Chapter 8
Coping Strategies
JOHANNA
Faint? No. I don’t faint, nor do I lose consciousness at any point.
My awareness of my surroundings fades as key questions thunder through me.
What was Max thinking?
Why Dan?
Why didn’t Max tell me?
Someone presses a cold compress against my forehead and tucks a warm blanket around me. Both my hands are held tight to either side as I lie on a sofa. Overlapping voices call my name and worriedly discuss whether to get me a drink or call an ambulance.
“No ambulance.” I blink, and four worried faces snap into focus.
Anamaria and Bebe hold my hands. Caity has the compress. Corin’s behind me with the blanket, hands resting lightly on my shoulders.
“You left us,” Caity says.
“It was a surprise.” Heat floods my cheeks. I stand, pulling my hands away to cross them over my chest and push off the blanket. “When?”
“The first meeting is set for Tuesday.” Corin scoops up the blanket, folds it in quarters, and lays it over the back of the sofa. “It’s on your work calendar.”
“No, when did Max make the change?” My voice stays even, until I break a little and a whiny add-on slips out: “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I don’t know just when.” Corin sighs and runs a hand through his hair, leaving runnels that my fingers ache to smooth. “He talked to the lawyer the first week, signed documents the second, and only then told me what he wanted.”
After which pain and the need for ever-stronger medication reduced Max’s periods of lucidity, and all we could do was watch and keep upping his meds.
He’d had time to talk to me, maybe not much, but some, and he’d let it slip.
He was dying, and I forgave him for dealing with things as best he could.
Nevertheless, his silence about these changes hurt.
He could have warned me! I wouldn’t have tried to change his mind. Maybe asked for his reasons, or—too late now.
“Is this going to be a problem?” Corin asks as he returns to his place at the far end of the table.
“No.” I huddle against the back of the sofa. “Not unless he makes it one.”
“Aunty Jo, who is this guy?” Anamaria asks. “Who was he to Uncle Max? If we’re going to have to deal with him, it would help to know something about him.”
“I don’t know who or what he is now,” I reply.
“A partner in a small, local accounting firm with a reputation for painstaking accuracy.” Corin ticks off on his fingers. “Alpha. Lives in Cleaveland Heights. Unmarried, unmated, and no pack—though he does have children, grown and older than Anamaria, a daughter and son, twins, both betas.”
All very respectable. He’s done well. Not at Max’s level, but few can match that.
“He’s planning to attend the meeting Tuesday,” Caity adds. “I asked him after the memorial service.”
“That’s all nice and good, but …” Anamaria leans forward to lay a hand over mine, just as Max used to do. “Who is he to you? Or who was he?”
“It’s a common story.” I shrug, looking away but not taking my hand from under her stroking fingers.
“Beta seeking pack meets omega and starts dating, then separately meets alpha and does the same. Eventually introduces them in the hopes they’ll like each other.
They start as friends and seem to get along on three-way dates, but when they go on a few dates on their own, something goes wrong.
Alpha demands beta choose between him and omega.
Beta declines. Alpha says not choosing is a choice.
Alpha storms away. Beta and omega live happy ever after, mostly, until it ends. ”
A bare bones story, delivered in a steady tone. My face stays dry, though my cheeks and neck flush.
“That must’ve hurt.” Anamaria keeps stroking my hand.
“I didn’t know you wanted a pack,” Caity says, then frowns. “Do you know what went wrong between them?”
“Only a guess.” Twisting my hand, I grasp Anamaria’s, the warmth grounding. “That was around when Max realized not liking sex was just who he was, not some passing trend.”
“He told me all about the ways people might react when I was figuring out I was asexual too.” Bebe rolls her eyes. “Said that people would try to blame me, or think I just needed one bout of good mattress pounding to see the light, but if they had a problem with my lack of desire, it was on them.”
“He talked to me too, particularly after I presented as an omega.” Anamaria smiles, something akin to Max’s glorious warmth and welcome beaming from her.
“He wanted to make sure I knew all my options about heats and hormones and desire, what can be adjusted and what can’t—yet—and didn’t trust the school to do a good job, especially after Mom started . .. you know.”
“I remember.”
They’d been so cute, Max snuggling with each of the girls at least once a week in the living room or back porch throughout their teenage years, regardless of when or how they presented.
Though I’d found him especially appealing when he and Anamaria cuddled together, talking intensely despite the glares from Anamaria’s mother, who never managed to hide her envy or stop dropping sharp hints about how Anamaria fit any and every negative omega stereotype and needed to watch her language, clothes, makeup—anything she could pick at.
I hated Corin’s ex-wife for that more than I’d ever hated Dan. I’d walked around with a sore spot in my heart for a long time after the divorce, though Max did his best to keep me distracted.
“Dan didn’t say anything about why he took against Max back then, but he came from a mostly beta family.
I don’t think he wanted to be tied to an omega who didn’t want him.
” I lean back in my chair. “As for Max, he seemed to like Dan, or I wouldn’t have asked them to try, but as far as I know, I’m the only one Max ever wanted to court or be courted by.
” A dry, crackling laugh escapes me. “He was too busy helping save omegas from their hormones.”
“You do yourself an injustice.” Corin rises, tapping his fingers against the back of his chair. “Max loved you, and that was enough for him.”
“And I loved him.” I stop there, though something about Corin’s expression brings to mind a conflicting statement: it wasn’t always enough for me.
Max figured out ways to balance being an omega uninterested in sex, while I faced the puzzle of deciding what I was willing to do to adjust to that.
I’d managed, but the process took longer than I liked to remember.
But that was a conversation I refused to have with the four of them all at once. Maybe if Anamaria or Bebe ever wanted to know more details, if it would help them deal with their lives and relationships, I might share—but one on one, at best.
As for confiding my coping strategies in Corin, that would lead us into uncharted waters. I’d helped the girls through the gaps in their sex ed classes, and he knew that, and he’d made arrangements to stay elsewhere whenever Max had a heat; otherwise, we’d never discussed intimate matters.
“I’ve barely seen Dan since then, but it’s water under the bridge.” Time to get the conversation back on track. “We’ll meet on Tuesday, as scheduled, and go from there.”
“The three of us are the only ones actually named in the trust documents.” Corin nods at me and Anamaria. “Max asked me, at the end, to include Dan, said his financial expertise might come in handy, and I honored that, but Max wouldn’t want you uncomfortable.”
“It’s not Dan that’s the problem.” I shake my head, wrapping my arms around my body. “I don’t even know him anymore.”
“Then why the shock?” Bebe gestures at the blanket.
I shake my head, shoulders hunching.
“Because Max didn’t tell her he was doing this,” Corin says, hand warm and comforting as he rubs my shoulder, his thumb brushing the side of my neck in a soft caress, “and now, she can’t ask why.”