Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
CARYS
It takes me two more days to be willing to talk to Billie about everything.
The scratches along my back have faded, the worst of them now only pink welts.
Rhett’s bonding bite is scabbed over, too, healing just as quickly as Paxton’s did.
The shop finally hits a small lull, and I have the chance to actually catch up on all of the administrative stuff that’s been pushed to the back burner since the middle of December.
I process Billie’s paycheck, the last hours she worked before going to California, but I don’t deactivate her profile in the software.
A whole storm of conflict twists my stomach when I exit out of the program.
I flip the sign to closed, lower the light in the front room, and then hide in the back, working on inventory and deep cleaning while the pre-game plays on my phone. It’s not until I get a text from Billie that I finally gather my courage and walk the four blocks to my apartment.
Ordered Greek.
Billie’s perched on the sofa, her plate of food mostly empty on the coffee table, and she’s slowly sifting through a book she hadn’t had this morning.
She glances up as I cross to the kitchen, dropping my bag on the counter but ignoring the food.
Nerves swell up in me fast enough to rob me of my appetite and make my hands tremble.
“I have a trip to Prague in June,” Billie says after a long stretch of silence. “Would you want to go with me?”
June’s peak wedding season, so I should say no. Instead, I slowly turn to her and frown.
“Just you?”
She nods, her eyes flinty with resolve as she stands and closes the distance between us.
“It’s for two weeks, but I know weddings are busy during the summer. You could come for part of it and then fly back if you have a big order that needs to get delivered.”
June’s also the off-season for the team. “What about…”
I trail off. I haven’t said his name around her. Neither has she.
She traces my lips, and then my jaw, her eyes catching on the bond mark.
“They don’t need to know. Secret, remember?”
My stomach drops all the way to the floor.
“You’re going to keep all of this a secret for six months?” I can’t keep the desperate disbelief out of my voice
Her lips thin, but she doesn’t drop her hand, slowly lowering it until it traces the neckline of my shirt. My thighs clench, and my scent surrounds us, but I try to ignore it.
She says, “As long as I want, yes. I don’t want anybody to know yet.”
“Why?”
She shrugs, her eyes shuttering. “I’m not ready to talk about everything yet. I need more time to figure out what I want to do with it all.”
Ollie’s words bounce around in my mind, and I slowly breathe in, trying to find my courage.
“More time? Isn’t this proof of you having made a choice?
” I grab her hand before she can run her palm over my nipples.
My pussy protests as her touch disappears, but I can’t be distracted right now.
“It’s not like they don’t feel every time my body reacts to you, each time your lips or hands are pulling pleasure from me. ”
She sighs. “I don’t know.”
I take her in, trying to figure out what exactly is going on in her head. The Billie I knew last year, that stepped in and helped me when I was drowning in too much work, would never string Paxton along like this. Maybe she isn’t doing it to string him along?
“You’re scared,” I whisper, making it a statement rather than a question.
She pulls back, and I drop her hand. “I just don’t want to talk to him yet. And it’s not like he’s reached out since Christmas, either. What if I’m not the only one not ready?”
“You’re wrong,” I say. “He’s been hoping every single day you’ll call him.”
She only crosses her arms. All of the words just rush out of me, inelegant and disorganized.
“Paxton loves you,” I say. “He’s spent nearly a month in complete misery, trying to give you the space you asked for.
We’ve been waiting for you, wanting to talk about what all of this might mean for the future.
And then you came back last week, and I was just so grateful you were here again.
I didn’t fight back on you wanting to stay out of sight.
I switched my clothes and washed my hair, making sure none of your scent was on me when he saw me. ”
I suck in a breath. “But I can’t do that for six months while you sort out whatever fear has you so convinced we don’t want you or…
or whatever it is that has you frozen in the headlights, too scared to admit you want me outside of this apartment.
I know Paxton and I were never supposed to…
to end up anything like this. But I can’t change what happened, Billie. ”
She takes a step back, grabbing the counter.
I continue on. “All I can do is decide what kind of future to build. And I want to build one with you in it. As my friend, as my partner, as someone part of my… my pack. I want a chance to be in a room with Paxton without both of us drowning in guilt and muddy waters. I want to be able to be in that arena around both of them and not have to panic that someone might see. I’m tired of hiding, of keeping things secret. ”
“You kept Rhett a secret,” she says, her eyes growing desperate. “Why can’t we do the same for right now? Until everything settles a bit more. Until all-star break.”
I shake my head. “Nothing is going to settle unless the three of us can talk everything out. And I can’t live another month like this.
” I gesture at the apartment, at her. “I can’t spend nights here with you when they both can feel me getting off and then look them in the eye and say nothing is happening.
You’re asking me to lie in their faces. You’re asking me to destroy a foundation that’s barely been set, that already is shifting because of my heat happening at the exact wrong time and place. ”
I try and calm my racing heart.
“He knew for two months and didn’t tell me,” she whispers.
“I know. And I know that feels like a betrayal. But he did it because he loves you. It didn’t change anything for him, not with you or your relationship.
” She swallows, tears lining her eyes. “I never would have expected him to open up your relationship. I still don’t, Billie.
If you decide you want him alone and not a pack, we’ll never talk to each other again.
Rhett and I will move to… to Norway if that’s what it takes. ”
“How can I know it’s me he wants if you’re his scent match? If he kisses me, how do I know it’s not you he wants instead?”
The questions are a blow to the gut. Is… does she think he won’t want her because she’s not scent matched with him? After everything she’s had to have felt from him in the last three weeks, everything I just admitted?
“When I kiss you, do you worry I’m thinking of Rhett?”
Her eyes widen. “Of course not.”
“Why? He’s my scent match.”
Her nostrils flare, indignation sparking in her gaze. “Because we aren’t the same person.”
I nod.
“Neither are you and I, Billie,” I whisper.
The silence falls like a sheet around us, too thick to cut through. A hundred different emotions flash across her face, her eyes growing desperate while fear tightens her entire body until I’m convinced she’s about to run. I lick my lips.
“When they get back tomorrow,” I whisper, “I need to be able to tell them. That you’re back, that we’ve slept together multiple times, that something… that maybe we’re building a pack of four.”
There’s an endless moment of waiting, of her eyes searching mine, of her facing down whatever insecurity is riding her hard right now. And then the moment passes.
“No.”
The word sinks through me, ripping open my chest. I struggle to breathe, to keep enough of the emotions locked away so I can make it out of here and to Rhett’s place. I swallow, nod, and then order a rideshare on my phone.
“Okay,” I whisper, my voice shaking with the effort of holding everything back.
My scent swirls around me, heartbreak turning it acidic.
I grab the mini backpack that has an extra set of clothes and sling it over my shoulder along with the purse I used today.
I don’t say another word, terrified of what might actually come up, and leave the apartment.
She doesn’t follow me, doesn’t text me. When the rideshare finally gets to Rhett’s place, I crawl into Paxton’s bed instead.
PAXTON
Timber drops into the seat next to me on the team’s plane, his eyes focused on his phone.
I don’t pull my head off the window, my hands already swelling from the punches I threw late in the third period.
Rhett had managed to keep his cool as Carys’s heartbreak ripped through the bond, but her fear and sadness and grief locked my muscles.
Maybe I’d have held it together better if I hadn’t also felt Billie.
Her emotions were more messy, almost the exact mirror of when she left in December.
I’d instigated a fight with only three minutes left in the game just to distract myself from everything going on. I’d gotten a five minute major.
I’d dropped into the temporary locker and just shook out all of the emotions, crying and trembling and dry heaving, ignoring entirely that Rhett had followed me with a terse instruction from Ares.
When I’d finally managed to breathe without wanting to throw up, I’d asked him what was happening, and he’d admitted that Billie was back.
That she’d been back for nearly a week, staying at Carys’s place.
His best guess was that they were fighting.
The rest of the team walked in just as I laid the first punch into him.
Ares hadn’t intervened, content to let the two of us work it out, but Miles wasn’t down for that.
It had taken three of the guys to pull me off my brother.
My knuckles were busted and my lip was bleeding. Rhett’s nose was broken.
Timber sighs and tilts his head back.
“You scent matched with Carys,” he says.
I frown. “How do you know that?”
“You’ve been a mess since her heat,” he says. He gestures toward my hand. “And I noticed that. Betas can’t lay a claiming bite.”
I sigh and shrug.
“Ollie isn’t the first scent match I’ve had. But it… didn’t end well,” he says after a bit, watching the rest of the team load into the plane. “Carys, Ares, Marilyn, the entire team at the time helped me put my life back together when it all blew up, when I learned the truth about her.”
Rhett locks his gaze with me, no apology or regret in his face at all. No, it’s just the look of an Alpha who was doing what he thought was best for his Omega. I can’t even fault him for it. Timber takes in the loaded looks.
“It’s not good to hold stuff in,” he says. “You need to let it out before it twists you up inside and it comes out sideways.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Tell me what happened,” he says. “I’ll probably be able to convince Ares to not bench you the rest of the month.”
With a sigh, I do. It takes most of the flight back to Nashville to tell the entire story. When we land, he blows out a breath and then nods. He disappears into the rest of the milling team without a word.