Chapter 1
SPENCER
Five months later
“But how do I get him to notice I’m alive?” the beta currently sprawled halfway across Spencer’s bar wailed.
It was the third time she’d asked the question. Or maybe the fourth. Spencer was kind of losing track.
Either way, he definitely should have cut her off before her last drink, but he hadn’t realized how many she’d tossed back before coming into his bar. Well, not his bar. The bar he bartended at. His employer’s bar.
The point was, the beta had definitely been barhopping prior to her arrival.
But he couldn’t take-backsies what he’d already served her, so for now, Spencer switched her pomegranate cider out with water and leaned on his elbows. “That’s easy,” he told her. “You flirt.”
She frowned at him, swaying slightly on her stool. “But I don’t know how to flirt.”
“That’s easy too. Like, ninety percent of it is just eye contact.” Spencer met the beta’s bleary gaze, lowering his lids halfway and giving her a lazy smile. “Hey,” he crooned. “What brings you out tonight, gorgeous?”
The beta’s frown turned into a slack-jawed stare. She blinked at him. Hiccuped. Blinked again.
Spencer laughed, straightening from the bar and snapping his fingers. “See? Nothin’ to it.”
“Hey.” The beta reached her hand across the bar, trying and failing to grab Spencer’s wrist. “Would you maybe wanna—”
Spencer’s barback for the night tugged at his sleeve, wordlessly letting him know he had new customers to serve. Whatever the beta wanted to ask Spencer would have to wait. He pointed to her water glass. “Drink that,” he ordered. “The whole thing. Hydrate or die.”
He frowned to himself. That had come out as more of a threat than he’d intended.
Oh well. He shrugged, sidling over to the other end of the bar, where two new customers waited for him.
Spencer blamed his lack of immediate recognition on the dim lighting. Then his heart gave a little skip-beat thump he blamed on not taking his own hydration advice.
But he knew these two dudes. He knew them very, very well.
“Ash and Ryyyyder!” he crowed, lifting his hand for a high five that neither of the stone-faced men gave him. “Oh man, did you come to visit me?”
Ash rolled his eyes. “We came to see if Noah was working.”
Oh yeah, that made sense, since Noah was Ash’s older brother.
He was also one of Spencer’s roommates, one of his two very best besties in the whole wide world, and an occasional barback at this very bar.
He was a gorgeous ray of calm alpha sunshine, and Spencer could understand wanting to see him as much as possible.
He and Ash had a certain family resemblance, though Ash’s curls were a darker blond, his frame narrower and his cheekbones sharper. And where Noah was easy sunshine, Ash was more like … streamlined fire. Harsher. More intense. Liable to singe.
He was also unpresented, his designation a hot little mystery to the world. Spencer was betting on alpha though. Boy had a temper.
Spencer leaned over the bar with a sad shake of his head. “Not tonight, my dudes. He switched shifts to take Eli on a fancy date. The opera or ballet or maybe a science lecture. I forget.”
“Staking out your next conquest?”
Spencer shifted his gaze to Ryder, Ash’s ever-present shadow. Speaking of gorgeous alphas. Although, Ryder looked nothing like Noah, or Spencer for that matter. He was the rough and tumble type, with his dark hair buzzed close to the scalp and tattoos everywhere and muscles on top of muscles.
He also maybe hated Spencer. It was hard to tell for sure, though—Ryder acted like he hated everyone. Everyone except for Ash, who he treated with a quiet, possessive care that made Spencer’s dick kind of hard.
It was why Ryder was clearly good people, no matter how much he snarled at Spencer. Loyalty like that was always worth more than surface politeness. And Spencer didn’t mind a little snarling, anyway. He tended to bring it out in people, so it would be hypocritical to get all up in arms about it.
He’d kind of forgotten that Ryder had asked him a question, but the burly alpha was glaring down the bar at the beta, who was very unsubtly staring at the three of them.
“Her?” Spencer asked. “Nah. She’s halfway to blitzed.”
Ash’s scowl now matched Ryder’s in intensity. “You’re going to lose your license serving her.”
Spencer waved a hand. “Psh. She’s drinking water. And I texted her friends with her phone like ten minutes ago. They’re already on their way to take her home.”
“You’re allowed to do that?” Ryder crossed his tatted arms. It made him look like a bouncer. Maybe the bar should hire him.
Spencer shrugged. “Probably not.” But what was he gonna do—leave her to stumble home on her own? “You two staying?”
Ash and Ryder exchanged a glance. They did that silent, talking-without-talking thing a lot. It was sick as hell to watch.
After a moment, Ash nodded. “Yeah. I’ll take a beer. Something light.”
“ID?”
Spencer was joking, of course—Ash and Ryder were both under the legal drinking age, not that he gave a shit. But Ryder slid two fakes toward him, and Spencer picked them up out of curiosity. They were good quality, could have fooled him for sure.
“All right. A beer for … Sebastian.” Spencer gave Ash a nod. Then he turned, waggling his eyebrows at Ryder. “And for you, Stanley?”
Ryder took a seat at the bar. “Pina colada,” he said dryly.
He was joking, right? Spencer had always assumed he’d be a whiskey straight kind of guy. But Ryder’s expression gave nothing away.
Spencer looked to Ash, who shrugged, taking his own seat. “You heard the man.”
Well, then. Spencer flashed them a grin. “Coming right up.”
He went to fetch their drinks, a new pep in his step.
The night had been slow as hell so far, and while Spencer hadn’t minded being a shoulder to cry on for his one and only beta customer this last hour, she’d be leaving soon, and then he would have to send his barback home and it would just be him spinning bottle caps on his lonesome.
But Ash and Ryder were always decent company. They’d started coming over to the house Spencer shared with his two roomies more at the end of last year, looking for Noah when he’d been secretly dating his professor, and they’d taken to staying over sometimes to play video games with Spencer.
Spencer might have thought their continued visits were the two of them taking pity on him—everyone knew Spencer hated to be alone—but Ash and Ryder weren’t the pitying types.
In the social circus that was life in college, they generally kept to themselves, a devoted duo.
Spencer didn’t know if they were dating or friends with bennies or none of the above.
Ash’s late presentation made it doubly hard to tell—he didn’t have any pheromones of his own, and he was always covered in Ryder’s dark, woodsy scent.
They were both the kind of hot Spencer might have tried getting into bed with if they weren’t off-limits courtesy of their relation to Noah (Ryder might not have been blood-related, but he was considered part of the Teller family regardless).
Who was Spencer kidding? He definitely would have tried to get either or both of them into bed. They were hot as fuck, and snarky and cool in the kind of careless way that couldn’t be faked.
But the Noah barrier was probably a good thing, saving Spencer from his own horny tendencies.
Because the summer had been long and lonely, and Spencer could use all the friends he could fucking get.
His two besties—Noah and Chase—had both found serious love, and though they tried to be around for him, being super stellar boyfriends took up a lot of their hang time.
And with Spencer spending less time in random beds than he used to for … reasons of his own, it made things kind of quiet.
So Ash and Ryder coming to hang was welcome, even if they’d originally come for Noah. Spencer didn’t mind being someone’s second choice. It was better than being no choice at all.
He brought back their drinks, giving a nod to the trio of girls who’d come to pick up their beta friend. Spencer pushed the pina colada toward Ryder, still not sure if the alpha had been fucking with him with his order. “We don’t have a blender, so I made it on the rocks with crushed ice.”
Ryder accepted the drink from him, his dark gaze never leaving Spencer’s, and took a slow sip. He nodded once and pulled the drink closer.
Ash grinned at Spencer, all sharp and lovely. Beautiful smiles seemed to run in the Teller family. “He fucking loves it.”
Spencer grinned right back.
Hell yeah, the night was looking up for sure.
Spencer woke up with a cramp in his lower back.
Not the kind of cramp that came from doing fun things with hot people either. It was the kind that came from sleeping all wonky on a couch not made for sleeping.
He should probably start spending more hours in his own bed, but Spencer didn’t like sleeping alone. He never had. Half the fun of banging randoms was getting an all-night cuddle as part of the deal.
Well, not half the fun. Ninety percent was still probably getting to bust a nut with someone warm and willing. But, like, a decent 10 percent was the cuddling. Maybe 15 to 20 if Spencer got to be the little spoon.
One of the major drags of being an alpha was not enough people figuring out he wanted to be the little spoon. Fucking designation stereotypes, man.
Ash and Ryder had kept him company for the rest of his shift last night. Ash had been making Spencer cackle and Ryder smirk by flinging peanuts at Spencer’s taciturn barback during his closing duties. Spencer had no idea where Ash had kept getting the peanuts from—their bar didn’t even serve them.