14. Everett
The gym door slams at the bottom of the stairs, and I’m left sitting up in bed with a pumpkin spice latte and no idea what I’ve done.
He’s clearly grumpy about something. I stare at the cup, anxiety curdling in my stomach, making me want to curl up and cry. That’s the hormonal dumb omega part coming out.
The intelligent Everett part of me isn’t putting up with that crap.
I ignore the way my stomach is twisting and drink the latte anyway. It’s exactly right — too much syrup, barely coffee at all, cinnamon the whole way through. He remembered the extra shot without being told.
He drove across town to get me a drink just because I mentioned it. Then this.
Whatever soured him happened out there and I have no way of knowing what it was.
A phone call, probably. His agent perhaps, or his lawyer. The upcoming hearing is enough to sour anyone.
Not my business and I’m not going to make it mine.
That’s alphas for you. If he’s in a mood, then his gym is the right place for him, not by my side. Give an alpha something heavy to lift or something hard to punch, and all their aggression has a place to go.
I certainly don’t want to be its target.
I half expect him back up within the hour anyway. That is what the last five days have done to me.
I finish the latte. It really is very good. Then I strip and remake the bed, open a window, and go to put myself back in order.
I take a good long hot shower, then get dressed for the first time in almost a week. I do the buttons on my shirt up slowly in front of the mirror, and somewhere around the collar I start to look human again, instead of a man who spent five days begging on his back and enjoying it.
The marks on my shoulder have gone a deep, settled purple. I button the shirt over them and stop looking.
Quiet settles around me for the first time in five days.
For five days he was either wrapped around me or audibly fetching something in the next room. His scent lay so thick on the air that I stopped being able to tell where it ended and I began.
Now the window is open, the sheets are clean, and the air is fresh. I keep catching myself listening for the stairs, but he doesn’t come up.
Lunchtime comes and goes and the door to the downstairs gym stays shut.
I make myself something to eat and eat it standing at the counter. He cut the crusts off. I never asked him to.
The bike starts up again beneath my feet while I’m rinsing the plate.
Okay, it’s been a heavy few days. He’s owed an afternoon.
I go back to my room, open my laptop and catch up on work instead. It’s the first time in a week that my brain has been entirely my own, and it’s a pleasure to use it.
London did not slow down because I was otherwise occupied.
For the rest of the afternoon, the only sounds in the house are my keyboard and the sounds of him in the gym beneath me, just two adults getting back to normal.
Whatever that is.
At seven, I hear noise from the kitchen and by the time I have closed the laptop and thought of something ordinary to say, I hear the gym door close again.
What the hell has got into him?
I am not going to start tonight by begging. He is forty feet away. If he wanted to tell me, he could walk up a flight of stairs.
Tomorrow he’ll be over it.
He’s not.
I take the opportunity to sleep in. I’ve had five days of heat. Five days of physical activity. I need the rest. Still, I can’t help but reach for him when I wake in the night and feel annoyed with myself when I do.
The man owes me nothing.
It’s supposed to be omegas who are the hormonal ones. Omegas are volatile. Omegas are too emotional. Omegas require supervision for their own protection.
And I can state with some confidence that anyone saying that has never shared a house with an alpha in a grump.
An omega in a bad mood will talk about it. At length.
Alphas sulk and break things. Halfway through the morning, I hear him empty the dishwasher, crashing and banging away. If it were my house, I’d feel the need to check the plates for chips. But it’s not. He can smash up his own house as much as he likes, the big baby.
None of it is new to me. I grew up with an alpha in the house. When my father lost, nobody had to tell you.
No one ever suggested he was hormonal. He was ‘passionate’. He ‘cared’. It is remarkable what caring excuses, when you are six foot three and your moods arrive with a growl attached.
So I am not, at first, particularly bothered. Alphas sulk. It is practically a secondary sex characteristic.
What I am is inconveniently tuned to him. Everything always runs too high after a heat.
I can still smell him. I want to shove him into a wall and demand to know what his problem is. I also want to put my face against the back of his neck and breathe. Both are terrible ideas.
The clean sheets were a wasted effort. The pillows underneath still smell of him. So does the hallway. So, unhelpfully, do I. That’s what five days of his body on mine will do, and no amount of showering helps.
I don’t care. We were never a genuine match anyway. Not really.
I put on my earphones and some really loud music and do my best to drown out my thoughts.
I spend the rest of the day in my room, only coming out when I get hungry enough and then I go back.
The check-in catches us just past midnight. I wake confused at the bleeping from my phone.
Oh fuck. Somehow I am desperate to see him and dreading it at the same time. But if we miss it, this entire trainwreck will be for nothing.
I scramble out of bed, pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms. I don’t want him in my bedroom. Not this time.
Not after whatever he’s pulling now.
I half expect to collide with him in the hallway but I don’t. Instead, I keep walking.
He heard the check-in notification. He must have, right?
I reach the end of the hallway at the door that leads to his bedroom. There’s no sound from inside.
Great. The great lunk has slept through it.
I bang on the door. “We need to check in!”
He opens it immediately.
So. Not asleep.
The big alpha is wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and looking far too good in them. I look away.
“Hang on. I’ll get my phone. Stay here.”
So, I guess I’m not invited in.
He comes back in an instant and stands shoulder to shoulder with me in the hallway while the app decides whether we’re both real.
He’s close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his arm. He smells like a fall day and it’s all I can do not to lean into his chest and just sniff him like a crazy person.
If he feels the same about me, he hides it well. He watches the screen the entire time.
Green tick. Confetti. He’s back inside his bedroom, the door shut before the confetti finishes falling.
I go back up the hallway and close the guest room door behind me. Then I stand at the window and watch the dark yard, and let my hands shake.
When they stop, I sit on the edge of the bed and open the laptop. Working is better than thinking.
But I can’t think about anything except the way that he refused to even look at me.
I pick up my phone and dial Priya’s number, checking my watch.
It’s ten in the morning in London. She answers on the second ring. “Everett. It’s the middle of the night there.”
“We need a better search firm. I’ve not had one decent general manager candidate for the Barons. Let them know that we’re taking it away from them.”
“All right.” I can hear her typing already. “Anyone you want to try next?”
“You. I’d like you to come out here and run the place until we get someone else in.”
I can’t do this. I thought I could manage it until we got someone in, but I don’t want to. I can’t deal with Callahan. I want to go home.
I don’t say that to Priya though.
The typing stops. “Everett. I run your office. I don’t know the first thing about hockey.”
“You don’t need to. It’s a business like any other. Payroll, sponsors, lease, contracts. Blah. Blah. The hockey side stays with Sacco — he’d rather answer to someone who doesn’t pretend to know his job anyway.”
“You think he’ll take direction from your assistant?”
“He’ll take it better from you than from me. He doesn’t detest you.”
A short silence while she rearranges her entire life. “I can run it remotely from Monday and fly out within the fortnight. I’ll draft the announcement tonight. And the search?”
“Take that one too, please.”
“Understood.” A pause. “And Mr. Callahan?”
“What about him?” Priya has never interfered in my personal life. She can’t be asking what I think she’s asking.
She isn’t. There’s a pause, then she says, “His hearing is next week.”
It would serve him right if I left him to the league. But I was in the box when Berg went into the boards, and whatever else Callahan is, he wasn’t wrong about who started it.
“Call the league office in the morning,” I say. “Keep it discreet. The club’s position on appeals doesn’t change, but he’s the star player. It’s just business sense to minimize his time away from the ice.”
“Of course.”
“And have the lawyers look at Dorn. Maybe get them to have a quiet word with the league’s legal team. The guy is a loose cannon. He’s going to get someone killed and that’s going to cost them.”
If Priya has thoughts about any of this, she keeps them to herself. “I’ll send the engagement letter within the hour.”
She’s gone before I can decide whether to be annoyed.
I sit with the laptop warm on my knees and try to stop my thoughts from running away.
The heat was a momentary blip. It messed with my emotions and my brain. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Now I am.
I have another six days to go before the mandatory cohabitation ends. That’s not long.
Yes, it’ll be boring. I don’t particularly like the idea of spending the next six days confined to this room, but I’ll live through it.
After that, I’m done.
No more hockey. No more Callahan.
I open up my browser and book a flight back to London.
I send an email to my hotel checking that they still have my suite reserved for when I can finally leave Callahan’s house, then add that I won’t need it longer than two weeks.
Soon I’ll be back in my own home and all of this is behind me.
As soon as the flight confirmation comes through, I check it, making sure everything is in order, then I get my suitcase out of the closet.