Chapter 5
Chapter Five
CARYS
I’m knee deep in sunflowers and lilies, my arms scratched to high heaven from ruscus and my fingers bleeding from floral wire, when the soft bells above my shop’s front door chime.
I pause, my hands buried in the stems I’ve already tied together.
Maybe it’s just the mail getting delivered or those vases I sourced for the welcome party on Friday.
A quick signature and then back to all of this mess.
“Hello?” a feminine voice asks.
Damn it.
I tip my head back and breathe carefully through my nose. I’ve already had two breakdowns because of the last minute adjustments to this bride’s order for tomorrow. I cannot afford a third right now.
I raise my voice, trying to add a fraction of pep I don’t feel right now, and say, “I’ll be with you in just a minute.”
With more expedience than artistry, I attach the last section of greenery to the wreath and then drop the floral wire to the table before I can manage to pull even more blood.
It takes me a minute to dig out the first aid kit my dad’s made me keep back here when he’s gone on road games and then another to get the various punctures covered.
Bleeding on customers is not a good business practice.
Then, I readjust my claw clip and breathe deeply, letting my eyes flutter shut for a heartbeat.
That calm place is hidden under too many layers of stress and exhaustion at the moment, but I plaster a happy-yet-grateful smile on my face anyway.
My strides are mostly confident as I head into the small, cozy front room of the shop.
Billie stands beside the small table I use for client meetings, her arms crossed, her gaze taking in the entire room even as she frowns.
She’s dressed in jeans and a dark brown sweater.
The small bit of makeup she wears just makes her blue eyes look like ice, the perfect contrast to her black hair that falls in a straight waterfall down her back.
The sight has an odd pressure forming under my sternum, like I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
I smooth down my apron to try and dispel it.
Her gaze shoots to me. There’s an awkward half-minute where I contemplate shrinking into the walls as guilt rushes through me.
That lunch date I promised nearly a week ago hasn’t happened.
The last two texts she sent have gone unanswered, swallowed in the tide of overwhelming workload that this particular event has become.
I’ve done a mess of a job getting her settled in with the team.
“Hi,” I manage, my voice cracking.
There’s another awkward lull of silence that has me wanting to crawl out of my skin. Words tumble out as I try to break the quiet.
“Oh my God, I swear I’m not ghosting you. This client just decided to add an entire wedding’s worth of flowers to her after party and so I’ve been in complete scramble mode for the last several days trying to get it all put together.”
My scent spikes with my nerves, and I grimace. I grab the small bottle of scent-blocking lotion I keep tucked in the chest of drawers and slowly apply it to my arms and neck.
“Paxton told me Ares mentioned that you were really busy this week,” Billie says. She tucks her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, cataloguing the shop again. “I was curious if you wanted to get drinks tonight.”
I pick at a few of the scratches on my arms and drop the lotion back out of sight.
“That sounds fun, but I’ve still got, like, forty feet of garland to make and then I have to prep everything for getting picked up by the event planner tomorrow morning.
I’m stuck here for another few hours at least.”
Probably more like five or six. It’s going to be the third fifteen hour day I’ve had to put in this week. Billie nods. She drops her small designer bag on the café table and drapes her hair over her shoulder.
“How can I help?”
Relief floods me before I have a chance to quell it. She’s asking to be polite, but there’s a game tonight and it’s already almost five. Puck drop is in a little under two hours.
“There’s a game tonight. You don’t have to stay holed up here with me.”
Billie shrugs and smiles again. “An away game. I can order us some dinner and stream the game on my phone.”
Tension twists my stomach. “Are you sure? You really don’t have to ruin your night.”
Billie’s smile this time has an edge to it. “To be totally honest, I’d rather be here than alone in a rented apartment that still doesn’t have a couch in it.”
I frown. Her furniture was due to arrive yesterday.
“They pushed back delivery again?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yep. There was snowfall in the Rockies that delayed everything by a few days apparently. Hopefully it gets here by Monday, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Just like the first time we hung out, Billie is quiet with a sly humor that has me smiling so wide my mouth hurts even more than my back. While I’m still trying to catch my breath, she pulls another bucket full of lilies from the cooler.
“I cannot believe you convinced your entire sorority to dress up as ducks for the big Halloween party on campus,” I say, wrapping wire around another grouping of sunflowers before adjusting the spread of ruscus below them.
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “That wasn’t even the best part. Our president went as a text message cursing autocorrect.”
I downright cackle. “That is way better than anything I’ve ever managed to come up with.”
“It was definitely one of my better ideas,” she says. “Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I try to do something even if Paxton isn’t home.”
“Are you doing something this year?” I ask.
It’s only a couple days away. “We could go out if you want. I have an afternoon event delivery but then could do something. I could probably put together some kind of costume by then.” Not that I have any good ideas or time to go shopping for one, but I’ll throw some kind of vibe together for the sake of helping Billie feel welcomed here.
I spin open one of the lilies and then frown.
“Wait. The team is at home that night, aren’t they? ”
Billie nods before quietly setting the full bucket of lilies beside me. She touches her phone’s screen and unmutes the pre-game show we’ve been casually watching.
“Wow. They really don’t have much nice to say about the Scorpions, do they?”
“Not for a while,” I admit.
Billie flicks her hair over her shoulder, her lips flattening into a thin line. Her voice is hard as she says, “It’s only the end of October. They haven’t even played a full month. It’s not like the season is entirely lost at this point. They could at least give the guys the benefit of the doubt.”
My chuckle is dry, my smile fading. “How would they get all the viewer traffic if they said something nuanced?”
“Gross,” she mutters.
While I add the last bit of flowers to this portion of the garland, she wordlessly cleans up the little pieces of leaves littering the work table, dumping them into one of the large compost bins.
Then she helps me move the finished piece to the only cooler that has any space left, holding the doors open while I try to keep anything from getting damaged.
“Are you doing anything besides the game then?” I ask, prepping to start the last of the garlands. Fifteen more feet and then I can finally collapse into my bed.
“Rhett mentioned a party happening after the game. I think it’s one of his music friends,” Billie says. “We’re probably going to go to that since they have an off day the next day. Paxton will refuse to dress up, but I’ll probably do something simple.”
My stomach flutters at her casual mention of Rhett…
again. It’s even worse than when Timber had mentioned him.
Since my literal run-in with him last week, my entire body has been a mess.
Perfuming at the worst times, thoughts derailing when I’m trying to focus.
I’ve never been so… inside my own body in my life.
And that lemongrass scent of his? It’s haunted my dreams. I’ve woken up more than once from the wildest sex fantasies I’ve ever experienced.
Even now, my orchid scent surrounds me, breaking through the lotion and billowing out like the world’s worst snitch.
Thank all the stars that Billie is a Beta and won’t actually realize just how unruly my body is being right now.
Is this what other Omegas feel when they’re near an Alpha?
Because I don’t think I can handle it, honestly.
Smelling all of the different scents on Dad after practice has never bothered me like this.
Maybe my heat is finally getting close? Nerves crowd my throat just at the thought.
I need to come up with some kind of plan for when I actually have one.
The idea of calling my dad to help get me somewhere safe is…
mortifying. Crap. Is there even somewhere to go here?
The sorority had a safe space in the big house.
Maybe I could just hunker down at my apartment?
“Carys?” Billie says my name like it’s not the first time.
I swallow all the thoughts and sensations. My cheeks flush as I look over at her. “Sorry. Just got…”
I trail off, not even sure what to say. A second hangout is definitely not the time to admit to having wild fantasies about a player on your dad’s hockey team.
A player who happens to be the soon-to-be brother-in-law of the woman you’re trying to become friends with.
I’m sure that will make her super comfortable around me and want to hang out more.
Ignoring the shaking of my hands, I start a new grouping of ruscus, stripping a stem that’s in the way and dropping it inelegantly to the ground.
“So do you want to?”
“Want to what?” My flush gets hotter even as I grimace.
Billie grabs the last of the ruscus left in the bucket and hands it to me before taking the empty bucket back to the cooler. “Go to whatever this Halloween party is.”
I shake off all the overwhelming thoughts. “Oh, sure!”
She refills the bucket as she smiles. “You want to dress up with me? Paxton will refuse especially since we’ll be going straight from the game.”
“If it’s something simple!” I say, trying to keep a bit more upbeat to hide the swirling mess of…
of everything going on under my skin. “I don’t think I’ll have time to put together anything intricate.
I have another wedding after this one for delivery Saturday and then the event on Halloween itself. ”
Billie nods. “I can come up with something for us if you’re all right with that.”
Her phone pings with a notification, the noise temporarily silencing the commentary. She purses her lips as she swipes it away.
“That’s dinner finally. You want to take a break for a bit? We can watch the first period and then get back to it.”
I drop the wire onto the work table and stretch my neck. “A break sounds great.”
Her shoulder brushes mine as we head to the front of my shop to get the delivery order.
Billie adjusts her hair, and a wall of sweet, almost unnoticeable, peach fills my nostrils.
My stomach clenches, and my chest flutters.
My scent swirls around me, blending with the peach.
Billie doesn’t notice, crossing to the door and politely taking the delivery order we’d put in from a nearby Italian restaurant.
“Text me your sizes, and I’ll make sure I have it all together by the game,” she says.
I drop into one of the chairs I normally use for client meetings, my smile not as faked as before. “I can do that!”