Chapter 21 Jett #2
“From cooking accidents,” I add, brushing past to check the vegetables. “We protect you from everything. Unfortunately, that includes dinner-related injuries.”
The vegetables are a disaster. Half are soggy, the other half could be used as ammunition. I have no idea how they managed both, but here we are.
Cassian is practically glued to Sharon, convinced she’s seconds from tripping over air and ending up in the ICU. He looks one deep breath away from swaddling her in bubble wrap.
Pine is still torturing the rice. Flood it. Drain it. Flood it again. Dump it again. It’s like watching someone baptize a hostage for confession.
And me? I’m staring at all of it, wondering how a simple meal turned into the apocalypse.
Sharon picks up a knife, holds it wrong, and my blood pressure spikes. I catch her hand before she turns dinner prep into a medical emergency.
“Jesus, Sharon. Aim the sharp part away from your body. Basic survival.”
She laughs like this is all comedy. “I’m fine, Jett.”
“Sure. And I’m a zen master.”
Cassian crowds in even closer, hovering like an anxious golden retriever. Sharon bumps him with her hip.
“Cass, I can stand without you monitoring every molecule around me.”
“I’m not monitoring,” he insists. “I’m ensuring stability.”
“You’re hovering,” I tell him. “And it’s weird.”
“I’m being responsible,” he argues, which is exactly the kind of thing someone being weird would say.
Pine drains the rice again. It makes a sad, wet slap in the sink.
He looks at me, defeated. “I think I killed it.”
“It was never alive, Pine.”
The kitchen smells like a fucking circus, Xavier’s voice pops back into my head. Something about how courting an omega can scramble an alpha’s instincts, knock sense right out of them, make everything go sideways.
At the time, I told him he was full of shit.
Now… yeah. Maybe not.
By the time dinner should be ready, the chicken is overcooked because Cassian got distracted by a work email and forgot to reset the timer.
The rice is overcooked again because Pine was so focused on making sure Sharon didn't burn herself on the pot that he forgot to drain it properly the second time.
The vegetables are a mushy mess because nobody was paying attention to anything except Sharon.
"So," I say after a long moment of silence. "Anyone want pizza?"
“I’m so fucking hungry right now, that I can eat anything,” Cassian says immediately, looking relieved.
"We have failed," Pine announces, leaning back against the counter.
"On the bright side," Sharon offers, hopping down from the bar stool and moving toward us, "at least nothing actually caught fire."
"The night's still young," I mutter, pulling out my phone to order pizza from the place downtown. "We could still burn down the house if we tried."
Even I end up laughing at my non attempt at a joke.
We end up on the couch with a box of pepperoni pizza and another bottle of wine. Sharon is sitting between us like she belongs there. Like this is exactly where she's supposed to be. Like she fits into our lives the way we always knew she would once she showed up.
"So that was the most chaotic dinner preparation I've ever witnessed," Sharon says, taking another bite of pizza.
She's pulled her legs up underneath her, tucked against Cassian's side while I'm on her other side.
Pine is in the armchair across from us, watching us with that intense look he gets when he's thinking about something important.
"And I once saw my mom try to cook Thanksgiving dinner while wearing roller skates because she was practicing for some kind of sport that she only lasted one day doing. "
"Why was she wearing roller skates?" Pine asks.
"She was practicing for something," Sharon shrugs. “You guys are giving her a serious run for her money when it comes to chaos in the kitchen.”
After pizza, Sharon suggests chess. Apparently, Pine has a board somewhere in the house, and she's curious about whether we play. She's also looking at us with that expression that suggests she knows something we don't know yet.
"I play a little," I say.
Which is technically true. I play a little in the same way that I'm a little good at my job. Which is to say, I'm really good at it. I'm the kind of good at chess where I've beaten basically everyone I know.
Or I thought I was.
We set up the board on the coffee table.
Sharon sits across from me on the couch while Cassian and Pine settle in on either side to watch.
I've got this serious expression on my face like I'm about to go into battle.
Chess is war. Chess is strategy. Chess is the place where I get to prove that my brain is good for something besides performing stunts.
"First game," I announce, stretching my fingers. "I'm black. You're white."
I think I'm going to destroy her. I'm confident. I'm cocky. I'm absolutely certain I'm about to have an easy win.
Forty minutes later, I'm staring at the board in disbelief as Sharon moves her knight into a position I didn't see coming. I've been maneuvered into checkmate, and I didn't even realize it was happening until it was too late.
"What?" I say. "That's not possible."
"You're in checkmate," Sharon says sweetly, reaching over and tapping my king. "See? Your king has no legal moves that would get it out of check. I've trapped you. You lose. I win. Better luck next time."
"One game proves nothing," Cassian says, but he's trying very hard not to laugh at my expression. "You could have just gotten lucky. Jett probably wasn't paying attention."
"I was," I protest.
"Okay, let's play," Sharon says, already resetting the board with practiced ease.
Cassian is white this time. He's cocky about it too, talking about how chess is all strategy and he's very strategic because he's a firefighter and firefighters have to be strategic in order to save lives and not die in fires.
Thirty-five minutes later, Sharon checkmates him too.
"Best of three," Pine says, settling down for his game with intensity. "I'm going to prove that at least one of us can actually play."
Sharon destroys him in twenty-seven minutes.
"How are you doing this?" I demand as Sharon resets the board for the third time. "Who taught you to play chess like some kind of grandmaster?"
"My dad," she says quietly. "Before he left, and everything got complicated."
"You're basically a genius," Cassian says, sounding both impressed and slightly traumatized. "Sharon, you've destroyed all three of us."
"This isn't competition anymore," I correct.
We play another three games. Sharon wins all of them without any effort. By the fourth game, I'm not even trying to win anymore because it's become apparent that Sharon is operating on a completely different level than we are.
"Okay, I have a question," Pine says during the fifth game. "Are you letting us win sometimes, or are you always this good?"
"I'm always this good," Sharon says, moving her bishop with precision that suggests she's calculated at least ten moves in advance. "But I could let you win if you want…”
“Come on, we’re not that sensitive. We just need to try harder!” Cassian says.
By the time we're done playing chess, it's late. The clock on the wall reads eleven thirty, and Sharon keeps yawning. Her eyes are getting droopy. She's leaning against me like I'm a comfortable piece of furniture that happens to smell like cedar and gunpowder.
"You should probably stay over," I say. "It's late. You're tired. We have beds."
"If you want," Cassian says carefully, leaning forward. "We don't want to push you into anything you're not ready for. But we have beds. We have space. We have blankets. We can keep you safe."
Sharon considers this for a long moment. I can see her working through it in her head, weighing the options and the implications.
"Okay," she says finally. "But normal staying over. No weird alpha stuff. Just sleep."
"Just sleep," I agree, even though my alpha brain is definitely having thoughts about her in my bed and her scent mixed with mine.
I show her to my room at the end of the hallway. Pine's room is down the opposite direction. Cassian's is on the other side of the house. My room is not fancy, but it's clean and organized in the way that comes from having a mother who drilled that into you.
"This is nice," Sharon says, looking around at my room.
The walls are covered in posters of bands I like and some abstract art I picked up over the years at various venues and festivals.
There's a bookshelf full of books that I actually read, not just for show.
There's a guitar in the corner that I play when I'm thinking.
The bed is big and comfortable and smells like me.
"You can wear something to sleep in," I say, pulling out a t-shirt from my drawer. It's soft and worn from years of use, and it will probably fall halfway down her body. I want her swimming in my clothes. I want her to smell like me.
She changes in the bathroom. When she comes back out, she's wearing my shirt and nothing else visible, and I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that she's basically naked under my shirt except for underwear.
Trying very hard not to think about how that would feel.
How she would feel against me without any barriers between us.
Cassian and Pine arrive as she's getting into bed.
This is apparently the plan we've collectively agreed on.
The three of us sleeping in my room. Which makes sense from a pack protection standpoint, except it's also torture.
The kind of torture where I get to have her close but I can't actually do anything about it.
"This is nice," Sharon says, settling into the pillows. "This feels safe. This feels like what being part of a pack is supposed to feel like."
Cassian gets on one side of her, Pine on the other. I'm on the end of the bed, which is strategic because if I was any closer, I would do something stupid like kiss her or let my hands wander to places they shouldn't go.
We fall asleep like that. Sharon safely surrounded by three alphas who would literally throw themselves in front of a moving train if it meant keeping her safe. Sharon nestled between us like she belongs there. Sharon's scent mixing with ours until we all smell like pack.
And that's when things get really complicated.
Because now I know what it feels like to have her in my bed.
Now I know what her scent smells like when she's completely relaxed and trusting.
Now I know that she feels safe with us. Now I know that going back to not having her in my bed is going to be impossible.
But we're not there yet. For now, we're just three alphas protecting an omega. Just pack watching over its own. Just the beginning of something that's going to change all of our lives forever.
I fall asleep with her scent in my lungs and a smile on my face that I can't quite make disappear. She's here. She's ours. And we're not letting her go.
In the morning, we'll figure out what comes next. But for tonight, we've got her. We've got this. We've got each other.
And that's more than enough.