obsess over potential partners the same way everyone else did.
It didn’t help that I attracted friendships with the most horrible macho men ever, both from being in locker rooms all my life and from being the biggest guy in every room I walked into.
I think Sam is the first real friend I’ve ever made.
Sam is the one who helped me realize that I’m not abnormal.
How I feel attraction, how my relationships work, it’s not out of the realm of possibility in the way I always thought.
Being demisexual is quite common, even for burly alphas like me.
And I think seeing Sam be so confident in himself, both in his sexuality and his dominance as an alpha, has helped me accept the same about myself.
Still, stepping over that first threshold with someone else is scary. I’ve never been intimate with someone. I’ve never even been in a relationship that lasted more than two weeks. Kit is a part of my pack, and he deserves someone who is sure.
With all the confusion surrounding my feelings, there is one thing I’m sure of, and it’s that I’m not ready.
“Thatcher?” Opal asks, her low-toned voice pulling me back to the present. “Where’d you go?”
I try to give her a reassuring smile, but I’m sure it looks more like a grimace.
“Sorry. That’s the game where Dax got into a fight on the ice.
I wish everyone would stop getting into fights in the middle of games.
” I joke. Yeah, let’s blame it on hockey.
That’s a safe topic. “That weekend was fun. Mark Twain’s house was like transporting through time.
I love those kinds of things. I’d like to see the Titanic museum, too. ”
She scrunches her nose but not unkindly. “That sounds morbid. Is it on an actual ship?”
“I think it is, on the water somewhere.”
She thinks about that for a moment, careful not to move too much because of the sleeping cat on her lap. “Are you guys big travelers? Did you go anywhere over the summer?”
“Sam is a bit frugal about money, to be honest. I think rent for this house is the only big transaction he’s ever made. Besides renting downtown for that fundraiser last year.”
Opal’s eyes bulge out of her head. “He did that? He rented an entire street for that festival?”
I hold back a chuckle. “Yes, out of his own pocket. He wanted it to be special. Luckily, he has a lot of connections, so most of the vendors and activities were donated. Were you there?”
She nods, biting her lip. “Yeah, it was nice. I hadn’t been to anything like that out here yet. It was the beginning of my friendship with Rory and Stacia. Before them, I was a bit of a hermit.”
The way she speaks about them, even in passing, shows me how much they mean to her. “You must miss living with Rory.”
She meets my eyes and gives a tiny sigh, but then she looks around the room and her face relaxes. “I quite like where I ended up.”
My heart skips a small beat at that. I think I like where she ended up, too.