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Chapter One
Michael
I was a mapper. I mapped out my life, step by step, achieved the goals needed to get to the next step, repeat. It was how I’d always been, and it had never let me down. Until now. Now, I was a hot-mess-underemployed-moocher loserhead. And it made no sense. I followed the path to success to a T.
Get good grades and do all the activities in school to get a scholarship to college, check.
Earn a 4.0—3.8 at a minimum—while earning my bachelor’s degree and get a TA position with a scholarship to get me through an MBA, check.
Get my MBA with a 4.0 and go on step out into the world to have all the jobs falling at my feet…big old fail. The 4.0 was easy peasy. The job, not so much.
Now I was working as a checkout clerk in the grocery store in the Podunk town my brother and his husband moved to, living in their spare room, and applying for anything even close to my field anywhere in the country. It was supposed to be three months, just three, but two years later, I had nada on the horizon.
“You just need to accept your life here,” my brother Lou kept saying. “Settle down with a nice alpha, start a family.” And by “nice alpha,” he meant one of the plethora of undereducated guys in town who thought buying me a beer, a brand of their choice no less, was the way to get into my pants. None of them wanted more, and none of them seemed worth it. Not when the entire town would hear about it in a nanosecond.
Nope. I needed to stick with my plan, not his. I added a few specialty online classes to the plan, but the rest was the same, just…a different timeline. I’d mailed out fifteen applications this week. One of them had to stick. Or so I kept reassuring myself.
I grabbed my jacket and keys before sneaking out the back door like a teenager. Lou planned to tell his alpha, Ed, that he was ready to start making a baby, and if I were around, I’d just be in the way. He knew it. I knew it. And when given the proper information, Ed would know it. Unfortunately, they were both too nice and would want me to eat with them and such, and that would be more kinds of awkward than I cared to imagine, so off I skulked to a local bar. The only local bar, to be precise.
I purposely wore my ratty jeans and my T-shirt with a stain in the hopes of warding off the creepers. I wasn’t even what most people would consider hot. I was lean and long where most men wanted muscles. I was far from the high-maintenance omega type, and flirting was not my thing. But in a town of so few, I was fresh meat, even after two years. That was enough to warrant the unwanted attention.
My car was in the shop…again…so I walked the mile downtown. It was a gorgeous evening and the stroll gave me time to let go of the weight of all the rejection emails I got this week. I almost wished that they didn’t tell me I was rejected so I could be optimistically waiting for a call instead of the we were lucky to find the perfect candidate internally, or we have selected our candidate pool and regret to inform you that you were not part of it.” Besides, I could always snag a cab home. Well, the cab, if it happened to be running.
Being the ever nerd, I had my tablet with me so I could work on my latest course. It was a coding course that turned out to be far more practical than I’d thought when I signed up. If things didn’t pan out soon in the career world, I might just have to change my map and have my next destination be more tech oriented.
Dusk had barely set in when I arrived at Nick’s, which was perfect. It meant that I could find a booth to hole up in. If I ordered a beer and then later an appetizer and then another beer and such, they wouldn’t bother to ask me to move to the counter as it got busy, either. At least not from my past experience hiding out there.
“Hi, Michael.” The waitress who had become my sort-of kind-of friend, partly based on the mutual understanding I’d overtip her if she let me be a booth hog, met me as I scooched into my spot.
“Hi, Jackie.” I smiled up at her. She was a lifer in town, probably old enough to be my mother. She had a kind heart, but whoa Nelly if you pissed her off. It was probably why I liked her so much.
“Hiding out for the night?” she teased.
“You know me too well,” I bantered in return not wanting to think too hard on it. The sadness that crossed her eyes hurt. In some ways, she could see me better than most.
“You know, if you got your own place, you could hide out at home.” By my own place she meant renting the apartment above her garage. I honestly didn’t think it was all for the money, either. I’m sure plenty of people would be interested in it if she even bothered to put up a flier.
“Yeah, but that would be giving up.” I fished out my tablet and keyboard, to hurry the conversation on. I didn’t want to get to the point where I was thinking about what it would mean if Lou and Ed did get pregnant right away. Sure, I’d be happy for them. Over the moon, even. They had been married six years, so it wasn’t like they were jumping into anything. It would, however, mean I needed to move out. I was in their only spare bedroom.
“True enough. Want the draft of the night?” As if she had to ask. I always had the sale draft. It forced me to try new beers and kept my wallet happy.
“Always.” I gave her a wink.
“I’ll get that right out to you. Still working on that fancy schmancy college stuff or working on applications?” She eyed my tablet, now set up on the table.
“Probably both. I have to figure out what I messed up on an assignment before I turn it in.” It was killing me that I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. It was so close to perfect, I could feel it, yet as it was, it was rubbish.
“Sounds like a plan.” She stood there as if she had more to say, and I threw her a subtle nod and smile in encouragement. “I may need to ask you to come up to the counter tonight.”
“That’s fine,” I boldly lied. It was far from okay, but what can a single omega in a booth do when the room was filling up? “Expecting a crowd?” I pried, wanting to be prepared for what the night was going to bring.
“Yeah. Old lady Betsy passed away and after the funeral, people are not gonna wanna go home.”
I’d never me
t Betsy, but the town seemed to adore her. I was surprised I hadn’t heard about her funeral. Although, I guess technically I had since people had been referring to “the funeral” as they meandered through work today. She’d moved to the nursing home long before I got into town, but the library had a Ms. Betsy storytime room with her bio on the wall. Turned out, she’d fostered more than one hundred kids in her lifetime and loved them all as her own. That was dedication and purpose. I admired her, even not having ever met her.
“I understand that.” My unsettledness at maybe needing to move lessened as the reason became clear. She was good people, and if those she touched wanted my little corner of the bar, so be it. “If it gets to the point you want my booth, give me a nudge.”
“Will do. I’ll go get you that beer before things get busy.” She scampered off, and I dove into my work. I was going to find the error if it nearly killed me.
Chapter Two
Porter
I tugged at my necktie. My Ferrari never looked shabby, but in my normal circles, it was nearly always the least flashy. Here, I couldn’t have drawn more attention to it than if I’d stolen a set of cop lights and set them flashing on top of it. I felt that old uncertainty welling within me, that itchy, too big and yet too small feeling underneath my skin. I straightened, tugging my shirtsleeves down over my new Patek watch, an impulse buy to ease my nervousness over this event. Which was ridiculous. I was Porter Dahl now, the head of the top app-development company in the US. CEOs practically begged at my feet for my mere attention. Not Montgomery Dale, the scrawny little foster boy no one wanted. Until Ms. Betsy.
I was here for Betsy, I reminded myself. And for my own sense of closure. I’d meant to visit her so many times before now, but there had always been some meeting, a banquet, an opportunity—everything else had seemed more important. And now she was gone. She’d let me send her a little money here and there, but only for the kids, never for herself. I wished I’d been a little more forceful. But no, she would have deflected. She would have done amazingly in the business world, if she’d set her mind to it.
It was dark out now, the neon open sign flashing annoyingly in Nick’s window. I’d escaped town before I was old enough to get in there. Not that I hadn’t tried. But in a town this small, everyone knew everyone, especially Ms. Betsy’s kids.
I wondered if any of the others were still around. Jerry, who, at two years older and fifty pounds heavier had bullied me almost to the point of running away before Ms. Betsy figured out what was going on and gave us both a talking to. Jerry for bullying, and me for not coming to her when it got so bad. Jerry hadn’t stopped, but it had become manageable. No one had been kicked out of Ms. Betsy’s before, and no one wanted to be the first.
I opened the bar door, struck by the contrast with a normal club in the city. It was just a regular door, no automatic close of any kind, and it hung open behind me for several moments before I realized I needed to pull it closed.
The bar was getting full. I had tried to make it to the funeral so I could get in and get out, but I’d forgotten how rough these roads could be, and I’d gone slower than usual to avoid damaging my car. It was made for freeways, not these country gravel roads.
I could sense people side-eyeing me as I made my way to the bar. I recognized several of them, a few by name, but more by face. There was Gerald White, who had chased me and Kevin out of his yard when we were twelve, playing at archeology in his garden, uncovering “artifacts,” generally carrots and onions and a few rocks. Mrs. Hyatt, who had always followed me and any other foster kid by about ten feet any time we entered the grocery store, making sure we didn’t steal anything. And Pastor Sellars, the mild-voiced preacher at the church Ms. Betsy had attended, who always put me to sleep. A few faces I thought might have been kids I’d grown up with in the system, but ten years had dulled my memory, and they had changed. I had changed. And I hadn’t particularly wanted to hang onto these memories, either.
Did any of them recognize me? I’d done my best to differentiate between foster-kid-Monty and successful-businessman-Porter. Partially, it was the stuff: the clothes, the watch, the car. But I’d invested in personal training, too. I’d hired a dictation coach to remove the odd country pronunciations from my speech. A personal trainer to help me bulk up, which in turn improved my posture. And a life coach, who basically was a paid best friend, but also pointed out those rough spots either in my personal life or in my business life that I was blind to.
“May I get a dirty martini?” I asked the bartender. She eyed me warily, and I took time to survey the room a little closer. It didn’t take but a moment for me to zero in on the man in the corner booth. I’d trained myself to pick out the differences in a room, in a contract, in a person in microseconds. And this man did not fit. Yeah, his clothes were just as tattered and torn as most of the locals, but there was a hopefulness to his face that people who grew up here quickly had beaten out of them by life. The bartender placed my drink on the bar, and I slid a bill across to her, not paying attention to what it was as I sipped the drink. I couldn’t help but grimace. Damn, that was awful! This place didn’t know the difference between a dirty martini and a vodka martini, that was for sure.
“Let me get your change,” the bartender said.
“No need,” I said, waving her away. I needed something to do. I didn’t like to sit still even at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times. I knew Ms. Betsy would be fussing at me. She’d told me more than once that people wouldn’t change the way they thought of me if they didn’t interact with me. But I had no interest in interacting with the people I’d left far behind me in this town. And first thing tomorrow, I’d leave them behind again, this time for good. But in the meantime, I wanted to see what made this man tick, with his bright face and his fierce concentration on the tablet in front of him. He clearly wasn’t from around here, and he clearly wasn’t here for Ms. Betsy. He showed even less interest in the rest of the bar than I did. I wanted—no, needed—to know his story. What could have possibly brought such a man to such a town as this?
Chapter Three
