2. Hudson
Hudson
Boston had changed less than I expected. I hadn’t decided yet whether that was comforting.
The streets still held traces of sleet, and the hotel bar still charged nineteen dollars for a mediocre whiskey.
Lincoln lifted his drink, considered the color, and sighed. “This isn’t a good whiskey,” he said.
“It came out of a bottle labeled whiskey.” I turned my glass once on the coaster. “And you picked the hotel.”
“I picked it by its proximity to the conference center and the university.” He ran his hand through his silver-streaked beard.
Lincoln was broader through the shoulders than me, with deeper lines at the corners of his eyes. Silver streaks ran through his beard and glistened at his temples. He was still handsome.
I had silver at my temples too. But where he called it distinguished, I called it evidence that we were still omegaless and increasingly unlikely to find her as we aged.
Outside the windows, headlights dragged white smears across the wet pavement. Inside, the bar glowed low and gold, all dark wood and brass lamps and rich tourists.
Lincoln stretched one arm along the back of the booth. “One more week.”
“Then back to London.”
“Where nobody asks me to eat soup out of bread.”
I laughed. “Nobody asked you.”
“The waiter recommended it.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
I took a sip of my whiskey and let the burn sit on my tongue.
Lincoln watched me over the rim of his glass, his face changing. “We should go by the old place before we leave,” he said.
“Why?”
“To look at it.” He placed his glass on the coaster.
“It’s a building.”
“It was our building.”
“Not ours. It was a lease.”
He looked at me with open pity. “Christ, Hud. Remind me never to ask you for a wedding speech.”
“I’ve written three excellent wedding speeches.”
“You once congratulated a bride on her impressive compatibility with the groom.”
“They’re both accountants and still married.” I set my glass down. “The bakery’s a phone shop now.”
“She was happy there.”
“She wasn’t happy with us.” It came out harder than I intended.
“You can say her name.”
“I’m permitted to do a great many things I don’t do.”
“But you won’t.”
“She left us for a man with more houses.” I turned the glass on the coaster. “More money.”
“You’ve said that before. But it was more than houses and money.”
“It makes me feel better. It’s so much kinder than saying she left us for her scent match.”
“It really isn’t.” Lincoln lifted his glass and sipped. “Do you remember the radiator that used to scream?”
“Subtle change of the subject.”
He grinned. “Every morning at six. You used to hit it with a shoe.”
“It worked.”
“For five minutes.” He shrugged. “So. The flat.”
“Do you actually want to see it?”
“Maybe.”
“Then we’ll go. Tomorrow afternoon, if we find the time.”
His eyes came up to mine and stayed there. “You hate nostalgia.”
“But you asked.”
Lincoln’s mouth moved into a smile. “You soft bastard.”
“Certainly not. I’m a feared and serious man.”
“Of course you are.”
“Several people fear me.”
“Only the barista when he gets your coffee wrong.”
“He counts.” My nose twitched.
He laughed, short and deep. Then the door opened and a young woman came in with wet dark hair clinging in waves around her face, cheeks flushed from the cold, and a navy coat pulled tight around her body. Then her scent arrived.
Sugared blackberry.
And under it, a floral thread so faint I nearly lost it. I went still.
Stop looking at her, she’s too young for you.
Across the table, Lincoln stopped smiling.
She stepped up to the bar and pushed the damp hair back off her forehead. Her fingers trembled. “Irish whiskey,” she said.
Irish accent, softer at the edges by time abroad.
The bartender gave her the flat suspicion of a man who has been lied to by undergraduates too many times. “Can I see some ID?”
She opened her bag with the annoyance of a woman who’d been asked many times before. Her wallet appeared, and she slid a card across the bar.
Lincoln’s eyes cut to mine. I shook my head and watched her. I had no choice. Whatever her scent had done to the air, whatever animal thing in me had stood up at the sound of her voice, she was still a young woman. One who was flushed and shaking, and alone in a hotel bar.
No was the only civilized answer.
The bartender handed the card back. “In town long?”
“Just one night. I’m here on business,” she said, almost convincing. “I’m in New York, usually.”
“Long way for one night.”
“I have a very important meeting tomorrow.”
The bartender’s mouth lifted on one side. “I see.”
Lincoln made a small sound into his drink. I looked at him.
He looked at the table. “How old do you think she is?” he said.
“Old enough that he gave the card back.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I tapped the table and watched her. “I know what you asked. I’m declining to answer it.”
“Hud.”
I turned back to him. “I’m thirty-nine. You’re older. There’s no answer to that question that improves for either of us.”
“I only want to know whether I should be ashamed of what I’m feeling.” He twisted to get a better look at her.
“It depends if what you’re feeling is immoral.”
The bartender set the whiskey in front of her. “How old are you really, Mary?”
She smiled. “Twenty-three, like my card tells you.”
Lincoln exhaled through his nose. Twenty-three was legal, adult, but still far too young.
She lifted the glass and drank, and through some miracle of pride she did not cough.
“Smooth,” she said as a floral thread slipped through the room again.
I looked away first. “Is that her perfume?” I asked quietly.
Lincoln’s gaze stayed on the bar one beat too long before he turned back. “What?”
“Is it perfume? The smell.”
Lincoln leaned in, and his voice dropped. “Or her scent.”
I looked at her again.
She sat with one foot hooked round the rail of the stool, shoulders drawn tight, the glass held in both hands. Her hair had fallen forward across half her face. She kept touching a napkin to her brow and then glaring at the napkin as if it had done her wrong.
A man two stools down said something to her. She glanced at him, and laughed.
This time, Lincoln turned fully. So did I.
The man was thirty or so, in a suit gone shiny at the elbows. He leaned in. She leaned away by the smallest measurable distance and lifted her whiskey.
Lincoln’s hand flexed around his glass. “He’s going to make a move on her.”
“He’s been trying since she sat down. But her body language shows she isn’t interested.”
“She’s being polite about it. He’ll mistake that for progress.”
Under the bar, the man’s knee angled toward hers.
She lifted the whiskey again, and her hand shook harder.
“Hudson,” Lincoln said. “She’s an omega, and I think she’s going into her heat.”
“I know.”
“She’s too close. She shouldn’t be in a bar.”
“I know.”
“Look at her hands. They’re shaking.”
Heat rarely announces itself. It gathers like weather behind the bones. Temperature first, then the skin, then the scent, and then the body begins building an argument the mind never agreed to hear.
Mary pressed the napkin to the back of her neck.
The man in the shiny suit said something else and reached for her elbow.
She shifted away before he made contact.
Good girl. The thought arrived whole and unwelcome, and I set my glass down with far too much care.
Lincoln’s scent changed beside me, whiskey warming, rain going dark at the edges.
“Don’t,” I said.
His jaw set. “I didn’t move.”
“You were going to.”
“He was going to touch her.”
“She handled it.”
“For now.”
He was right, and I curled my fingers against my thigh. Every instinct I had was already halfway across the room, which was a good deal worse.
Mary said something to the man. He raised both hands, laughing, and she slid off the stool. For half a second, her knees nearly betrayed her. She caught the edge of the bar. The bartender’s head came up, and she gave him a smile, set cash beside the glass, and turned toward the elevators.
Lincoln stood. I looked at him.
“Bathroom,” he said.
“Lincoln.”
He looked down at me. “She’s going into heat alone in a hotel.”
“She may have someone upstairs.”
“Do you believe that?”
I didn’t. I believed she had a room key, too much pride, and quite possibly a terrible plan.
I stood. “We can’t frighten her,” I said.
“Obviously.”
“And we’re not following her.”
Lincoln laughed. “Of course not, we’re going to the elevator and then to our room.”
I shouldn’t have laughed. It came out regardless, low and helpless.
Mary reached the elevator and pressed the button, one hand braced flat on the wall beside it, head down.
Damp curls clung to the back of her neck.
The scent around her had thickened, blackberry ripening, rain warming on skin.
A floral note opened another fraction, and then violet caught at the back of my throat.
My lungs forgot their purpose.
Lincoln swore under his breath, and she turned at the sound.
Her eyes were blue. Not pale, not soft. Bright, startled blue, darkened by pupils far too wide for the light in that bar. She looked at Lincoln first, then her gaze came to me.
Her nostrils flared. “If you’re about to tell me I look unwell,” she said, “I already know.”
“Unwell or early heat?” Lincoln asked.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m prepared. I have a plan.”
Lincoln’s mouth curved. “You do?”
“Yes, I’ve interviewed several applicants. It was very competitive.”
The elevator chimed, and the doors opened.
“I don’t doubt that.” I held my hand against the open doors. Mary walked in first, slowly. We followed, because if we could do anything for her, we could get her safely to her room.
She pressed for floor four.
Lincoln’s finger hovered over the panel, then withdrew.
Mary looked at the buttons, then at us. “That’s either convenient or ominous.”
“We’re on four as well,” I said.
“A likely story.”
“It’s true.”
“The worst ones usually are.”
The doors closed.
The elevator was too small.