Chapter 26
ROWAN
Iwake before the sunlight thinks about showing up. Eight days in this cabin, and it’s flown by. I’d stay longer if we could, but Eli’s out of vacation hours, and I’ve got an architecture project waiting that I’ve pushed off longer than I should.
Yesterday morning, Jess ate the pancakes, smiled through them, and then built a wall out of silence the rest of the day. I can’t blame her for needing space. I just hate how wide it feels. And how Cassian and Eli both looked at me like I should’ve seen it coming.
Maybe I should have. I’m supposed to be the one who reads the load-bearing points, who knows when something’s about to fail. But with her, all my calculations go to hell.
She could decide she doesn’t want to be our Omega. I’ve kicked out females who only wanted me and Cassian—refused to accept Eli as part of the equation.
But Jess took him to bed without hesitation.
The question that’s been clawing at me since yesterday: is she regretting it now? Regretting us?
Next to me, Eli’s breathing is steady. The scent of Jess clings faintly to his skin—vanilla and jasmine mixed with his bergamot.
They had sex two days ago, and the confirmation still sits strange in my chest. Not jealousy.
Something more territorial. The need to add my scent to hers, to show that she’s ours, not just his.
I could wake him, pull him into me, except he’s making those soft sounds that mean he’s still half-dreaming.
And he was up late last night about that guard who tasered Jess, and if he’s being reprimanded or not.
Nexus’s last communication he showed me was that they’re handling it. Wouldn’t even release the guard’s name.
Eli won’t let that stop him. He was a hacker before he joined Nexus’s IT department, then took extra hours as a guard when he got bored sitting behind a computer.
Carefully, I get out of bed and close our door behind me.
Cassian and Jess’s doors are closed. The ocean keeps doing what it does—subtracting and returning, one patient inch at a time.
None of us has to pack until lunchtime, so I take my time with the crossword puzzle I’ve been working on since yesterday and make a pot of coffee.
Movement on the deck catches my eye—Jess, wrapped in a blanket, bare feet braced on the bottom rail. Her posture’s defensive, shoulders curved inward. Still pulling away.
My Alpha instinct says go to her, fix it, make her feel safe. My brain says she’ll bolt if I push.
I’m going anyway. I’ve never been good at staying away from problems that need solving.
I pour two mugs without overthinking it—hers the way she likes it, splash of cream, honey stirred until it disappears. If she wants space, she can tell me. I push open the slider.
“Thought you weren’t a morning person?” I hand her the mug, watching her face for tells.
“Just couldn’t sleep.” She takes it without meeting my eyes. Avoidance. Yesterday’s pattern continues.
I shouldn’t notice how easily her hand could fit in mine, how quick the urge is to lean in and taste her lips again, to kiss her until she stops hiding. I keep both to myself. Barely.
She wraps her hands around the heat of the mug and closes her eyes for the first sip.
The tiny, involuntary sound she makes—somewhere between a sigh and a yes—goes straight to my cock. I adjust my stance, willing my body to stand down. Not the time.
“Rowan, you remembered the honey.” She beams up at me. “Thanks.”
After a breath, she says, “I’m okay. I just… It’s been years since I was at the beach. I forgot the way it sounds before the day starts. Like the world’s taking inventory.”
I lean against the post, arms loose, giving her room to bolt if she needs it. “You’re out here so early, I was contractually obligated to check whether you were rethinking the other night.”
A flare of humor loosens her mouth. “You mean the s’mores? Yes. We committed marshmallow crimes.”
She bumps my hip with the blanket. “Felonies, sure—but I’d be a repeat offender.”
“‘Good,” I say, and let it sit there like permission.
“I liked the rest.” I keep my eyes on the water because looking at her mouth means remembering how it parted for me last night, how she tasted, the small sound she made when we kissed. “You?”
Her eyes flick to mine, fast and honest. Citrus brightens her scent, revealing her nerves.
“I liked it. I just…” She rubs a thumb along the mug seam.
The silence stretches. I wait, every instinct screaming to push, to demand she tell me what spooked her yesterday. To fix it.
But I’ve learned—barely, recently, painfully—that not everything responds to pressure. Some structures need space to settle before you can add weight.
So I wait. Even though it feels like holding my breath underwater.
“I’ll miss this place. The beach. I thought I’d forgotten how it felt to be near it, but it’s the opposite. It’s like something remembered me.”
I track the line where the tide has redrawn the shore since last night. “We can come back,” I say, because it’s true and because I want her to know it. “As often as you want. Even just a weekend.”
Her shoulders drop a little. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She tucks the blanket closer.
“Sabrina would’ve loved it,” she says suddenly, voice thinner on the name.
“She always said she wanted a place where you could hear the ocean in your sleep. I used to tell her that was a dumb requirement, because what if you snored? She’d say, ‘Then the ocean has to deal with it.’” A brief laugh.
“She would’ve loved last night. The stupid jokes.
The fire. The stars trying to photobomb us. ”
I move closer, eliminating the distance between us in one deliberate step. Grief doesn’t need fixing—it needs something solid to lean against.
My parents taught me that. What they didn’t teach me was how to stop myself from wanting to burn down anything that makes her hurt. That’s not protective—that’s the kind of territorial Alpha bullshit that gets people suffocated.
So I don’t touch her yet. Just stand close enough that she can reach for me if she needs to.
She sips. “Did your family do trips? Like this?”
“Not like this.” I let the steam blur my view for a second, then blink through it. “We were skiers.”
Her head swivels. “Skiers?”
“Born on the mountain, basically. I learned right after walking. Without poles.”
“No poles?” Her eyebrows climb. “Show-off.”
“Poles are a design crutch,” I say, because I can’t help myself, and she groans into her mug.
“You’re impossible. Okay, fine. Skiing family. So… cabins and hot chocolate and those wool socks and thermal underwear.”
“All of the above,” I admit. “My dad believed in ‘if you can stand, you can ski.’ Mom believed in hot chocolate before your fingers stopped working.”
“Maybe that’s the next vacation then.” She nudges my calf with her toes. “You can teach me how not to die on a mountain covered in snow, and I’ll teach you that s’mores on a stove count.”
“They don’t.”
“They do if you’re patient.”
I meet her eyes. “Then you’ll have to show me how that works.”
Her smile goes soft. “Deal.”
The wind lifts the edge of her blanket. She shifts her grip on the mug and nearly spills her coffee on herself. I reach out, covering her hands with mine—steadying the cup.
She goes still. Not pulling away, but aware like she’s cataloging the weight of my palms, the way my fingers curl over hers. Her scent shifts again, warm vanilla and jasmine threading through the citrus.
“My mom used to believe hot chocolate was the cure for anything.”
Jess’s eyes lift to mine, holding for a beat longer than casual. “Do you talk with your parents much?”
I haven’t answered that question in a long time. There’s the summary I use with strangers, and then there’s the truth that lives under the roofline. I give her the latter because she’s the only one who’s asked like it matters what the beams are made of.
“Dad was noise,” I say. “Big laugh. Bigger opinions. He taught me how to measure twice and cut once, except he never measured. He could eyeball an angle within a degree.”
Her smile turns soft. “And your mom?”
“Quiet.” The word slots into a place in my chest I didn’t know was there. “Which made people assume she was soft. She wasn’t. She just didn’t waste words.”
The next words come rougher. “They were older when they had me. Dad’s heart gave out on the mountain.
One minute he was ahead of me, laughing about beating the storm—the next…
” I swallow. “He was just gone. Mom lasted longer. Cancer. Stubborn kind. She refused to sell the house. Said if the walls fell, she wanted to be there when they did.”
Jess’s fingers tighten around her mug. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was in my twenties,” I say, watching the steam rise between us like smoke signals. “Arrogant enough to think I could engineer my way out of anything. Build the right ramp, find the right specialist, work harder than death could work.”
I leave the rest unsaid—that I’m still that arrogant bastard. The projects changed, but not the drive. I’ve already decided she’s not someone I’m going to lose.
“She thanked me, told me it was beautiful, and never used a single one. Died in the same chair she read to me in.”
“That’s kind of beautiful, though. That she got to leave on her own terms.”
I nod once. “Yeah. But when the house sold, I couldn’t go inside for the final inspection. Eli had to do it. Said the air felt… hollow. Like something was missing from the blueprints.”
I don’t tell her that I drove by the house three times before I could make myself leave. Or that I still have the key in my desk drawer, even though the locks have been changed.
Some structures you can’t let go of, even when they’re no longer yours.
“You don’t have to talk about this if—”
“I want to,” I say. “It’s been a while since I talked this much about them.”
The mist shifts. A gull calls somewhere out near the pier. Jess inches closer until her shoulder brushes mine under the blanket. No drama. Just contact.