“This is actually good.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
She laughs and drops a twenty in the tip jar, giving me a seductive smile. I move on to the next customer before I’m forced to turn her down directly.
Because I’m not exactly in a relationship technically, but I’m not available either.
At least, not for a few more days.
For the second or third time in the last hour, I’m viscerally reminded of Phoenix in my old room, standing on my bed to sign that poster. The way her thighs felt under my hands when I steadied her. The way she’d looked at me when she climbed down, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with something I’d really like to think is interest. The scent of her wrapped around me and lingering in the room even after she flounced away.
Down, boy. She’s so far out of your league you’d need a telescope to see her.
But Atticus’s words from earlier keep circling back. The suggestion that had seemed insane at first and only slightly less insane the more I thought about it.
Three alphas and two omegas.
I don’t want to believe he was saying what it sounded like he was. The idea is ridiculous, so out of the realm of possibility that it isn’t even worth considering.
So why the fuck can’t I stop thinking about it?
“Hey, Dom?”
Mason’s voice cuts through my thoughts. I look up to find him standing at the bar.
“Have you seen Phoenix?”
I pause mid-pour, frowning. “Not since she got off the stage. Why?”
He doesn’t answer, already moving toward the rear exit. I watch him go, more than a little confused.
Not to mention concerned.
I push the feeling aside and return to the customers still waiting. But a few minutes later when there’s a lull at the bar, I’m tempted to follow the urge itching at the back of my mind.
I weave through the crowd toward the front entrance of the bar.
Outside, the street is quiet and basically deserted. A single streetlamp casts a pool of yellow light over the sidewalk, illuminating precisely nothing useful.
No Phoenix.
My gaze drops to the ground, scanning automatically. Cigarette butts from other nights. A crushed beer can. Some kind of wrapper that the wind has plastered against the building’s foundation.
And there?—
Something small and white, half-hidden in the shadow where the wall meets the concrete.
I crouch down, fingers closing around the object before my brain fully processes what I’m seeing.
An unlit cigarette. It’s slightly bent, like it was dropped in a hurry rather than discarded deliberately.
I turn it over in my palm. The filter catches the streetlight, and my stomach drops straight through the fucking pavement.
Pink.
The filter is stained with pink lipgloss. The same shade Phoenix was wearing tonight—the same shade she’s been wearing every day since she got here, so omnipresent I’d stopped consciously registering it.
She didn’t finish her cigarette.
