21
gatlin
Kane eyes me across the table at the restaurant where I’ve taken him. “I’m a little worried, because every time you tell me you want to have a serious conversation, it’s always about how unhappy you are.”
“Not this time,” I say. “I promise.”
It’s been over three months since Ellis’s heat.
When we went home afterward, I was worried that it would be another break between us and our omega, and that we wouldn’t see him again unless he went into another surprise heat.
But Hannah and I have been keeping in touch, texting pretty much daily.
And Kane was still keen on his idea of having Ellis come and see us on weekends, and he wasn’t opposed to Hannah coming along as well.
I think Kane wanted it to be one weekend a month or something, and it hasn’t turned out like that.
We’ve had Ellis and Hannah visit us and we’ve visited them. It’s turned into the four of us being together nearly every weekend, something Kane never complains about.
Hannah and I have been really comfortable with each other since the beginning, settling into talking easily, as if we’re old friends.
I can hardly imagine a day going by without hearing from her.
I didn’t realize—before she appeared in my life—how much I was missing having someone like her, someone who’s willing to sort through my day with me, talk about how we’re both feeling, console each other, build each other up. We’re close.
“All right, then,” says Kane. “So, what is it, then?”
“Maybe we should wait until they bring our food,” I say.
“You said we should wait until we ordered,” he says. “We’ve ordered. Spit it out.”
I take a deep breath. “I want to move closer to Hannah and Ellis.”
“Move?” he says. “You mean, buy a different house, live in a completely different place?”
“You can do what you do from anywhere,” I say, because most of his work is remote these days.
He commutes to the office once or twice a month, but he could do that from where Ellis and Hannah live, because his office is about midway between our two current houses.
Kane’s commute has always been at least an hour long, which was why he was happy to go mostly remote.
“Not anywhere,” he says. “But I guess, if we move to that part of the state, then, yeah, it’s doable.”
I wait, feeling hopeful, because it seems as if he might be open to it.
“Why?” he says.
“Why?” I repeat. “I think that’s obvious. To be closer to our omega, and to be closer to Hannah.”
“To Hannah,” Kane echoes.
“You know how close Hannah and I are. You know we talk every day. It’d be easier if there wasn’t a two-hour drive between us all the time.”
“Look, we have a life bond with Ellis, and he’s crazy about that girl,” says Kane. “For now. You know how he is, though.”
“Oh, come on, he’s been doing much better with therapy and stuff,” I say.
I never thought that the kind of therapy that I got Ellis into might not be the best for his brain chemistry and his background, but he’s been doing much better since he got into something that addresses his unique needs.
I actually really like it, too, because it’s very aligned with a lot of eastern thought.
It talks a lot about mindfulness and accepting things.
I’ve looked into it, and I find it fascinating.
“So, you think he’s going to settle down with her forever? What if he breaks up with her?”
“He can’t do that,” I say.
“You want us to move closer so that you can lock them down and you can keep her, because she’s, like, your bestie or something. But Gatlin, she can be your bestie regardless.”
“That is not what I want Hannah for,” I say.
Kane gives me a look. “Oh, well, that’s even worse, then.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You want her to have babies with Ellis,” says Kane. “You want them to reproduce and us to be the little alpha uncles who come in and babysit and stay the night with Mommy and Daddy. I see right through you.”
I sit up straight. “Uh… well, Hannah and I have talked about this, and we think it would make better sense if, um, if it’s me first. Not Ellis.
He’s not ready. But that would all be really far down the road.
Hannah is barely twenty-five.” She just celebrated her birthday, and we went and met her parents, who I don’t think liked us very much, but then, I guess when your daughter is in some thing with three men, it’s a lot.
“So, you want us to move down there, but just to be close, not because of babies,” says Kane.
“It’s a process,” I say. “Eventually, I’m hoping it would lead to babies, to maybe all of us moving in together, to being close and—”
“Moving in together? All four of us?” says Kane.
“You don’t want to move.”
He shrugs. “I do like our house, I guess. It’s a good house. We like the location, and we spent all that time working on the stone walkway and the patio, and if we move, we have to leave it behind.”
“But what’s more important? A patio or family?”
“A patio,” he snaps.
“You don’t mean that,” I say.
Kane opens his mouth to say something and then closes it.
“What’s going on with you?” I say to him. “Why are you being like this?”
“Me?” he says. “You ambushed me again. You said this wasn’t about you being unhappy, Gatlin.”
“It isn’t,” I say. “I am not at all unhappy. I am actually very happy with what we have going on right now—”
“I am, too,” he says. “Which is why I don’t see why you want to change it.”
“I want to be closer to Ellis and Hannah,” I say. “These are people I love.”
He flinches.
“I know you love Ellis, at least,” I say, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility to say he’s got feelings for Hannah.
He loves buying shit for her. Every time she comes to see us, he’s giving her jewelry or a new fancy case for her phone or a handbag.
This is in addition to all the lingerie he buys for her to wear, but he says those are gifts for us, not for her.
Of course, I know she loves putting on little lacy, sexy things for us to peel off of her.
She is kind of like our little sexy doll that we like to dress up and then undress and play with. She doesn’t seem to mind that at all, either.
“I do love Ellis,” Kane says. “But I like my life as it is. I don’t want a different life. You never seem to like our life.”
“Well,” I say, “maybe this is not the life I want.”
He groans. “That is a really shit thing to say to me at this stage of our involvement together, especially considering we share an omega.” He swears softly under his breath and flags down the waiter. “I’m going to need a strong drink,” he says.
hannah
“How was your dinner with Kane?” I sing into the phone with Gatlin. I’m sitting on the couch in Ellis’s living room, painting my toenails. I have my foot up on the coffee table, nail polish bottle on one side, phone on speaker on the other.
Gatlin told me that he was going to have a very important talk with Kane and that he would hopefully have news for me afterward.
Gatlin sighs, sounding dejected. “Not great.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “What happened?”
“I don’t even know how to get into it,” says Gatlin.
“I guess I’ll just tell you that I wanted to convince him that we should move closer to you and Ellis.
And he got all freaked out and said all I do is complain, that I’m never happy, and that he doesn’t want to change our life because he likes it the way it is. ”
“Oh,” I say. “I know we had mentioned that a few times, you and me, you moving closer here, but I also mentioned maybe it made better sense for Ellis and me to relocate. Gatlin, what about your studio?”
“I’ll just open a new one,” he says. “I can do that, and it’s no big deal for Kane—”
“Meanwhile,” I say, “Ellis has no job at all, and is just living off the profits he made from selling pictures of his penis, and you know how I’m feeling about the internship lately.”
I had a realization. It’s sort of complicated, but it has to do with the fact that I don’t have ambition in the same way that some people do.
I think, growing up with a mother who was an alpha, seeing her have such a drive to do something, it made me feel like I should have that same kind of alpha drive. But the truth is I’ve never really wanted to achieve something for myself.
Maybe that sounds insane.
I know you’re supposed to want to do that, you’re supposed to want to change the world or be a rock star or a baseball player or something.
I’ve tried to want it, but if I’m really honest with myself, I don’t think I do.
It sounds like a lot of work, and it doesn’t seem worth it.
My mother is constantly struggling, all the time, for instance.
I feel like Ellis has struggled with this intense desire to be something unique and special as long as I’ve known him. Maybe Callie and Andrew, too.
Gatlin is the first person I’ve met who’s more like me.
His ambition is to make other people feel happy and good.
It’s not for himself. Well, it is. It’s only that he recognizes that he’s happier when the people around him are happier.
He’s happier when he’s in a happier environment.
And so, he works to make things better for everyone, and he also benefits from that.
I’m the same way. I wanted to be a literary agent to preserve the elements of the publishing industry that preserved quality in books.
But I didn’t want to do this single-handedly.
It wasn’t for glory or anything. It wasn’t an ambition for me.
I wanted to be part of something. I wanted to work with others to make things better.
And lately, I’ve been thinking that there are better ways to be part of something, better ways to make things better for other people, and I’ve been getting less and less attached to the idea of being a literary agent.