Chapter 4
brODY
“She’s going to watch a movie. Should we invite ourselves over?”
Damien stares at me from the counter beside the coffee machine, one white paw lifted to his mouth, his expression so flat I’m convinced he’s judging me.
“Nope. You’re right. That would be a bit much.”
Which doesn’t explain why I’m still standing at my kitchen window, pretending coffee takes twelve minutes to make while Claire curls up on her couch across the way.
She’s tucked beneath a blanket, blonde hair twisted into a messy knot that keeps slipping loose around her face.
She’s wearing thin-framed glasses, turquoise-colored eyes with the longest lashes.
She’s fucking beautiful. Her oversized shirt has slid off one shoulder, revealing the thin strap of her bra, and my attention locks there.
She looks soft, tired, and completely unaware of what she’s doing to me.
I should move.
I don’t because apparently I’m the kind of Alpha who can face down a room full of cameras without blinking, but one quiet Omega in a blanket has me rooted to the floor like an idiot. If my two packmates were home right now, they’d be giving me so much shit over my obsession with our neighbor.
She scrolls through channels, settles on something, and pulls the blanket higher before reaching for a mug on the side table.
Even through two windows and the dark glass between us, I notice the way she wraps both hands around it.
Small hands. Delicate fingers. The same ones that signed my book with a tiny heart she tried to pass off as an accident.
It wasn’t an accident.
The coffee machine beeps, saving me from whatever the hell my brain is about to do with that thought.
I pour a mug, take a sip, and lean against the counter while Damien finishes his paw maintenance and turns his attention to my coffee with the smug confidence of a creature who believes ownership is just a matter of wanting something badly enough.
“Don’t even think about it,” I tell him.
His paw slides toward the mug.
I move it.
His paw follows.
I move it again, and the little bastard holds eye contact while reaching farther, slow and deliberate, until he bats my spoon off the counter. It clatters to the floor, and he lifts his chin with a soft trill, like he’s just made a valid legal argument.
I stare at him. “Real mature.”
He blinks once.
Which, coming from Damien, is basically a confession.
I pick up the spoon, rinse it, and glance back at her window. She’s laughing at whatever’s on the screen. I can’t hear her, but I can see her shoulders shaking and her head tipping back, and it’s already ruining me from a distance.
I still picture her watching the sweet buns video yesterday, sitting in her backyard in those shorts with the sun on her thighs and her phone clutched in both hands. When I slapped the dough, Claire froze, then grabbed her phone so hard I thought she’d crack the screen. After that came the fanning.
It gave me the stiffest hard-on of my adult life, which is saying something, because I once shot an entire salted-caramel series in gray sweatpants and had to learn humility in real time.
Damien, who’s relocated to the fruit bowl and is attempting to sit inside it, removes a banana from beneath him with his back foot and kicks it off the counter.
“Yeah, I know,” I mutter. “I’m obsessed. Noted.”
I cross the open-plan living space to the window, coffee in hand, and lean my shoulder against the frame.
Her living room glows warmly against the dark, all crowded bookshelves, soft lamplight.
She’s curled on the couch, small and soft, and I hate that I can’t decide whether I want to feed her, tease her, or carry her straight out of that lonely little room.
Probably all three.
She doesn’t leave the house much. I’ve been next door for weeks, and I can count the times on one hand.
The backyard yesterday. The trash bins last Tuesday.
A grocery run on Saturday morning. That’s it.
This gorgeous, sharp, funny woman has built herself a bunker out of bookshelves, recipe notes, and locked doors.
And damn if I don’t want to get inside.
Not like that.
Well, yes, like that too, but not only like that.
I take a slow sip of coffee and watch her tug at the blanket tighter. I know why she hides. I watched the clip again last month after the bookstore meeting. Sat right here with Damien, who was trying to eat the drawstring on my sweatpants while I pulled up the interview and hit Play.
It was rough.
Not because of what she said. People made it sound like she’d kicked a puppy into traffic while declaring war on food bloggers, but if you watch the whole thing, not the butchered little clip everyone passed around, you hear what happened.
She’d been rattled. Her head was somewhere else, and her mouth went sideways before her brain could grab the wheel.
The second the words fell out, her face changed.
Tiny flinch. Eyes going tight. That awful half second where you know you’ve screwed up, but the cameras are still rolling and there’s no way to shove the sentence back down your throat.
The internet didn’t care. It never does. They chopped it, captioned it, fed it to the mob, and turned a nervous woman having a bad day into the villain of the week. I’ve been online long enough to know how fast people get mean when they smell blood.
Hell, I’ve been there. Years ago, my account got nuked because I uploaded a video without checking the oven door reflection and unintentionally gave the internet a view it did not pay for.
One mistake. One click. Years of work gone overnight, and I got to spend the next month being known as the guy who made banana bread with his dick accidentally in frame.
So yeah, I know a little something about a bad moment following you home.
Claire didn’t mean what they think she meant.
I’d put money on it. I’d put my whole damn kitchen on it, and the worst part is that she’s been punishing herself harder than anyone else ever could, hiding in that house like if she stays quiet enough, small enough, still enough, the world might finally forget to hate her.
My fingers tighten around the mug.
That doesn’t sit right with me, not one damn bit.
“We can fix that,” I tell Damien.
He’s on the floor now, batting the banana across the tiles.
“Tomorrow. We make gooey chocolate cookies. The ones with the sea salt and the brown butter that everybody loses their minds over. We do the full production. Blinds open, her angle, perfect sight line from her living room window. I want her watching.”
Damien stares up from the banana.
“Then I bring her a plate. Warm. Still gooey. Along with a link to the video so she can eat them while she watches me make them. Full experience.”
He squeaks.
“I know. I’m a genius.”
I take another sip of coffee, watching her settle deeper beneath the blanket. Every part of me wants to cross the yard, knock on her door, and see what she does when I’m standing close enough for her to smell me.
But I don’t.
Because Claire isn’t the kind of woman you rush. She’s skittish in a way that pisses me off, because nobody becomes that careful without someone teaching them the world bites.
The problem is that doing it now, while it’s still just me, is preferred, because once Corey and Jakob arrive home, subtlety is dead.
Corey will take one look at her, grin like he’s just found trouble gift-wrapped in glasses, and say something filthy before his brain has even clocked in for the day.
Jakob will be worse in a quieter way. He’ll stand there all calm and steady, say five words in that low voice of his, and somehow make her feel safer than a locked door.
Then that’s it. We’re done.
Once Corey and Jakob meet her, this quiet little spark I’ve been trying to handle carefully is going to turn into a house fire.
That’s the pack, and that’s how we work. We don’t do half measures, and when something matters, we all feel it. But right now, in this quiet, with her living room softly glowing through the dark, she’s mine to figure out for a little longer.
My phone buzzes on the counter, and I drag myself away from the window. Corey’s name flashes on the screen.
“Finally,” I answer. “Thought you’d forgotten my number.”
“Impossible.” Corey sounds exhausted, amused, and smug all at once, which is his natural state. “You text me fourteen times a day. I know your number better than my own bank PIN, which is concerning because you send me photos of kitchen tiles and Damien’s crimes.”
“He’s settling in. He knocked one vase off the mantel.”
“And?”
“Scratched the banister.”
“And?”
I glance toward the fruit bowl, where Damien is sitting on two bruised bananas like a furry dictator. “Possibly violated some fruit.”
Corey laughs. “Sounds like home. How’s the house?”
“Perfect. Two ovens. Good light. Big kitchen. Neighbors mostly keep to themselves.”
“Mostly,” he says, dragging the word out.
I close my eyes. “Don’t start.”
“Oh, I’m starting. I saw your last couple of videos.” There’s a pause, the exact length of a man choosing violence. “So. Claire, huh? You mentioned she’s our neighbor, the girl from the bookstore. The pretty Omega next door who made you bake sweet buns like a desperate housewife with abs.”
I bite the inside of my cheek because laughing will only encourage him. “When are you back?”
“End of this week. Early next at the latest. Lease is signed, storage is handled from our last place, and if I eat one more hotel burger, I’m going to start chewing drywall. Jakob texted too. He’s booking a flight from Auckland. Couple more days with his family, then he’s coming home.”
Home.
He says it like it’s already decided. Like weeks ago we weren’t in Austin, packing up half our life and pretending this wasn’t a gamble. Now, home is a house in Mistberry Cove that is more permanent, for settling down, to escape the horde of fans.
It fits better than it should.
“How’s Jakob doing?” I ask.
“Good. Tired. You know his parents. They’ve probably got a binder titled Suitable Omegas for Our Emotionally Repressed Son.”
“They still blaming us for him not settling down?”
“Obviously. We’re the corrupting influence. The food-blogging pack of doom.”
I tense up. “They can fuck right off with that.”
Corey’s voice gentles, just a little. “Yeah. He knows.”
I stare toward the dark window, where Claire’s living room still glows warmly across the yard. “Good. Because Jakob doesn’t need a match shoved down his throat by people who think love is a scheduling issue.”
“Careful,” Corey says. “You almost sounded emotionally intelligent.”
“Must be the new place.”
“Or the Omega next door.”
I don’t answer fast enough, and Corey laughs, low and wicked. “Oh, this is going to be fun. Tell me she’s perfect for us.”
I stare back toward Claire’s house, my jaw tightening even as heat rolls through me. “No. I’m telling you we’re going to be careful.”
“Sure, big guy. You keep telling yourself that. Anyway, I looked Claire up.”
My smile drops. “Yeah, and?”
“She got chewed up pretty bad.”
My grip tightens around the phone.
Corey’s voice loses some of the teasing. “She didn’t look mean, Bro. She looked like she wanted the floor to open up and do her a favor.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “That’s what I saw too.”
“And now she lives next door to us.” His grin comes back into his voice. “This should be interesting. She’s also very cute. And if she’s half as interesting as you’ve been making her sound in every single text you’ve sent us, then maybe when we get home… save some for us, yeah?”
I laugh. “Get here first. Then we’ll talk.”
“Oh, I’m getting there. Try to stop me. Okay, I’ve got another call coming in. Go be neighborly or whatever you’re calling it.”
“Night, Corey.”
He hangs up, and I set the phone down while Damien materializes on the counter beside it, pressing his head against my forearm, purring.
“You hear that? Your other two daddies are on their way home,” I murmur, scratching behind his ear.
I carry my coffee back to the window. Claire’s still on the couch, but she’s changed the channel to some film. I can see the glow shifting colors across her face. She’s pulled the blanket up to her chin, and she’s smiling at the screen.
I grab the remote from the arm of my couch, flip through channels until the screens match, and drop onto the cushions.
Damien is there in seconds, scrambling over my legs, kneading my thigh twice, then collapsing across my lap with his full weight and letting out a sigh so dramatic it rivals any performance I’ve ever given.
I settle my hand on his back. Warm fur. Steady purr.
On the screen, some chef is meeting a woman who’s just moved into his city. She’s carrying boxes and he’s holding a spatula. The dialogue is terrible and the lighting is worse, but I’m absolutely going to watch every minute of it.
Because she’s watching it. And right now, alone in our separate living rooms with our separate screens and one shared wall of night between us, this is the closest I can get.
Damien yawns against my knee.
“I know, buddy.” I take a sip of coffee and watch the film I’d never choose and the woman I can’t stop choosing. “Soon.”