The alpha across from us places his hands on his lap as he exhales a loud sigh. “I am here to make sure you don’t disappear again, yeah, but two things can be true at the same time. Maybe I’m just wondering who the real Jessica Dryers is: the omega I met that night, or the one across from me.”
It looks as though she’s going to say something, but all she ends up doing is jerk to a standing position, scraping the chair across the floor as she gets up. The sound is loud and jarring. She doesn’t say a single word as she turns away from the table and leaves. From where the table is in the dining room, I can see her head up the stairs out of the corner of my eye.
Going to her room, probably, to get away from Rourke and his line of questioning.
Mason growls out, “You upset her.”
“No,” Rourke says. “I just asked her a question. She’s the one who didn’t want to answer.”
“You shouldn’t fucking talk to her like that.” There’s a trace of my brother’s dominance in that statement, and I tense a bit inresponse. I always hated when he lorded the fact he was an über over me. They’re like the kings of alphas, a step above the rest.
Rourke, though, doesn’t so much as flinch at the way my brother said it. “And who the hell are you to tell me that, hmm? Why do you even care? Were you trying to get with her while she’s here?” The accusation is thrown out just like that, and I assume what little civility we had before is utterly gone now.
My brother’s nostrils flare as he fumes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that maybe you were hoping to slide into Jess’s good graces when you know she’s going to be out of her mind with need, the weakest she’ll ever be. Maybe the fact that I’m here isn’t helping your little plan—”
“There’s no fucking plan,” Mason growls out. “I told you, I didn’t know Asher and Jess were going to be here, and I fucking meant it. I didn’t come here to have company.” He stands abruptly, much like Jess just did, and also like Jess, he leaves without saying another word, storming to his room.
Rourke waits until he’s gone, then he looks to me. “What about you? What were you hoping to gain by helping her?”
I’m aware he’s only doing his job, investigating me and my brother a bit, but I still take his line of questioning personally. “I wasn’t hoping to gain anything.” The moment I say that, he cocks a brow at me, as if he doesn’t believe me.
The nerve of this guy.
“I wasn’t,” I say, meaning it. “I—” I stop myself from spilling everything to him.
But the hesitation was there, and he noticed it immediately. “You what? Help me see the full picture here, Asher. Convince me you and your brother weren’t planning on taking advantage of her.”
He sounds like he means what he says, like his only concern is for Jess and her well-being, and again I can’t help but wonderif his concern is due only to the fact that he was sent here to find her and bring her back, or if, perhaps, that night they met at the Omega Garden, he fell for her.
My voice comes out quiet, “There’s… a lot of history between us.”
He nods once. “I did a little dive into your past and hers.”
“Then you know her parents died about ten years ago. We were… we were friends before that. In the same grade. It was before we officially presented, but both our families knew what we would be.” I lean on the table between us and stare hard at the dark wood.
Rourke stays quiet, waiting for me to finish without prodding.
“Then, when her parents got in that accident, things changed. She barely survived. She was the talk of the school for months before she came back, and then when she did come back, it was different. She was different. We all were.”
My story isn’t quite truthful. We were more than friends. We were best friends. We told each other everything. We even joked that we’d end up in the same pack together, once we were old enough. Clearly, fate had other things in store for us.
“I… couldn’t act like everything was fine. Everyone acted differently around her, and I was no exception—even though I should’ve been. I was a dumb kid who wanted to fit in, and going to talk to the girl who was in therapy because her parents died was the opposite of fitting in.”
He listens until that moment, when he leans forward and says, “That was pretty shitty of you.”
“I know.” I run my hands over my face. “I know that now, I do. And I knew it then, I just… I don’t know. I wasn’t brave enough to do what was right, I guess.”
“And you never wanted to talk to her again?”
“I did. Of course I did, but after a while, I was scared. Scared of what she’d say. Scared of what I’d say.” I sigh. “Scared of what other people would say. Staying away became my new normal, as much as I wish I could go back and change things.”
“What made you agree to help her when she reached out to you, if you two hadn’t reconciled?” A loaded question. A heavy one, one I don’t know I’m prepared to answer, especially when the one asking the question is a stranger.
As much as I don’t want to say, I also feel an odd sense of calmness sweep over me when I remember Jess saying she trusts him. Possible jealous feelings aside, if she trusts him, I should, too.
Plus, he works at Alabaster Security. They don’t just let anyone walk in and get a job.
