When he pulled me into his lap, I turned off the part of my brain that insisted it was wrong or shameful to let him touch me. The part that screamed I wasn’t worthy, that he only wanted me because of my burgeoning scent. I listened to a quieter voice, one that whispered it was okay to want things sometimes. And I wanted this: his hand stroking softly from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine, then curling gently around my waist.
“She gave me a time to meet,” I replied. “At a diner near their house. Tomorrow.”
Andrew stiffened for a split second, then pulled my back closer to his chest, his arm an iron band across my hips. “Should I tell you how much Idon’twant you to do that?”
“I have to,” I said. “She knows something. If we find out what it is, Nathan and I can… get back to our lives.”
Why was that thought so depressing?
“Or she’s lying,” Andrew growled.
I shook my head. “She’s not. She sounded genuinely scared.”
“Even more reason not to go.” I wriggled in his grasp to look at him, exasperated. He looked more anguished than angry. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“You’re not exactly objective,” I reminded him. But a secret, small part of me thrilled at how fiercely he wanted to protect me. I would just have to keep that part under wraps so as not to ruin my credibility.
“I don’t think you should go either,” Nathan said, his jaw set.
“Too bad,” I said.
“We’ll go with you, then,” Andrew said. “All of us. To make sure you’re safe.”
“No,” Gabriel said, stealing the word from my lips. “Two Alphas can not show up to this meeting with a scared woman. I will go with Bridget; you two will stay here.”
“Like hell we will,” Andrew growled. “No fucking chance.”
“I will protect her with my life, amore,” Gabriel said. “You know this.”
I scoffed. “No one’slifeis going to be in danger. My mother has never even seen a gun, let alone held one.”
“Do I not get a say at all in this?” Nathan asked. “If you remember, I was the one who was shot at.”
“Don’t,” I replied with a glare.
Nathan shook his head. “This isn’t your fault, Bridget.”
“Yes it is. He’s my… father,” I shuddered involuntarily, “and I’m going to fix it.”
I pushed out of Andrew’s lap before the argument could loop back around on itself. I needed a minute to gather my thoughts away from their scents. “It’s settled. I’ll meet with my mom and we’ll hopefully have some actual information to give Maggie. And then we can all go back to our normal lives. Right?”
Like a coward, I retreated behind the locked door of the guest room and worried that my “normal life” was no longer an option.
Chapter 30 - Bridget
I dressed carefully the next morning, in the nicest clothes I’d packed: dark jeans and a purplish-gray sweater that matched the bags under my eyes perfectly. Andrew had brought home some heavy-duty descenter, and I’d coated myself in a thick layer.
There must have been a discussion during my absence, because everyone was on their best behavior. Nathan and Andrew were perfectly civil to one another, and there was no mention of my heat spike or any last-minute attempts to convince me not to see my mother. It was like we’d all decided to pretend I wasn’t a ticking time bomb of Omega hormones.
Ever since I’d presented, my heats had never been more than a day of unnaturally heightened arousal and the barest whisper of a perfume. Enough to make me uncomfortable, but nothing like what they should have been. Even though they were irregular and came with little warning, they were just an inconvenience.
Now, though, I could tell something else was happening. I felt like a simmering pot just before it boiled. We needed to discuss the possibility that my heat would be a full-blown ordeal, but I didn’t have the courage to bring it up myself and be rejected.
If we didn’t talk about it, maybe it just wouldn’t happen.
An hour before the designated meeting time, Gabriel and I prepared to leave the apartment. He was wearing a black turtleneck and a leather jacket that made him look like an Italian James Bond. I noticed the bulge of a firearm on his hip.
“Is that really necessary?” I asked, nodding towards the gun.
