19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Inever thought I would be telling my life story to Ciara Callaghan while locked in a dark closet, and yet here we were.
Even I could admit that I’d come into the closet to confront her, already hot with anger. I’d been going over my show notes with the PA who was just itching to get out of the studio so she could go to lunch when Ciara had peeked out of the closet, typed something on her phone, and then ducked back inside.
And after a morning of watching Artie mope around the apartment and not being able to get him to actually tell me why, I somehow just knew that it had something to do with the long-legged lady alpha who was currently looking at me with big, distractingly pretty brown eyes as I started to tell her about my childhood.
“Did you ever wonder how an American like me somehow ended up in Scotland?”
Ciara shrugged her shoulders with a shake of her head. “Not really, did you ever wonder how an Irish woman like me ended up in Minnesota?”
“Touché,” I said, offering her a smile that no doubt showed how nervous I was. “Well, I was born in California in a big Italian family, lots of cousins, but my parents just had me and my sister. I was always a rowdy kid, but shit kind of hit the fan when my alpha designation developed when I was twelve.”
“Twelve?” Ciara’s brows drew together with surprise. “Isn’t that quite early? I was fourteen and the doctors told me even that was rare.”
“What can I say? I’m a medical marvel,” I joked with a laugh that was too sharp even for my own ears. “But it also put me into what my parents like to call ‘super puberty.’ I got taller and bigger than the rest of my peers… and then there was the rage.”
Closing my eyes, I could still remember the uncontrollable anger that seemed to ignite in my hormone addled body at the slightest provocation.
“I fought. A lot. Anytime someone looked at me funny I threw my fists first and asked questions later. It was definitely not sustainable for my parents who were hearing it on all sides until I was eventually expelled from school. To have the words ‘violent’ and ‘alpha’ on your school records doesn’t bode well for getting into literally any other school.”
Ciara seemed to understand me because she leaned in, her cinnamon scent filling my nose as she spoke. “When I was fifteen, Chelsea Warner told Brynn she was a motherless slut because the boy she liked had a crush on Brynn. I saw red and the next thing I knew I was winging an algebra textbook at her head. It took the dads and Aurelia all day to do damage control for that because the Warners were one of the richest families in our little town.”
“So you get it. The rage is mind numbing to the point where sometimes I’d blink and there’d be a kid with a fat lip. My parents really had no other choice but to send me away to someone who could handle me. My nonna lived in a tiny little village in Tuscany and even at nearly eighty years old she was the most intimidating woman I’ve ever met.”
She’d taken one look at me, bruised and battered from my latest fight, and had promptly put me to work on the tiny farm that my uncles ran.
“My nonna was an old school omega and had very strict ideas about what an alpha should be like. Strong, protective, the shield of all pack members even at the expense of their own sanity. She raised me up from an angry preteen into who I am today and I returned back to California to finish up my last year of high school a very different man… but the only problem was that I didn’t feel at home there anymore and I felt…”
A rattling, anxious breath left me as I gripped the top of my knees. My suit was definitely going to be dusty by the time anyone found us, but I couldn’t find it in me to care as I bared my soul to her.
“You felt abandoned,” Ciara provided, nibbling nervously on her lower lip. “You felt like they’d left you behind in Italy even though you understood why.”
“Exactly.” I was surprised to hear her put it into words so succinctly. “I made it through the year and then applied for university in the UK and moved out. My dad understood it on some level, but my mom didn’t. Almost every phone call would end with her in tears so… I kind of just stopped calling.”
It took meeting Artie and his pushing for me to reconnect to actually bite the bullet and do it. My mom died six months after that and the guilt still ate at the edges of me like a slow flesh-eating disease.
Yet another thing to add to the pile of all of the bullshit I was carrying around on a daily basis.
Ciara was quiet for a moment before she let out a sharp sigh. “My mam left me with my drunk of a father for six months before coming back for me. When I saw her standing in the foyer I was so excited and elated… and then as soon as that wore off I was so mad at her for not taking me with her. I never even got a chance to get past that feeling because the car we were driving in lost control and we flipped over the side of a bridge.”
I… I hadn’t known that about her. Anything she’d told Leith or Artie about her past they’d kept close to their chests. I sort of figured bad shit had happened to her judging by her propensity to run away from her problems—but I hadn’t expected that.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured softly, turning to look at her fully and really look at her for the first time since I’d stomped my way into this closet and gotten us trapped.
Ciara shrugged like it didn’t bother her at all anymore. “I’ve got a wonderful family now that loves me… and a boyfriend who I think might do the same.”
The word boyfriend grated against my nerves, my inner alpha disliking her use of it when talking about someone who was not in my pack.
Leith and Artie had made it very clear that they wanted her to join our pack and I’d resigned myself to it—or at least that’s how I presented myself to my packmates.
I hadn’t resigned myself to shit and I knew it deep down. Every time I saw the female alpha when it was my turn to pick Artie up from practice she looked and smelled better than the last time.
Artie had been my first love and I could recognize the signs of attraction for Ciara a mile away.
“Why didn’t you tell them about me confronting you on your run? You could have done so—easily—but you didn’t.”
If Ciara could tell I was avoiding her mention of a boyfriend, she didn’t show it as she wrapped her arms around her knees. “At the time you weren’t wrong to ask that of me. The chasing me down on a run I could have gone without, but your reasons were solid. I’ve always been so terrified of waking up one day in the same exact situation as my mam that I sort of… avoid romance entirely.”
I sat up, feeling a little bit offended. “Artie and Leith would never do anything like that.” And neither would I, a voice in my head whispered.
“You don’t think I know that? Leith Dougall is one of the gentlest men I’ve ever met. But that doesn’t mean anything to my cracked little brain—especially four years ago when I felt like I was a bad luck charm to everyone I met.”
“And it’s somehow better with this boyfriend?” Jealousy that I hadn’t even realized I’d been feeling leaked into my voice.
Ciara’s brows rose as she glanced over at me, her full lips opening to let out a whoosh of breath. “Yes—at least I think so—Wiz makes me feel… I don’t know, secure? Like even if my world is going to shit, that he’d be my landing net.”
“Artie likes you, so does Leith, what about them makes you feel insecure?” Shit. That came out almost accusatory when I hadn’t meant it to.
Ciara’s soft expression hardened and her lips pressed into a thin line.
“It’s not them that makes me feel insecure. It’s you Enzo Santoro,” she scolded, pointing a finger in my face. “You glare at me one moment and then act soft in another. It’s utterly confusing. Half the time I’m not sure if you wish I’d just disappear or if you want to fuck me and get it out of your system.”
Her words stung fiercely and I couldn’t admit, even to myself, that they rang of the truth.
And I really didn’t like that.
Without thinking, I reached over and gripped her chin and pulled her face to mine.
Her lips were just as soft as I’d imagined they’d be a thousand times when Artie came home from practice wearing her scent on his skin. The image of both my omega and her dancing along either side of me as I tasted both of their lips like very different, but still very delicious glasses of wine.
That scent which had previously lingered in my peripheral thanks to my omega, now filled my nose and everything finally clicked for me. The reason why Leith and Artie were so set on the woman in front of me and what my inner alpha had been whispering to me all along.
Scent match, I realized with a jolt as Ciara moaned softly, her lips moving against mine.
Then the moment was over all too soon as the door to the storage closet was opened, nearly sending the both of us careening backward and flat onto the floor.
Aurelia Peterson peered down at us from her wheelchair, a shocked expression on her face. “I was wondering where you’d gone and I figured you weren’t listening when Hideo told you about the closet but…”
Ciara was up on her feet, a hand touching her swollen lips as she snagged the bag full of supplies she’d been sent to collect.
“Not a word,” she said to her sister, her cheeks warm with a blush as she hurried out of the broadcast studio, leaving Aurelia and me still staring at one another.
There was a beat of silence, Aurelia’s blue eyes taking in my disheveled appearance with the level of shrewd observation that I’d seen in the eyes of her father and uncle while they watched their players at practice.
“I’m not going to say anything about what I just saw,” she began slowly and held up her hand when I opened my mouth to thank her. “But, I will say this. Ciara may look like a tough woman on the outside because that’s what she wants the world to see. But I know better and I’ve been protecting her since she was twelve years old, so if you hurt her in any way I will make your life a living hell.”
The normally affable omega’s eyes were ice cold for a moment as we stared each other down, a fierce protectiveness evident in her stiff shoulders. Then, the expression melted away and she offered me her friendly customer service smile.
“I look forward to seeing your segment today, Mr. Santoro, have a lovely rest of your afternoon.”
She turned and rolled back toward the elevator without so much as a backward glance in my direction.
I sat there for a long time, my lips still tingling from the press of her lips and it took everyone returning from lunch to finally break me from my stupor.
“You did what, Enz?” Artie’s mouth was wide open as he stared at me with shock.
I’d just spilled the beans about what I’d done in the broadcast closet and both of my packmates were looking at me as if they’d never seen me before.
“You kissed her against her will? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Leith asked, his face red with anger as he clenched his fists.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly against her will,” I pointed out, remembering the way her mouth had softened and moved against mine, and the way her moan had sent a bolt of need straight to my cock.
“Did you ask?” Leith pushed.
“… well… no, but—”
“But nothing, Enzo, you can’t stomp about and be angry with Ciara one moment and then kiss her the next,” Leith said, cutting me off and echoing the words that Ciara herself had said less than six hours ago.
Artie reached out and put a hand on Leith’s knees and I could feel him soothing Leith’s anger through our bond. “Love, look at him. I think he’s finally realized what we did a while ago.”
Then our omega turned to face me. “You did, didn’t you, Enzo?”
My mouth was dry as I nodded. “Yeah.”
Artie looked pleased as hell with himself as he smiled. “Took you long enough to figure out that she’s our scent match.”
Looking down at my clenched fists, I still felt stupidly conflicted. “Not that it matters, she has a boyfriend now, she’s with that hockey player.”
Leith frowned with recognition. “Wiz? That’s not that surprising, the guy is already famous around the Complex because he follows her around.”
“Why aren’t you more upset about this?” I asked, surprised that Leith wasn’t torn up about Ciara finally taking the chance with someone who wasn’t him.
“I don’t know,” the other alpha said, his expression thoughtful as he scratched at the edges of his beard. “I wouldn’t mind him being around if that’s what she wanted—if she wanted all of us that is.”
“It’s one thing to add Ciara to the pack, but another alpha? Who has nothing to do with us?”
The cloves scent that clung to her skin must have been his, I realized now as I thought back to how her cinnamon had invaded all of my senses, and apparently, put me out of my mind for a moment. He smelled to me the same way Leith had at first, nothing special—at least not in the way that Artie was special—but even I had to admit that Leith’s apple smell was now a part of what I thought of as home.
“That’s if she even wants us at all,” I said, pointing out the obvious.
Artie’s expression fell again and my inner alpha whined at me to go and comfort him, but I stayed where I was standing, letting him process.
“It’s not fair. How is it that you’ve both kissed her already and I see her more than the both of you?” The omega finally pouted, crossing his arms over his chest.
His words seemed to finally break the tension that had been hanging in the air ever since I made my confession.
Leith’s chuckle rumbled through the living room as he gave Artie’s shoulder an affectionate pat. “If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t kissed her in four years.”
Artie seemed to think about it for a moment before brightening. “You’re right, that does make me feel better.”
After a moment of comfortable silence, it was Artie who finally asked the question that had been rattling around in my head all day.
“It’s all well and good to be on the same page about Ciara, but how are we supposed to convince her to even read the book?”
I looked at Leith and he looked at me as we realized that we had no clue where to even start.