Page 118 of Lyric & the Heartbeats

“Morning,” he said softly. His voice was still raspy, and heat colored Lyric’s cheeks.

“Morning,” she answered.

After she’d fixed herself a mug of coffee, she wiggled her way behind the table to sit beside him on the couch.

“What are you doing up so early?” he asked.

Lyric sipped her coffee, hiding behind her mug both to conceal her blush and to avoid the intimacy of the early morning.

The quiet before the storm.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Lyric hedged, tracing the design on her mug with a fingertip.

The tablet he carried everywhere tapped softly against the table as he sat it down, the side button clicking as he locked it.

“Everything okay?”

The concern in his voice tightened the vines of guilt crawling through her stomach.

“I was looking for a sweatshirt yesterday” —a detail he definitely didn’t need, but she was stalling, okay?— “and I found my pack of suppressants. I’m four days behind.”

Five now. Because she’d missed her chance to get him alone the night before.

Slow, she risked a glance up, lifting her gaze from the design on her mug to his face. Instead of anger or disappointment, she only found curiosity.

“Can’t you double up and get back on track?”

“Well… that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was thinking about… not taking them at all.” She dropped her gaze, the vines in her stomach piercing as she stared hard at the edge of the table.

She braced herself for a chastisement, but after a long moment, Henry rapped his knuckles on the table quietly.

Lyric’s eyes crawled up his chest to eventually meet his gaze. “Are they hurting you? I haven’t seen you take any pain relievers the past few days, but I assumed you’d just taken them while I wasn’t around.”

Her throat tightened. She didn’t know if it was because he paid such close attention to her that he noticed, or that his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it. His gaze was purely curious, absent of judgment or condemnation like she’d expected.

“It’s nothing… dramatic,” she answered hesitantly, unable to tear her gaze from the swirl of concern that mirrored the swirl of greens and browns and blues in his shining hazel orbs. “They just give me head and body aches sometimes. I’ve been sleeping better the past few days too. But they dampen my scent, so I didn’t want to put anyone on the bus in jeopardy and suddenly—”

“Lyric, despite what your experiences in the past are, alphas aren’t animals—at least not most of them—and especially not the ones on this bus. We’ve been around omegas before, we can handle it. If you want to stop taking your suppressants, that’s your decision, and I’ll fully support you not only as a manager, but as a friend.”

Lyric’s throat grew tight and she sipped her coffee to wash it down, but it only returned a split second later. Clearing her throat, she returned her gaze to Henry and blinked away the rising tears.

“I thought you’d be mad,” she whispered.

His expression shifted to surprise. “What? Why?”

Lyric shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been on suppressants for so long, it feels like I’m doing something bad by not taking them.”

Henry’s hand covered hers on the table where she’d been scraping her nail over the edge.

“You’ve been taking them for a long time, right? Several years?”

Lyric nodded.

“That’s a long time, so I understand why you feel like it’s wrong to stop. That’s your normal, so a change in routine is liable to throw you off. Will you be okay adjusting without them?”

His concern made her chest ache, and she sipped her coffee, adding to the warmth already flooding her body. “I should be okay.”

“But if not, you’ll let me know, right?”