28. Try To Keep Up #3
"I wasn't going to say a single word about the hat." August's mouth twitches at one corner. "It's doing a tremendous amount of work. That's all. I respect the hat."
"I will put you in the harbor, flower boy."
I lean back into the warm wall of the three of them and let all of it wash over me — the bickering, the low thrum of their mingled scents, the strange, unfamiliar novelty of being fought over instead of fought past. So this is what it feels like.
I'd forgotten. Or maybe I never truly knew it, back then, too busy being grateful to notice I was quietly being taken for granted.
Then, over the rim of the whole warm, ridiculous moment, my eyes find the bar again. Find Cade.
He's watching. All of it. The three of them wrapped around me, laughing, claiming, being a pack — and him behind his own bar, hands gone still at last, face unreadable as a shut door, on the outside of the glass looking in.
Our eyes meet for the second time tonight.
Something bitter and old and quiet turns over in the pit of my stomach, ugly and familiar.
Once again. Left behind. Even now. Even in the warm middle of all of this. The one who won't cross the room.
For one raw second the old grief gets its hand around my throat — the exact grip I felt at the top of that aisle, watching a set of doors and waiting on men who'd already made their choice.
Three of them came back for me tonight. Three of them are standing right here, warm and ridiculous and mine for the taking, if I want them.
But the fourth is still behind glass, and some stubborn, wounded, unkillable part of me is busy counting the one who didn't come instead of the three who did.
Stop it, I tell myself, hard. Stop grading the men who showed up against the one who wouldn't.
I pull my eyes off him before the feeling can climb into my face. I smooth my expression out easy and give the three warm bodies crowded around me a slow, considering smile instead.
"So," I say. "What if we bar hop?"
All three of them look at me like I've just proposed we rob the register on the way out.
"You," Beckett says slowly, disbelieving. "You want to bar hop."
"The woman who color-codes her own sock drawer," August says faintly, to no one in particular, "wants to crawl the whole strip on a Thursday night."
"People change," I tell him, sweet as pie.
"Clearly." Sawyer's looking at me like I'm the single most interesting thing in three counties. "They do."
Beckett just narrows his eyes at me, suspicious as a hound, like he can smell a plan coming off my skin. He can. He's got the best nose of the three of them, and he's known me the longest.
"Is that so hard to believe?" I lift my chin at him. "None of us have work in the morning. Correct?"
They exchange a look over the top of my head — that silent Alpha conferring I have never once managed to crack the code of — and I decide, right there, that I am done waiting around for the three of them to grant me permission for my own night.
So I take it.
I slide down off my stool, spin on the heel of my boot, and drift away from all three of them toward the door, tossing the words back over my shoulder like a fistful of confetti.
"The whole street's got new bars now, gentlemen.
Completely different from how it all was five years ago.
Try to keep up." I flash them a grin I don't entirely feel. "I've got an excellent tolerance."
I have a truly shitty tolerance. But they do not need to know that.
I walk. I don't look back. This is the whole test, isn't it — this exact moment, my bare shoulders squared, my back to the three of them, the door standing open ahead of me.
Their one chance to follow me out into the night, or to let me walk through that door alone, the way they once let me walk down a whole aisle alone.
I make my boots keep moving. I make myself not look back to check.
I don't make it three steps.
Sawyer's already there — ahead of me somehow, walking backward toward the door with that insufferable grin and one hand held out, fingers wiggling at me. "Well, come on then, Blooming Apricot. You're the one who said keep up."
I snicker despite my whole self and put my hand in his.
The night air hits me the second we're through the door — salt and cold and sharp after the sweat-warm fug of the bar — and it clears my head just enough to feel the full absurdity of it.
Me. Amber Whitlock, who arranges other people's happily-ever-afters for a living, striding down her own hometown street with an Alpha's hand wrapped around hers and two more falling into formation behind me like I'm a parade worth marching in.
A month ago I ate cereal standing over my own sink like a Victorian ghost. Look at you now, some giddy, tequila-warm little voice sings in the back of my skull.
Just look at you now. August falls into step on my right without a single word, close and warm, that sage-and-iris of his settling over me like he's decided sheer proximity is a winning strategy.
I drift left, fully expecting the space beside me to stay empty — and I startle, just a little, when Beckett drops into it, matching my stride, hat and all.
"Did you just walk off your own shift?" I ask him.
He shrugs, entirely unbothered. "Duty calls. I'm a volunteer."
"Volunteer my ass," August mutters from my other side. Then, lower, almost to himself: "...Cade's not coming, then?"
A small silence opens up between the four of us. Beckett's jaw works once, tight.
"Probably's got to hold the place down," he says. "It's a genuine madhouse in there tonight." A beat, careful. "He's got our location. He knows exactly where we'll end up."
I keep my eyes forward. I keep my face light, my steps loose and easy, like the answer doesn't matter to me in the slightest, like I haven't clocked every single word of it and filed it away.
But I have. I always do. I know, walking out into the salt-cool dark of the street with three Alphas orbiting me like I'm a thing worth the orbiting, exactly which of the four of them wants this — wants me — badly enough to walk clean off a shift and chase me down a street.
I know precisely which one is still standing frozen behind his bar, too — wanting me and running from it in the very same breath, too scared of something I can't yet see to close the distance between us.
Five years ago, I'd have waited. I'd have stood at the end of that aisle and waited for the men I loved to finally choose me, and I would have called all that waiting love.
Only this time, I won't be the one waiting for the cards to fall in my favor....