Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
EMILY
D espite her obvious curiosity, Brielle waits until we’re halfway to Jackson to break the silence.
“You want to talk about it?”
I shrug. “It’s not like there’s anything to talk about.”
Brielle just snorts. “Like there wasn’t anything for me to admit about your brother and me?”
She has me there. And I hadn’t even had the decency to ask her some place private. I’d waited until Olivia and Melissa were busy looking at baby things to ask about what was happening between her and Ethan the summer she moved back.
I sigh. “Yes, Penny is his.”
“Obviously.” She sounds almost… smug? I raise my eyebrow in silent question.
She flushes and ducks her head. “I told Caleb there was no way that you and Beau made a baby with those eyes. I didn’t take a ton of science classes, but I took enough biology to know there’s no way for you and Beau to have a green-eyed baby. ”
I scrunch my nose. “Really?”
She chuckles. “Yep. Brown and blue can’t make green.”
I wonder how many in the family know that, too, and just never said anything. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, revealing her phoenix tattoo and one of her bond scars.
“I also remember you smelling of cloves a couple times,” she continues, “and Beau’s a Beta, so he doesn’t have a scent. I just assumed it was a one-night-stand type thing.”
“And Beau just decided he wanted to be a father, and I was conveniently there?” I keep my voice light-hearted so she knows I’m mostly joking.
She scoffs. “Well, no. I saw how you practically climbed into his lap on the Fourth of July. You don’t do that when it’s just your brother’s friend, no matter how long you’ve known each other.
” She tilts her head, and I risk looking over at her as I pass a truck pulling an oversized camper.
“But that’s not really what I was asking about, and you know it. ”
I blow out a heavy breath and shrug, focusing on the highway again.
“I don’t know,” I grouse. And, because it’s Brielle—the only person not from the families and an Omega who’s had a very messy journey to being bonded to her Alphas—I admit a bit more.
“Every time I’ve been in the same room as him, all I want to do is mark him.
Physically and with my scent. I want to wipe that fragile look from his face and figure out why he looks like he’s a rabbit caught in a coyote’s vision. ”
My scent pulses from me as if to drive home the point. Brielle nods.
“But he’s only here through the month, right?
So letting anything physical happen would just be idiotic, especially with Penny in the middle of everything.
I know that, logically, but the rest of me?
Not so much. It doesn’t care about what I should do.
It just wants him pressed against me and my scent covering his so stupid fangirls stop trying to get to him. ”
I turn the radio on, just low enough it cuts through some of the mess in my head without—hopefully—overstimulating Brielle .
“When Beau came home smelling of him on Saturday after the calf emergency, I just about lost my mind,” I whisper.
“And that’s never happened before, not even when we were fooling around all summer.
It wasn’t even his full scent. It was muddied by the cattle and whatever sour-smelling cleaner they used to deal with the mess. ”
“Do you think you might be matches?” she asks.
As in scent matches. I hadn’t even thought about it. I swallow as I think back over that summer.
“No,” I say slowly. Then, stronger. “No. I’ve never had the type of all-consuming reaction described by the Council. I mean, I’ve had…”
I let the sentence trail off. Her cheeks flush. Naomi hiccups a small cry, and Brielle reaches back to run her finger along the baby’s cheek.
“Obviously you’re attracted to him,” she says.
Yeah, the fact that vanilla is still pulsing out from me makes that pretty obvious.
“But it hasn’t been that primal need to drop everything and claim him otherwise nothing else in life will make sense?
That’s how Caleb described it to me, how it impacted him as an Alpha. ”
“Yeah, right. It’s not that extreme.” I tap my hands on the steering wheel. “Why?”
She shrugs. “Just wondering. If you were matches, it would take some of the guesswork out of what steps you’d feel like you should take.”
My laugh doesn’t sound all that happy. “Yeah, that’s true.”
The first sign signaling we’re getting close to Jackson flashes by us, and I ease into the left lane to pass a slow-moving semi full of cattle.
“It would also help alleviate the confusion you feel for not wanting to hold him at arm’s length,” she says after a long moment. “If he’s your match, it’s almost a get-out-of-jail-free card to explain the depth of what you’re feeling.”
I frown. “That’s… perceptive.”
Brielle’s giggle is happier than mine was, but not by much. “Yeah, well, it’s almost like I’ve lived something similar.”
I can’t help but scrunch my nose again. “Let’s not bring up the fact that you’re bonded to my brother.”
She laughs harder this time, and some of the exhaustion clinging to her since she had Naomi drops away. It makes me smile just a bit.
As I take the exit into Jackson that’ll lead us to the little boutique I’ve picked out for most of Penny’s birthday decorations, silence falls between us again.
“Sour-smelling cleaner?” she asks out of nowhere.
“I’m assuming it was a cleaner. But it was definitely sour.”
She frowns and purses her lips. Her conflict is obvious, but I don’t push her on it.
“Was your reaction stronger when you smelled him on Beau than when his scent’s been blocked, like today?” she asks.
Brielle twists in her seat and runs her finger down Naomi’s nose.
It seems like something that’s more for her benefit than the baby’s, but I’m not going to be the one to call her out on it.
Having survived pretty rough postpartum anxiety, I know all about having odd tics that help settle the worries.
“Yeah, it definitely was.”
Brielle’s frown gets deeper.
“What?”
She shakes her head, then clears her throat.
“Just because it’s the logical decision on paper doesn’t automatically mean it’s the right one for you,” she murmurs.
She twists a strand of hair back into the messy bun at the nape of her neck and traces the bond mark behind her ear as she resettles into her seat.
“Despite the Council’s PR campaigns the last thirty years trying to convince us all that the Matching process is the end-all, best way to find the people that will make you happiest, there’s not some perfect path.
If you don’t want to keep your distance, then don’t.
He’s only here for a few weeks, so you’ll need to come to some kind of middle ground regardless so he knows where everything stands when he goes back into the spotlight. ”
I don’t say anything as I park in front of the little boutique and turn off the Jeep.
Brielle arranges Naomi in her lap, letting her nurse.
I lean my head back against the seat and run through my mental list, ignoring just how often I get distracted by the Omega bull rider.
Brielle doesn’t say anything until she has Naomi nestled in a carrier.
“And if he actually does want me to keep my distance and just wants to be in Penny’s life without being tied to Beau and me?
He’s gone off and made literal history with that championship win.
No Omega had ever won the NbrA circuit. It’s what he’s always wanted.
There’s no reason for him to want to stay in the middle-of-nowhere Wyoming when there’s so much more in the rodeo world waiting for him. ”
There’s that fear again. I try and stab it down, but it only festers, spreading wider to avoid the killing blows.
“People change, and so do dreams,” Brielle whispers.
“You don’t know that he wants to keep pressing and carving out more fame.
It’s a lot of attention, and he’s an Omega.
Some people are satisfied with one championship.
There was that hockey player that retired a couple years ago after only winning the Cup once and arguably at the top of his career.
People thought he was out of his mind, but he and his pack don’t seem to be unhappy. ”
“You know hockey?”
She shakes her head. “Logan does.”
One of Faedra’s Alphas. That makes sense. He does some kind of athletic training work with one of the colleges in Denver.
Brielle sighs.
“Okay, look, I don’t know if I should admit this,” she says, her cheeks flushed again. “But you’re one of my closest friends, and I hate how you’re struggling over all of this. And… I remember being the Omega floundering.”
“Admit what?”
She bites her lip.
“Ethan’s clothes had that sour smell, too, when he got back to the house on Saturday.”
I grab my purse from the backseat. “So?”
“He didn’t stay long enough to help with the cleaning.” Brielle wraps a flannel at least three sizes too big and smelling of cinnamon around her as we head toward the boutique. “Beau sent him back while they were still waiting to see if the calf would make it.”
A small set of bells jingle, and a woman glances up from the counter tucked to the right. I give a small smile and nod that conveys we don’t need help, then grab a basket and start toward the bit of the shop I’m interested in.
“So it can’t be a cleaner.” She holds up a cute paper sun.
With a smile, I set it in the basket and grab a few more.
Her voice is softer than before when she says, “And even if it could have been, I know it wasn’t because my scent did the same thing when I first moved here. It’s a symptom of touch-starvation.”
“You were touch-starved?” The question drops out before I can keep it where it belongs.
Her blush tracks down her neck and onto her chest, disappearing underneath Naomi’s head. “Yep. It was the beginning stages, so it was easier to keep it hidden. But Melissa and Olivia both knew. Hudson, too, since he walked in at the wrong time while we were hanging out at Olivia’s place.”
“Oh.” It’s such a lame response. I focus on the decorations.
“I’m not saying that you need to make him better or anything.
Just that…” She whines a bit, and I grab her wrist. She blows out a breath, then tries again.
“If he’s so touch-starved that it was that potent on Ethan’s jeans, then it’s no wonder you were reacting so strongly on Saturday.
If you’re looking for a reason to try being a trio, that’s one that most will never hold against any of you.
It’s how Caleb and I started, just the promise of him helping ease it. ”
She grabs some garland that matches the paper suns. It’ll look perfect strung from the porch rails.
“I don’t know what he’s like, not like you do,” she says.
I scoff, but she shakes her head.
“You know him, even if some things have changed. You said you spent that entire summer sneaking around with him, just like Beau. And it’s obvious enough in your dynamic. There’s enough tension between you to power a city block for a week.”
Slowly, I nod. “Yeah, that’s true.”
“Right. So I’m not sure if he’s the type of Omega who can handle making that first move.
Faedra could. But me? I needed to not be the one constantly asking about where everything stood.
Maybe that was just because Brett was horrible and Ethan and I had a decade apart standing between us, but…
” She shrugs. “Triston might not be able to be the one to bring it up, no matter how bad the touch-starvation gets. He might even read your hesitation as disinterest. Which means he might need you to take the leap first.”
My stomach clenches at the thought, and that festering, messy fear spreads even more.