I lean close enough that his smile starts to win. His scent is stronger at his neck, still muted by chlorine but there, cedar and clean water and my Alpha underneath all that chemical bite. Ilet my mouth graze the side of his throat just above the tattoo, feel him go still for half a heartbeat, then press my palm to his forehead and shove him gently away from the wall.
“Earn it.”
He laughs as the water takes him, rolling onto his back for one lazy second before he turns and pushes into the lane. By the flags, his stroke is clean again. By the wall, he’s under pace, which proves he had energy left and has only been using his time at the wall to be a menace.
My attention catches across the pool to find Jude watching Hollis swim. The look on the Omega’s face is different than how he watches everyone else. Here, there’s almost a hunger in his expression, his gaze following the line of Hollis' body through the water, the reach, the roll, the clean turn at the wall. For a moment, Jude forgets to look unimpressed.
Then his cheeks go pink.
He drops his eyes to the clipboard so fast it would be funny if it didn’t make my chest pull. I file that reaction away and call the next send-off. Cooldown finally comes with the usual mess of relief and noise. Nelson drags himself onto the deck near Jude’s side, red-faced and panting, while Jude stops beside him with the clipboard tucked under one arm.
“Your pull got better,” Jude says.
Nelson looks up too fast. “Really?”
“A little. Don’t make it weird.”
Nelson immediately makes it weird by smiling like Jude handed him a medal. Jude’s mouth twitches once, there and gone, before he points the pencil toward the locker room and tells him to hydrate before he collapses.
Across the deck, Reece climbs out near the blocks with enough performance to make it clear he knows who’s looking. Two freshmen laugh at something he says before he claps Tate onthe shoulder, and Tate smiles a second late, eyes flicking toward Jude before dropping away.
The Omega just brushes over the interaction as he moves toward the door, conversation breaking around him. His hoodie slips off one shoulder when he bends to grab the gear bag, showing a narrow strip of pale neck before he yanks the fabric back into place. One of the juniors near the lane lines mutters something under his breath, low enough that I don’t catch it over the water, but Jude does.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it louder,” he calls without turning around.
Jude waits just long enough to make silence do the work for him, then swings the gear bag over his shoulder and pushes out into the main hallway, missing the rush of the locker room.
When I turn back to the pool, Hollis is already at the wall, arms folded on the deck edge, staring after Jude. The earlier flirtation is gone from his face, replaced by something softer and more serious, the expression he gets when he wants to fix something but knows his hands might be too big for the job.
I just move toward him, plopping onto the bench beside him. Hollis immediately shifts closer, folding his wet arms over my thigh and resting his chin there like soaking my sweats is a reasonable thing to do after practice. He’s heavy and warm even through the damp, his Alpha scent still mostly buried under chlorine until I slide my fingers into his hair and lean a little closer.
“You’re getting me wet,” I say.
His eyes stay on the doors. “You’re not moving so you must like it.”
I chuckle, reaching to card my fingers through his hair again, scratching lightly at his scalp until the low purr starts in his chest. The sound travels through my leg more than the air, quietenough that the locker room chaos nearly swallows it. Out here, Hollis stays tucked against me, still looking at the doors.
“So,” he says eventually.
“Yeah.”
That’s enough for a moment. It has to be, because if I let Hollis start picking apart every look Jude gave him, we’ll still be sitting here when Coach Marsh turns off the lights. Hollis feels everything first and thinks about it afterward. It’s one of the reasons I love him. It’s also why he needs me to keep him from walking up to Jude with an extra towel, a snack, and the emotional subtlety of a golden retriever.
“He looked at me,” Hollis says, softer now, like saying it too loudly might ruin whatever it was. “But, I don’t want to scare him,” he says.
I look down at the top of his wet head, at the broad line of his shoulders folded low against the deck. My Alpha, who once apologized to a freshman for blocking the hallway by existing in it. My Alpha, who purrs at scalp scratches and still worries the world will only ever see the size of him.
“You won’t,” I tell him.
Hollis presses his cheek more firmly against my thigh, dragging my attention fully to him. He looks ridiculous like this, half in the water and half draped over me, too big to be subtle and too soft to care. I tug gently at his hair.
“It’s time for a shower, babe.”
He finally looks up, brown eyes warm and a little too hopeful. “You always get bossy when you’re planning something.”
“I’m not planning anything and we’re not rushing him, okay?” I tell him. “I promise we’ll figure out a way to approach him but it has to be on his terms, okay?” I snort at the disappointed look on my Alpha’s face but I’m well aware that if I gave Hollis free reign, he’d have Jude curled up in his lap in the next fifteen minutes.
As intrigued as I am to see something like that, I don’t want to spook Jude. I want him to want us as much as we want him.
