6. hollis
hollis
The after-party has taken over the alumni lounge by the time I get Jude to the corner farthest from the doors.
Quiet is a generous word for it. There’s music coming from someone’s speaker, too many people laughing too hard, and half the swim team pretending they aren’t watching Bishop and me bring Jude in like we didn’t just buy him off a stage in front of half the school.
I take the end of the couch because it puts my back to the room and keeps Jude away from the easiest path through the crowd.
He sits near the corner with his hoodie pulled crooked from where Reece grabbed him, one knee bouncing so fast the movement makes my whole body hurt to look at.
He’s trying to be still and failing, and every Alpha instinct I have is roaring at me to fix it, wrap around him, cover him, hold until the shaking stops.
Bishop’s hand finds the small of my back before I can move. One firm press, right over my spine. Easy. Not yet. Let him come to you.
I turn the movement into reaching for a water bottle instead. There are a few left on the low table, wedged between empty plastic cups and a plate of cookies someone has been slowly destroying. I crack the seal on one and hold it out to Jude without leaning too far into his space.
“Drink?” I ask.
Jude looks at the bottle, then at my hand, then at my face. He reads people in pieces, so I keep my arm steady while he decides what to do with me. His fingers brush mine when he takes it, cold even through the plastic.
“Is this part of my prize package?”
His voice is dry, but the edges are still wrong.
“No,” I say. “If it were, there’d be a ribbon. Athletics loves a ribbon.”
The corner of his mouth almost moves. Almost. I get embarrassingly excited about it anyway and have to press my heel harder into the floor so I don’t lean closer like an idiot.
Bishop sits on my other side, close enough that his thigh presses against mine.
His hand slides into my lap and laces through my fingers with practiced ease, quiet enough no one else would make anything of it.
I squeeze back harder than I mean to, as he rubs his thumb over my knuckles until my grip loosens.
The room smells like beer, citrus mixer, old carpet, Alpha excitement, and too much cologne, but under all of it, close enough that my lungs keep wanting more, there’s Jude. Sea spray and grapefruit, sharp and bright, still tangled with fear and blockers.
He doesn’t react when my scent thickens. He watches Bishop’s thumb, my shoulders, the space we leave open on the couch. He watches the way Bishop touches me and the way I listen to it.
I’ve heard the rumors. Everyone has. Jude Morrison can’t scent anyone else and that the incident last year was because he didn’t know what his own body was doing.
Most of it is cruelty dressed up as campus gossip, but sitting beside him makes the truth harder and clearer than any version whispered in a locker room.
He’s reading everything except the thing I was born expecting Omegas to read first. Bishop’s knee presses into mine before I can stare too long, and I drag my attention back to the table. Jude takes a drink, swallows, then keeps the bottle in both hands like it gives him something to do.
“I’m going to pay you back,” he says.
Bishop answers before I can. “No, you’re not. The bid was covered. We got a donation from someone on the wrestling team, an Omega with enough money to buy the academy twice and make ballroom dancing a graduation requirement if he got bored.”
Jude stares at him for a second, then nods like that’s one more strange thing he doesn’t have the energy to unpack tonight. “I’ve heard rumors about Blair,” he mumbles.
We all have and I wasn’t surprised to find Blair sympathetic to our cause after he dropped twenty thousand on his now Alphas. He’s a spicy little Omega, but he apparently likes the underdog.
Bishop’s thumb keeps moving over my knuckles, Jude watching that instead of asking another question.
I want to ask if he’s really okay, which is useless because he obviously isn’t.
I want to ask if he hurts, if his shoulder hurts, if he wants food, if he wants to leave, if he wants me to stand in front of him until everyone in the room forgets he exists.
Bishop squeezes my fingers before any of it gets out of my mouth.
Jude takes another drink and lets the bottle rest against his thigh. “You mentioned I wasn’t on the schedule. I was holding the clipboard. You... triple checked?”
Bishop’s hand tightens around mine once. On the way over here, both my Beta and I explained that we didn’t actually expect him on the stage. “Yes. Your name wasn’t on the roster, the cue cards, the approved copy, or the order Marsh signed off on. Marsh was clear you weren’t part of the auction.”
The softness on Jude’s face disappears quickly enough that I feel it behind my ribs. I flex my fingers against Bishop’s, and he holds on.
“Reece made it seem like a change in the event. The announcer already had all the information about me and everything,” Jude says.
“I’m sorry,” Bishop sighs. “Coach called a meeting to see who’d be able to participate so we could raise money for our team.
Reece put your name in the ring but Coach immediately shut it down.
We thought he might try something, so we were watching.
We weren’t close enough to stop him from getting you onto the stage, and I’m sorry for that. ”
Jude looks at him carefully. Bishop doesn’t fill the silence with excuses, which is why Bishop is better at this than I am. If it were only me, I’d already be promising too much, talking too fast, offering everything I can think of until Jude climbed over the back of the couch to get away from me.
Jude’s thumb drags once over the label on the water bottle. “That was an expensive rescue.”
I shrug. “Worth it, though.”
His eyes flick to me. “Is dramatic in public a swim team requirement?”
“Only for captains and people who think open turns are optional.”
That gets him. It’s small, more air than laugh, but it’s there. Bishop’s thumb strokes over my knuckles again, slower this time, because he knows exactly what Jude almost smiling does to me.
Jude notices that too. His gaze drops to our hands, then to Bishop’s other hand resting near my back, ready to press if I get too eager.
“Is he always like this?” Jude asks, still looking at me.
“Usually worse,” Bishop says.
“I’m sitting right here,” I tell him.
“I know. I’m keeping you there.”
Jude looks at me properly then, and the attention is so sudden I have to hold still. He takes in my shoulders, my hands, my mouth, then the ridiculous way I’m trying to sit casually while every part of me is tuned to him.
“You’re very bad at pretending you’re calm.”
“I’m usually better.”
Bishop’s palm lands between my shoulder blades. “He once paced for twenty minutes because you laughed at something Nelson said near the pool.”
My head snaps toward him. “That was private.”
Jude’s mouth twitches. This time it’s closer to real, and I light up so fast I can feel Bishop’s hand press harder against my back.
“Breathe, babe,” he murmurs.
Jude’s eyes brighten with the first real amusement I’ve seen all night, and I’m so relieved I almost don’t care that it’s at my expense. Almost. “You’ve been watching me? Why? Is it because of... you know?” He gestures wildly, obviously referring to the incident last year.
A frown takes over my face. “Why would you think that? I really—” Bishop jabs me in the side and I sigh.
“I don’t really want to talk about swimming,” I say.
“Or the auction. Or Reece. Or any of it, unless you want to. I just want you to sit here and drink water and maybe keep insulting me if that helps.”
Jude goes still before a smile creeps onto his face. “Insulting you is very generous of me,” he says finally.
“I know.”
He takes another sip of water, and the bottle crinkles softly in his grip.
When he shifts, his knee brushes my thigh.
The contact is small enough that anyone else might miss it.
I don’t. My entire body clocks that single point of warmth like a starting signal, and Bishop’s fingers flex against my back before I can hold my breath too long.
“Hollis,” he warns softly.
“I’m fine.”
I’m not fine. But this moment is everything.
I grin before I can help it, too pleased by the fact that he’s talking to me to remember I’m supposed to be acting normal.
Bishop makes a low sound beside me, half warning and half fond, and I force myself to settle before I crowd Jude with how happy I am that he’s still here, still dry enough to cut at me, still letting his knee stay against my thigh.
His scent keeps pulling at me. Sea spray and grapefruit under the sour edge of fear, bright enough that every breath feels like taking him in deeper than I’m allowed. I know better than to trust that alone, especially since Jude isn’t answering it.
He sets the bottle on the table. “You’re really committed to the no touching thing.”
My voice comes out lower than I mean it to. “You haven’t asked me to.”
I see it in the quick flicker of his expression before he covers it with a scoff that doesn’t have any force behind it. “I didn’t realize there was paperwork.”
“There can be,” Bishop says. “Hollis loves instructions.”
I turn my head enough to glare at my Beta, even as my cheeks color with interest. “You are actively making me sound worse.”
Jude tracks the way I lean into Bishop a little, my purr trying to make its way out into the open. But I feel like that would be weird, because it wouldn’t just be for Bishop.
“You two are weird,” Jude says.
“Functionally,” I say, because our brand deserves defending.
That gets another small laugh, Jude’s gaze dipping to my lips. Everything in me wants to close the distance, but I wait, letting him decide what he wants to do with the space between us.
His fingers curl in the front of my shirt, and when Jude pulls, I go with him because not going would be insane, but I don’t take more than he gives. His mouth touches mine, pressure there and gone before he changes his mind.
Bishop’s mouth brushes my shoulder. “Breathe, babe.”
I drag in air, Jude’s fingers tightening in my shirt, his mouth parting against mine like that breath did something to him. I can’t hold the purr back after that. It starts low in my chest, soft at first, then deeper when Jude stays right there.
His hand slides from my shirt to my chest, palm flattening over my heartbeat.
I hold still while he feels the vibration under his fingers, his eyes closed and his mouth still close to mine.
Bishop’s hand stays warm against my spine, and the whole room narrows to Jude’s palm, Jude’s breath, Jude learning me through something other than scent.
The purr travels through his hand, through his bones, through the tiny space between us where touch has to ask permission first. Jude’s fingers spread over my chest, and his forehead tips against mine for half a second before he catches himself.
If the rumors about his scent really are true, I think I’ve found a way he can hear me.