4. Beck
Beck
Going back to Edison Wade’s house feels wrong without Andi.
Well, everything feels wrong without her. Terribly, debilitatingly, suffocatingly wrong.
I don’t think I’ve managed to take a full breath since we heard the news.
I feel like I’m one light breeze away from falling apart again.
Wind blows in through the open windows, swirling around in the space of Edison’s living room.
Shit.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry again, you stupid, stupid fuck.
I grip the mug of tea Edison made for me, he’s still a good host, despite the shell-shocked expression on his face, present from the moment he opened the door.
Chamomille. Just like her.
I’m not even drinking it really. I’m pushing off the inevitable moment when I eventually get to the bottom of the mug and the last little remnant of her I can still hold in my hands will be gone. I know I can always get up and make myself another cup, but that’s not the point.
I’m positioned the furthest away from the open window, probably so my acrid perfume isn’t blowing around in everyone’s faces.
Leo, being the angel he is, ran down to the pharmacy near our building and picked up a whole bunch of de-scenters for me.
Eli would’ve done it, but he’s been glued to my side since we heard the news.
I lather myself in the lotion and drown myself in the spray, but the burnt, twisted sweetness of my scent still leaks out occasionally.
This entire situation has left me a fucking mess. Infinitely worse than when I first presented as a male omega.
Back then, I always struggled with feeling way too many emotions about the stupidest little shit. Now I’m dealing with all these very real, fucking overwhelming feelings for something that’s killing all of us.
It’s obvious in the rigid way Eli is holding himself at my side, like every single muscle in his body is coiled tight, like a spring ready to explode, except there’s nothing to explode at because we’re all helpless in this situation.
He’s holding me tight against him, making sure to keep at least two points of contact with me at all times. Right now, the only part of me that doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall apart is the back of my neck, where his steady hand is pressing and trying to massage away the tension.
It makes me feel even more guilty. Because I know he’s just as affected by losing Andi like this, but here he is, helping me.
“I knew how much hate Gina had in her heart for me,” Edison rasps, breaking the tense silence of the room, running a tired hand through his hair. “But I didn’t think it was bad enough for her to do something like this.”
He looks absolutely distraught. There’s a heaviness to the lines in his face that weren’t present when we visited him only a few days ago. It’s aged him almost a decade.
One of the things that struck me when I saw him and Andi standing side by side was how similar their smiles are.
They both have the kind of smiles that completely transform their faces.
Some people only smile with their mouths, but the two of them smile with everything they have.
They’re bright, toothy grins that travel up their cheeks to their twinkling eyes.
With the amount of botox people in the entertainment industry use, those kinds of full-face smiles are rare.
There aren’t any smiles in sight now, though. Not on his face and probably not on Andi’s either.
All because of one terrible woman’s attempt at maintaining control.
“Why does she hate you so much?” I ask, clearing my throat and trying to steady my trembling voice.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Edison bites out, his tone gruff and frustrated.
Despite his designation, this is the first time I’ve seen any real sign of the dominance I’ve come to expect from alphas.
He’s been a remarkably easy-going guy so far.
I don’t know whether that’s because of his personality or because the forced chemical unbonding left long-lasting effects on his pheromones.
Probably a combination of both.
“I don’t know, not truly,” Edison says with a sigh, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I don’t think anyone but Gina knows the real answer. But... I have my theories.”
The tense silence in the room fills with heavy anticipation as we wait for him to collect his thoughts. I’m sure revisiting this chapter of his life, one that ended so terribly, is a difficult thing to do.
“Any insight you may have is incredibly invaluable,” Everett says, his jaw clenched.
“Yes.” Edison tries to take a deep, steadying breath, but it hitches at the end, and he lets out a quiet cough.
“Gina... has had a difficult life. But she wasn’t always like this.
We met at a party almost three decades ago.
She was on a first date with another man, a peer of mine—we’d worked on a few projects together.
I remember the limousine pulling up and just seeing the outline of her through the tinted windows, bouncing around with this vivacious, uncontainable life. ”
The description is so drastically different from the image of the bitter, vindictive woman I’ve had the displeasure of meeting that I don’t know what to do. It almost doesn’t feel real.
“She was twenty-one when we first met. I was nearly twice her age, but there was just something about her that drew me in like a moth to a flame. She’s always been incredibly sharp. Resourceful. Determined. Far more ambitious than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
Now that’s something that fits into the idea of Gina that I have in my head.
“She didn’t come from money, and she was the first person in her family to break into the entertainment industry.
When I met Gina, she had been signed to a modeling agency that had a reputation for being a front for matching pretty, young omegas with rich, powerful, ‘eligible’ alphas.
She’d been signed since she was sixteen, after she’d gone into preawakening, and as you can imagine, that requires parental consent. ”
“That’s... That’s basically human trafficking,” Cameron murmurs, his eyes wide.
“Yes, that’s what the agency was essentially a front for, and has since gotten them shut down.
But before suppressants were developed, many services matching omegas with alphas existed outside of the OCN, especially since it was much smaller back then.
This agency she was signed to was particularly predatory.
They made their models sign long multi-year contracts that were nearly impossible to get out of.
There was really only one way for her to break the contract. ”
Edison’s hand, covered by the corduroy quarter zip sweater, drifts up to the crook of his neck where his ruined bond mark sits.
“Three months after we’d met, right when her next heat came around, we bonded.
This sounds... foolish, in hindsight, but I was deeply in love.
At least with the person she showed me. I think...
” he lets out a small huff of laughter. “There will always be a part of me that feels that she was the love of my life. But I know now that it was all an illusion.”
His words wash over me and I can’t help but feel bad for him. Even if rushing into a bond like that wasn’t the smartest move, people do that sort of thing all the time. And the beautiful thing about a bond between an alpha and an omega is that it only helps those feelings grow stronger.
And Edison had all of that ripped away.
“I’ve always been the type to be consumed by my work, and at the time, I was...
lonely, and she wanted a ticket out of the contract and an opportunity to make a name for herself.
I was well into my career when I met her, and she knew how much I cared for her,” Edison continues.
“I thought I was saving her. But I quickly discovered that bonded life to Gina was not all I’d hoped it would be. ”
His gaze drifts across the space, from the kitchen to the view out the windows, showcasing the downtown LA skyline. But I don’t think he’s really seeing it. He’s definitely not seeing us, that’s for sure.
“It became obvious that the full-of-life, bubbly, animated version of her was not who she was all the time. She’d go through emotional cycles.
High highs, but very, very low lows. The three months we spent together before we bonded wasn’t enough time for me to get a full picture of just how deep her mood changes went.
I tried to get her help, but no matter how many people she saw, they never stuck. ”
“So she showed signs of mental illness even before Andi was born,” Everett murmurs softly.
“Yes,” Edison nods. “And they were only magnified as she grew more famous. I helped her land her role on The Real Omegas of Beverly Hills—I knew the original show runners. She had a captivating personality and was quick to cement herself as the main character, but she was always hungry for more. I think that’s when tension really started to form between us, when no matter what she did, what events we’d go to, she’d always be recognized as Edison Wade’s bondmate.
I think that’s when our age difference, her youth, really reared its head.
She wasn’t satisfied with living the housewife sort of lifestyle.
She wanted to party, which was fine, I didn’t have issues with that.
What was... problematic, was the way she pretended like we weren’t even bonded—she’d even cover her bondmarks with makeup when she went out. ”
“She cheated on you?” Eli grunts.
“Yes,” Edison winces, reaching up again and squeezing his shoulder.
“Serially. Some flings, some affairs. I learned this around when Andi was five or so, but I don’t think there was a period outside of the first honeymoon months when she wasn’t pursuing other alphas.
I was... naive. I ignored obvious signs that she wasn’t being faithful for far too long because I desperately wanted to keep the illusion of a happy family. ”
“Wait... how could she do that? She was bonded to you!” I shout in confusion.
I’ve never been bonded, but from the way I’ve heard it described, even the thought of being with another person other than your bondmate is inconceivable.
I’ve heard that some alphas can’t even get it up for anyone other than their bondmate.
“Are you asking how she could from an emotional perspective or a biological one?” Edison asks, his dark eyes—so similar to Andi’s—landing on me.
“Either. Both.”
“From an emotional perspective... I’m sure she told herself it was because I was gone so much. Truly, I was. I was terribly busy on my projects, and we’d sometimes go days without speaking to each other because I’d come home late and by the time I woke up, she was busy with her show.”
“Doesn’t excuse her cheating on you,” Cameron bites out, his expression stormy. He’s been careful to keep his emotions in check until now.
Edison just shrugs, waving a hand in the air like his bondmate desecrating their connection wasn’t that big of a deal.
“You boys don’t need to flatter me,” Edison says with a small huff. “I already approve of you all and Andi being together.”
His statement is so absurd that I let out a snort of laughter.
It’s so similar to something Andi would say, something silly about how we don’t need to pretend to care for her. It’s remarkable how there are still similarities in their personalities, even though she was primarily raised by her mother.
“Mr. Wade—”
“Please, call me Edison,” he says, interrupting me. “Might as well, considering I’m airing out all my dirty laundry, right?”
“Edison,” I say with a shake of my head.
“I think I can speak for all of us when we say that we’re not flattering you.
This is just how we feel. You don’t need to convince us that Gina fucked you over.
She’s already shown she’s capable of doing atrocious shit to her own daughter to fit whatever evil mastermind plan she has.
Frankly, I think you’re being too nice to her.
” The words spill from me in an anxious rush.
He swallows hard before taking a deep breath. Like he hasn’t heard that often.
“Thank you... I’m glad Andi has such passionate people in her corner. That said, enough about the history between Gina and I. Andi is what’s most important here.”
“Do you think Gina is just using Andi as a pawn, or does it go deeper than that?” Leo asks, speaking up for the first time since this conversation started. The way he phrases the question makes me think that he believes it does go deeper than that.
“Maybe Gina is using Andi as an opportunity to live vicariously through her?” Everett suggests, his gaze cutting towards Leo. “Is that a possibility?”
“I can certainly see that being the case,” Edison nods.
“That would explain why the bitch never let Andi do anything she didn’t approve of,” Eli huffs.
“So the moment Andi does something Gina would never do—like coming here,” I say with a wave at the home around us, “she decides to do the equivalent of dropping a nuke and pulls this stunt? What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“I’m more than familiar with the tactics she’ll use in court. I’m less familiar with cases of this kind, but I spent a dozen years in the court system fighting for custody of Andi,” Edison says. “Do you want my honest opinion?”
“Of course,” Everett nods. “It’s why we’ve come to you for help.”
“Gina is smart. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Which means we can’t fight her with fire. We have to play her sick little game.”
“And what exactly does that mean?” Cameron asks, resting his elbows on his knees.
“If she’s somehow concocted a case strong enough to get an emergency conservatorship on Andi enacted, our energy shouldn’t be spent figuring out how to overturn it. It should be spent on getting the title of conservator transferred away from her.”