Brooks’ grip on his fork tightened, but he nodded. “He’s okay, or he will be once he takes some time to calm down. I’m really sorry you had to see that.”
Brooks looked down at my plate. “You need something to drink? I should have offered before giving you your food, my bad.”
He turned and busied himself at the fridge, muttering to himself as he scooped ice into a glass and cracked open a Coke for me before sliding the glass to me.
He’d even put a bendy straw in the cup so that I didn’t completely ruin my lip gloss, I realized with a warm jolt as I sipped the sweet soda.
“Thank you,” I told him softly as I watched him stare down at his plate like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to finish it or not.
“Dallas isn’t a bad guy,” Brooks said suddenly. “It’s just… we’ve been through a lot in our lives and he gets kind of touchy sometimes and what happened today hit a little too close to home.”
“With what happened to Carter?” I asked, prodding gently. It felt like I hardly knew anything personal about the four members of my security team outside of what their files told me.
“Yeah,” Brooks answered, heaving a huge sigh as he finally looked at me with those green eyes that matched his brother’s exactly. “Our mom had a similar, ah, problem to Carter’s, though I think hers may have been a bit more hardcore. I don’t remember much of it, but Dallas… Dallas does.”
“Oh,” was all that came out of me. All thatcouldcome out of me.
Brooks nodded, his jaw clenching as he glanced away from me as if he were ashamed to admit it. “She was an omega whose alphas left her and the omega center was less than helpful. She turned to drugs pretty quickly and we lived like that until we were ten and the courts took us from her. She disappeared after that.”
“Jesus, Brooks, I’m sorry,” I said, and despite knowing it was a bad idea, I reached across the counter and put my hand over his. His knuckles were rough but warm and he quickly flipped his hand so his palm was up, his fingers curling around mine.
Nice, my inner omega purred like this was what she’d been angling for all along and not me just trying to comfort someone who seemed to really be needing it.
Brooks’ eyes crinkled in the corner as he smiled at me. “I wasn’t looking for pity, Lennon.”
“Good,” I shot back, giving his fingers a squeeze. “Because I’m not giving it. But I am hoping to give… I don’t know, camaraderie? Does that sound completely silly?”
Brooks shook his head once. “No, not at all. I just wanted to letyouknow that you aren’t alone in this shit show… and that Dallas isn’t mad at you. I just think he understands you more than either of you realize.”
I snorted at that. Dallas Wilson seemed like a stubborn asshat that couldn’t look past his own ego. If he really felt the same way that I did then he never would have snapped at me earlier.
…But Brooks didn’t need to know that.
“Maybe,” I surrendered with a sigh. “Thank you for the food, by the way. I feel ready to face tonight now.”
The corner of Brooks’ mouth pulled up into a half-smile. “Anytime, Ms. Holloway, I live to serve.”
A rusty laugh rumbled out of my chest. “In that case, you’re also on dish duty while I go and get dressed, have fun!”
“No fair!” Brooks called after me as I stepped back into my bedroom where the style team was waiting.
“Was that flirting I heard?” Lisa asked, her eyes sparkling with interest.
“No it was not,” I replied pertly, my cheeks warming. “Now, what dress am I supposed to wear?”
“It wasn’t bad, mom,” I said into the phone as we drove away from the hotel venue. My face was still aching from the practiced smile I’d kept on it all night and I was pretty sure my feet were two seconds away from falling off thanks to the strappy torture devices that Landon and Lisa had insisted I wear, but I was at least feeling much more normal than I had been earlier.
“You know you didn’t have to do the dinner tonight, sweetheart,” my mother said as the sound of a faucet running filled the speaker. She was down in Florida tonight and had already made it back to her hotel room. “You could have just stayed in and had a quiet night.”
“Yes, but then people would have started to ask questions. People were already asking where Carter is as it was.”
I’d managed to fend most of the said questions off with mentions of the flu, but I wasn’t sure how many people believed me.
Carter’s issues were infamous and I could tell they were already coming to their own conclusions about his absence tonight.
But they, at the very least, wouldn’t be leaking things to the press.
The paramedics who had taken him to the hospital, the doctors, nurses, and any other staff he came into contact with had already been given NDAs courtesy of my grandfather who had flown in immediately and was handling this expeditiously on his end.
