Pierce turns his back on me to rummage in the fridge again. He leaves the cheese wrapper right on the counter. It’s a taunt. He knows it. I know it. His childhood trauma manifests in paranoia and a unique flavor of agoraphobia. Me? I got the OCD control issues. I keep my eyes on him and not the cheese wrapper. It’s not easy.
He drums his fingers on the door, and I know he’s not really seeing the contents of the fridge. I look down at my shoes to ignore the fucking cheese wrapper.
“Do you know where he went last night?”
Ah, I win the standoff, and that’s probably not a good thing.
“Location sharing puts him at the Ritz downtown.” I put him out of some of his misery.
“He has a concussion.”
“I know.”
“So, why’d you let him leave?”
An expected response, but it still hurts.
“We…”
“We made a decision, and we are not changing that. We have too much to lose now. He has too much to lose.” There’s no emotion in Pierce’s voice.
“And you’re willing to risk losing him over it all?”
Pierce still won’t face me. I don’t need to see his face to read him, not after everything we’ve been through. All this posturing, the lack of eye contact, shit, even the snacking, is masking fear. The truth and the lies are about to fuck us royally in equal measure.
“You’ll find who sent it. Has to be Reed’s father. Only Randal and his buddies know.”
I run my hands through my hair. He doesn’t get it. Our time is up.
“And how am I going to do that, Pierce? I can track an IP address,” I pull the plain but crinkled white envelope out of my back pocket and throw it, like the accusation it is, on the counter. “This was dropped in the mailbox next to the post office three blocks from here. That I cannot track.”
He doesn’t turn to look at it.
“If we tell Beckett…”
“What’s Beckett going to do about it? The only reasonable thing, right? Kick us to the curb.”
“If we tell Beckett, we can make a decision as a pack,” I press.
“We go. That is the only decision.”
I shakemy head, the anger simmering.
“First…”
“Oh, fuck off.” He throws up his hands. I crack half a smile. He hates it when I have a list. Because he knows I come to the table with logic and footnotes. He stalks out of the room. I follow, of course. Even in our own home, his eyes scan the room, pausing at each exit.
“First, Beckett loves you, loves me. He’s not going to pack up his gym bag and run off.”
“No? Where is he right now?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Bad example.”
“Fine. Second thing?”
He gives up so fast because he knows I’m right. Despite storming out of here last night, Beckett isn’t a cut-and-run kind of alpha.
“Second, if this is a blackmail ploy, we tell Beckett and there’s nothing to blackmail us about.”
