Chapter 27 Ryder
RYDER
LOS ANGELES, DURING TESSA’S FIGHT TO KEEP JOSIE…
It was after midnight.
I should be sleeping, but my damn mind was so tangled up with hope and worry.
I just couldn’t settle down, and I wasn’t the only one.
Mac and Tray were in the kitchen doing fuck knows what at this hour.
Dixon was the only one who’d finally succumbed to exhaustion, though he was tossing and turning on the sectional.
He’d said her name in his sleep a little while ago.
That one-word, sleepy utterance had sounded so broken.
I didn’t blame Dix for collapsing in the living room.
None of us wanted to be very far from where Tessa’s scent was strongest. Hell, it was why I’d taken up station at the courtyard doors directly behind the damn sofa.
Hanging my head, I rubbed roughly at my exhausted eyes.
When I lifted to stare through the glass outside again, everything was still blurry beneath the soft glow of the golden courtyard lights.
The pool waters were dark and foreboding.
The flowers dull, muted hues instead of bright and cheery like they were beneath proper sunlight.
Blinking, I tried to clear the haze. It didn’t help.
Maybe the damn world was just foggy after the rain.
No. It was me. I hadn’t been able to focus since walking back into the mansion after beautification.
I just kept dissociating, staring at nothing and thinking about everything.
The others had found their own ways to cope.
Pretty sure when Dixon disappeared right after the Betas left, it was to follow Cat’s post-battle, pre-beautifying suggestion: Relieve the pressure.
Drop a load. Mac had paced for a while, going to the half-bathroom up front more than once to examine his face.
Tray had mindlessly drummed on any surface he could touch until Dixon returned half an hour later, chasing our manic-energy brother into the kitchen with empty threats of beginning yet another brawl.
Mac had already retreated there by that point.
From the sound of things earlier, he’d decided to scrub every dish and rearrange every cabinet.
I figured he’d roped Tray into the job, because that’s where they’d both stayed ever since.
The sounds of pots clanging and doors shutting stopped around eleven though, so now I had zero idea what was keeping them there.
None of us felt normal, but at least we looked normal again.
If my insides didn’t still feel like shit, I could almost pretend that the guys and I hadn’t fought.
Unfortunately, Beauty Mark Beta’s ‘magic’ treatments could only erase things on the surface.
The internal damage still existed. We’d all just have to move a little carefully over the next couple of days.
Baby our bodies until the invisible wounds also healed.
I kept forgetting I was hurt and moving like I wasn’t.
Maybe that’s why bruises existed—to remind a person they’re damaged.
Hard to forget you’ve been punched viciously in the face when you’ve got a big ass black and blue mark as evidence.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply. Tessa’s scent was permeating the mansion, clinging to every surface.
But, goddamn, it was amazing to stand here so close to the source of that smell.
Even while filling my lungs with her Omega perfume, part of me still couldn’t believe it was real.
No matter what anyone said, I was going to keep doubting until she walked through our door.
Despite the picture, the scent proof, and the fact that I’d read Cat’s Eros emails over and over, I still had a hard time believing it could really be her.
It was too much of a coincidence, and fate wasn’t that kind.
Yet, all it took was one walk through this living room to decimate my doubts.
For a while, Mac and Dixon had kept telling me to stop worrying.
I just... fucking couldn’t. And now that they weren’t actively comforting me, it was easier to become consumed.
Every single part of me—my brain, my heart, my soul, my body—was focused on the fact that if Tessa was real, then she’d be here soon.
Here, and in the flesh.
Here, and touchable.
Here, and kissable.
Here, and fuckable.
When we’d first signed the Eros contract, I’d written an impersonal letter to our, as-of-then, nonexistent Omega.
Now that I knew it was the woman of my dreams, I was kicking myself for not taking more time writing the note.
Tessa’s first impression of me—well the second impression, but the concert was so long ago—was a vague, halfhearted note filled with canned sentiment.
Mac had commented on it back then, saying we should write something more poetic.
I’d told him to just sign the damn thing.
“Fuck!” I shouted, slamming my palm against my right bicep as pain shot through it. “What the...” I turned quickly, finding Tray passing rapidly behind me. He’d pinched the ever loving crap out of me. I hadn’t even heard him coming. “What the hell, man?”
“You had that lost ‘this can’t be real’ look again,” Tray teased. He was slowly walking backwards, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“So, you fucking pinched me?” I raised my eyebrows.
“To prove it’s not a dream. Obviously.” He moved into the bedroom hallway, pausing just long enough to turn his body slightly and wink in my direction. “Let me know if you need more than a pinch.” Tray took the corner and disappeared, knowing full well he was pushing me too far.
“You want a piece of me, asshole!” I shouted after him. It was a belated, empty threat.
“Didn’t think you were into that, but I’m always game!” he yelled back, voice muffled by walls and distance. Patented Tray—turning it into something sexual.
“What a dick,” I grumbled in irritation, though part of me realized Tray was just trying to help me shake off the nerves.
“Shut the fuck up,” Dixon’s sleepy voice grunted from the sectional as he repositioned. He started snoring again almost immediately.
“Sorry, Dix,” I apologized, even though he’d already fallen back asleep. I envied him over that. I wanted to just drift off into la-la land and stop being tortured by my own brain. Of course, with my luck, I’d end up having vivid, Tessa-fueled dreams.
Now that I was facing inward again, my eyes locked onto the medical gown.
It was her. It was always going to be her.
Every corner of this house now held a shadow of her in the same way my own soul had contained her memory all this time.
Sweetest jasmine. Warmest cedar. A rich musky vanilla.
She’d been afraid. Dixon had been the first to say it out loud, though we’d all registered the negative emotion in her scent the very second Cat had fully unleashed Tessa’s aroma from the vacuum sealed bag.
After we’d battled one another until bruised and bloody, our instinct to protect her had presented almost as strong as our desire to mark and claim her body.
We didn’t want to fight over her; we wanted to fight for her.
Once she was truly inside our world, no one would ever dare hurt her.
Thank fuck she’d be here soon. I could only imagine how badly we’d fall apart if the wait for her was weeks instead of days. Now... mere hours. She was supposed to arrive tonight.
Tessa Fortune.
I’d searched for my mystery girl for months, finally giving up when the guys had staged an intervention and made me—temporarily—face reality.
It hit me now that the Fortune Pack tragedy, the news that had rocked Seattle and was all over media while I'd searched for Tessa, had been her family. She’d lost everyone.
That’s why she’d left the concert so abruptly.
If only I had known back then, maybe I could have helped.
If only I had found her, maybe we’d already be mated.
Hell, if there had been even one photo in the news, I would have recognized her immediately.
If they hadn’t blurred her face out in the damn pack photo back then. More ifs. More could haves.
I needed to know more. I needed to know everything.
Padding away from the courtyard doors, heart panging when Tessa’s smell began to fade, I went to my bedroom and snagged my laptop, along with the wireless earbuds carelessly tossed on the desk next to it.
My room was too far from the gown; she felt too far away.
Returning to the living room, I settled on the end of the sectional closest to the kitchen’s arched passage.
Opening a browser, I typed in ‘Fortune Pack Tragedy’.
Endless results populated. I began clicking on the articles and videos, one by one, diligently studying.
I didn’t want to stumble on an article that actually showed Tessa’s face.
If I did, I’d hate myself for missing it, for not caring enough back then about a huge pack tragedy.
But, no, the Fortune lawyers had been diligent.
Zero pictures of her. If she’d ever had a social media, it was completely scrubbed too.
Why had they erased her? The lawyers hadn’t stopped the endless articles though—the speculation about her whereabouts, the bloggers looking for their fame on the back of her pain, the implications that maybe she skipped the trip because she knew what might happen.
That made me furious. They’d proven the crash was an accident.
Something called fuel starvation happened.
The engine seized up. Fucking horrible, and absolutely nothing to do with Tessa.
About half an hour in, Mac appeared from the kitchen with a mile high serving tray of crustless sandwiches.
He set the tray down wearily on the coffee table, but then his gaze went to Tessa’s gown.
Snagging the sandwiches back up, Mac moved to the sectional next to me, plopped down, and rested the server on his thighs.
“Sandwich?” He offered.