Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Leif
The arrivals level of the airport bustles with activity as I check the board for Grady’s flight number and swallow back the knot in my throat. I’m twelve minutes early, which still leaves plenty of time to get down to baggage claim.
I hate airports. For Omegas, it’s sensory hell. Perfume layered over sweat, anxiety pheromones from travelers crammed shoulder to shoulder, and the artificial pine cleaner they use on the floors all hitting my nose at once despite the blockers I slapped on this morning.
My skin crawls beneath my jacket, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
As the escalator descends into baggage claim, I fight the urge to turn around.
Baggage claim is worse, somehow, with more bodies and less movement.
People clustering around carousels. I find the one for Grady’s flight, blessedly empty aside from a scattering of people at the other end, and I take up position beside a pillar where the flow of foot traffic won’t jostle me while I wait.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Emily: Did he land?
Leif: Still waiting. I’ll text when I’ve got him.
Three dots appear, then vanish. She’s nervous. We all are.
The board changes, announcing that his plane has landed.
My stomach swoops. Here we go.
Within ten minutes, passengers trickle down the escalator, then surge, a river of tired faces and wheeled suitcases. I scan each one, searching for blond hair, a familiar lanky frame, and an uneven gait.
I spot Grady at the back of the crowd, moving at a slower pace. His jacket is rumpled, his hair flat on one side where he must have slept with his head resting on the window. He appears exhausted, his shoulders slumped and purple shadows beneath his eyes.
I raise my arm before I can second-guess it. “Grady!”
He stops, scans the crowd, and spots me. Surprise flashes to find me here waiting, followed by a welcoming smile, and he starts walking again, changing his trajectory, though he doesn’t hurry. His knee wouldn’t allow it even if he wanted to.
I push off the pillar and meet him halfway. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says, his voice rough and travel-worn.
He shifts his grip on his cane, and his free hand comes up to grip my shoulder in what might be a hug if we were better at this. My hand finds his upper arm, and we stand there a moment, two people who used to know how to be friends and now don’t.
“You didn’t have to come all the way down,” he says. “I could’ve found you in arrivals outside.”
“I wanted to.” I drop my hand and step back. “How was the flight?”
“Long. There was turbulence over the Rockies.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You?”
“I drove. No turbulence.”
His laugh comes out rusty. “Smartass.”
As we drift toward the carousel, he walks with a slight hitch in his step when he puts too much weight on the bad leg, and his knuckles whiten around the handle of his cane as if in pain. Up close, he appears even more tired, the corners of his lips tight with exhaustion.
Whatever happened back east took something out of him.
The carousel groans to life, and suitcases slide onto the metal track. Grady leans on his cane, tracking the parade of black nylon and hard-shell spinners.
“I packed light,” he says. “Just the one bag. It’s navy blue with a sticker of a dragon on the side.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Dragon?”
He snorts. “It was merch promo for one of the Aurora Storm books. Chloe slapped it on so my suitcase would be easier to find.”
His suitcase appears, scuffed at the corners, a luggage tag flapping from the handle, and sure enough, a sticker of a dragon.
Before he can move, I step forward and heft the bag off the carousel. It’s heavier than I expected.
Grady reaches for the handle. “I can get that.”
“I know.” But I don’t pass it over.
He studies me for a beat, then swallows his pride and concedes.
We make the slow walk to the parking garage, his cane tapping a steady rhythm beside my footsteps. The silence between us stretches, filled with everything we haven’t said.
I should speak. I rehearsed three different openings on the drive over, and now all of them sound wrong.
The elevator doors to the parking garage close behind us, and Grady settles against the wall, his attention on the floor numbers as we descend.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt.
He turns to me, one eyebrow cocked in question.
“For disappearing when everything with Carson was happening. And after it all blew up.” The words come out too fast. “You were there for me when I needed someone, and then I just... went quiet. That was shitty of me. I should have reached out.”
Grady stays quiet until the elevator dings at our level.
“I could’ve reached out, too,” he says as the doors open. “It wasn’t all on you.”
“It was, though.” I lead him into the garage, the suitcase wheels rattling over concrete. “You’d already done enough. More than enough. I was the one who pulled away. I was an ass.”
He stops beside a concrete support pillar and turns to me. “Yeah. You were.”
I wince.
“But I get why.” His mouth quirks. “Carson did a number on you, and then you had the falling out with Emily, and everything got complicated.” He shrugs. “It’s okay, Leif. I’m not holding a grudge.”
The knot in my throat dissolves. “You should. At least a little.”
“I’ll save the grudge for next time you beat me at Scrabble.”
I laugh, and the sound bounces off the concrete ceiling of the garage. Grady joins in, his shoulders shaking, and just like that, the tension between us cracks and falls away.
We find my car parked three rows over, and I pop the trunk, heaving the suitcase inside while Grady lowers himself into the passenger seat with a grunt that tells me his knee is killing him.
As I slide behind the wheel, he buckles his seatbelt and asks, “Any word on Carson?”
I start the engine. “Last I heard, he moved to Arizona. He took a job in textbook publishing, of all things. He’s banned from teaching.”
“Serves him right.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” I pull out of the parking space. “Now, let’s get going. Emily promised us pizza, and if we’re late, Jared will eat all our toppings.”
Leaving the airport is slow progress, but once we hit the highway, it’s smooth sailing. The road stretches ahead of us, gray and wet from an earlier rain.
I merge into the right lane, set the cruise control, and wait for the silence to settle before I ask, “So. How’d it go? The trip home.”
Grady stares out the passenger window. The glass reflects his pale, tired face in the dimming light. “About as well as expected.”
Which doesn’t sound good.
I keep my attention on the road. “Want to talk about it?”
A long exhale leaves him, and his fingers tap a slow rhythm on his thigh. “There were meetings. A lot of them. Luncheons. Dinner parties. My father introducing me to people whose names I was supposed to remember five minutes after hearing them.”
He rubs his bad knee. “Board members. Investors. The kind of people who own islands and private jets and fly to Italy when they’re craving pasta.”
Surprised, I take my focus off the road for a second. Grady’s profile is sharp against the window, all angles and tension.
“Your family’s...” I search for the right word.
“Wealthy.” He grimaces with distaste. “The old money kind that comes with summer houses and charity galas and expectations.”
His jaw works, and he exhales again, harder this time. “They won’t be calling anymore. My mother goes where my father leads, and he’s made his position clear.”
Everything he’s not saying settles over the car, filling it with his disappointment and sadness.
I fight the instinct to release calming pheromones, to flood the space with cedar and linen and comfort.
It wouldn’t touch him. Betas don’t respond to scent the way Alphas and Omegas do.
All I can offer is silence, and my presence, and the steady hum of the engine beneath us.
After a mile, Grady continues. “There was a woman. Caroline Bennett. Our families have known each other forever. She’s smart and capable. She runs her father’s media company from the shadows while he takes the credit.”
His mouth twists with bitterness. “My parents had it all mapped out. Marriage and a merger, all in one tidy package.”
“An arranged marriage?” The words sound wrong the moment they leave my mouth.
“More like a legal partnership with tax benefits and the expectation of kids in the future.” He turns from the window. “I walked away from it. From the company, the trust, everything. My father’s exact words were that I would be a stranger to them.”
The highway curves, and I adjust the wheel. “So let me get this straight. Your family is loaded. Old money loaded. And you’ve been sleeping on Kyle’s couch for a year because...?”
“Because I didn’t want it.” His tone sharpens. “Not with the strings attached. I took tuition, because education mattered to them, but I worked for everything else. Managing Aurora Storm built me a comfortable nest egg. Not yacht money, but enough.”
He rubs his eyes beneath his glasses. “And now Chloe’s retired the pen name, and I’m... figuring it out. Journalism fulfills me, but the income isn’t steady or guaranteed, and my savings won’t last forever.”
“Could you represent other authors?”
“I could.” He doesn’t sound excited about it. “But it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be her.”
The pieces click into place. “This trip wasn’t only about obligation, was it? You went back to see if that life could make you happy.”
“I knew about the arrangement before I left Pinecrest.” His admission comes quietly. “I should’ve told Emily. But... I needed to see it for myself. To be sure.”
The road ahead splits, and I take the fork toward the coast. Pine trees crowd the shoulders, dark and wet.
“Was there anything real with Caroline?” I ask.
“No.” No hesitation. “She’s brilliant. We could’ve been good business partners. But that’s not...” He trails off with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t give up the chance, however slim, for a real connection.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
His laugh holds no amusement. “It was a lot of money.”