“It appears all the lads are rather smitten.”
My brow furrows and I’m ready to ask a follow up question when she smiles. “I’ll go get this right in.”
Huh, what’s Birdie up to?
“So, what tours do you have going on this week?” I ask Lain, putting the server’s words in the back of my mind.
“Well, we have another hike tomorrow, where Fergus will be, and then the coos on Thursday, which my old boy can’t go to. Wee sod likes to herd the coos, pisses Jamie off,” Lain muses.
“Who’s Jamie?”
“Owner of The Kilted Coo. He’s a few years younger than us. Grew up with Callum’s brother,” Greer says.
I clear my throat, taking a sip of my drink. “And how old is that, exactly?”
“Thirty, but I’m the youngest of all of us, clearly,” Lain says and Greer gives him a side eye.
“Mate, you’re a week younger than me.”
“Still younger than you,” Lain retorts.
“And you’re twenty-six?” Greer asks and I furrow my brows at him.
“How did you know that?”
He scratches his beard. “Effie might have said something,” Greer replies and I can appreciate the honesty.
“Is my lovely host usually in all of her guests’ business?”
“Nae. But she doesn’t usually have two unmated bonnie Omegas staying with her either,” Lain says.
They’re both flirting with me endlessly, and fuck, I like it. I like it too much and the thought of leading them on, of them thinking that this is something that it isn’t is overwhelming.
“I’m…I’m not looking for anything serious,” I blurt out. I need to make that clear here. If anything, I should have said this blatantly before I even kissed Greer.
He doesn’t look mad when I glance at him, just gives me a small smile.
“We know. You leave at the end of the month, we know what this is,” Greer says and while I take a breath of relief, there’s also something else…but I don’t dwell on the feeling.
When I glance at Lain, he’s just simply nodding. I feel like I just ruined the mood.
“I just made dinner awkward, didn’t I? I’m not good at this. I don’t date or go out with Alphas. I have a life in Chicago, I have Birdie. This is a vacation and I should have said somethingbefore earlier today, Greer. But it just felt so nice that I wasn’t even thinking about this stuff and it’s always important to be upfront about things and, well, now I’m just rambling.”
I glance up at Greer through my lashes. He reaches out and squeezes my hand.
“This is your holiday. We both get that. I knew what I was doing earlier, and I’d do it again.”
I take a deep breath and nod. We skirt around that conversation for the rest of the night, thankfully. The rest of the evening is filled with drinks, laughter, and my favorite, them bringing up moments from their childhood.
“He was being a right show off, Maisie, saying that he could easily pick up a grown ram at sixteen. Wasn’t as big as he is now,” Lain says, and Greer shakes his head, taking a sip of his beer. “He tried picking up the tup, and he fell backwards, landing right in a pile of shit.”
I’m laughing as they go back and forth and things feel easy, light, comfortable in a way I’ve never felt around men before. Nothing is sexually driven even if they do get more and more handsome through the night, but that could be more because of the wine more than anything.
Both of the men muse about their youth, and how much they still love this place. It makes me wonder about how I feel about going back home. I don’t talk about Chicago in the same way they do, hell I don’t even have a semblance of the same roots that they do. Everyone from high school moved on, and I lost track of my college friends.
I’ve spent so much time focused on success that I haven’t been living my life. I haven’t let myself feel anything. I knew there was going to be a point where everything would bubble over, where I couldn’t control how I was feeling, so naturally the universe chooses this moment to overwhelm me completely.
“Remember when you fell off Mr. Caffrey’s fence and your underwear got stuck on the picket?” Greer jokes back and I’m trying to hold a smile, though I know I’m failing epically right now.
