Ren felt his stomach drop a floor.
“Since when?”
“Since you arrived.”
The silence that followed was heavy, and smelled of raisins and walnuts, of freshly baked oatmeal cookies, of a warm kitchen in December with rain on the windows. Ren clenched his teeth against the flood of images the scent was pushing into his brain and forced himself to stay in the present, in the hallway, on Brody’s bare feet on the cold wood and the purple shadows under his eyes.
“Before you showed up, everything was in order,” Brody continued, and his voice changed. It grew softer, slower, as if the words required an effort he couldn’t afford. “I knew what I was doing. I knew why I was doing it. I had a plan for every move I made and a Plan B for when the first one failed. I slept five hours, woke up functional, trained, managed. Everything clean. Everything under control.”
He ran a hand over his face. His fingers trembled as they crossed his forehead.
“Now I sit at my desk and all I see is you behind that door. All my body wants is to cross the hallway and lie down next to you. My lungs want to breathe you in until my brain stops burning.” He let out a short, humorless laugh. For twenty-seven years I didn’t know what I was missing, and now I can’t stop needing it.
Ren didn’t move. His hands hung at his sides, and he wanted to raise them, he wanted to place them on that face ravaged by insomnia; he wanted to close the circuit that was killing them both. But he didn’t. Because the day he gave in to that, he would lose the only thing he had left.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” Brody said, as if he’d read the gesture Ren hadn’t made. “You just asked, and I’m answering.”
Ren swallowed. His throat hurt.
“Are you okay?”
Brody’s gray eyes met his with an honesty Ren hadn’t expected.
“No.”
The kitchen smelled of roasted garlic and rosemary. Rocco had left a pot of stew on the kitchen island before disappearing with that discretion of his that Ren was appreciating, and Brody hadset out two plates without asking. They ate in silence. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, but it wasn’t hostile either. It was the silence of two people who had said too much and didn’t know how to return to the safe ground of indifference.
Ren speared a piece of potato and brought it to his mouth. He chewed slowly. The stew was good, with a spice he couldn’t identify that warmed his chest as he swallowed. Brody was eating on the other side of the island, standing, with his plate resting on the marble countertop as if sitting down were a luxury he couldn’t afford. The dark circles were still there. Purple. Deep.
Ren looked away.
The kitchen door burst open, and the air shifted. Ren felt it before he saw it: a physical presence so dense it displaced the oxygen in the room. The man who entered was bigger than Brody. Much bigger. Shoulders like beams, a thick neck, hands the size of plates. He moved with a lightness that belied his bulk, his feet light on the tiles, his body in constant balance like that of a fighter who never stops gauging distances.
Alpha. The scent confirmed it: mineral, dry, clean. Without the complexity of Brody’s scent, without those layers of sweetness that stirred Ren’s gut. This was a direct scent, with no tricks.
“Jax,” Brody said without looking up from his plate.
“Kovac.” The man took an apple from the fruit bowl and took a bite that echoed throughout the kitchen. His dark eyes scanned the scene: Brody at one end, Ren at the other, the tense void between them. He smiled. “And you must be the omega.”
Ren straightened his back.
“Ren.”
“Jax.” He stepped closer and held out his free hand. Ren accepted it. The handshake was firm but measured, neither crushing nor holding him back. “I work with Brody. Security.”
“Jax,” Brody repeated in a tone that was clearly a warning.
“What? I’m introducing myself. I’m being polite.” Another bite of the apple. He chewed with his mouth open, his eyes darting from one to the other as if he were watching a game. “So you’re having dinner together.”
“We’re eating in the same room,” Ren corrected.
“Right. Three meters apart and both looking like you’re at a funeral. Very natural.” Jax leaned on the counter next to Brody and lowered his voice, though not enough. “Have you told him yet that you don’t sleep, or are you still playing this little game?”
Brody set his fork down on the plate with a sharp clatter.
“Shut up.”
“Because I sleep,” Jax continued, unfazed, “but the wall of my room is right next to yours, and I hear you tossing and turning in bed like a caged animal. Every night. Three, four in the morning. And then you go down to the gym and punch the bag until dawn, which, by the way, you’ve already busted two times this week.”
