A deep ache that was all too familiar echoed through me. The loneliness I’d held close like a protective armor felt wrong now.
This was it. My one and only chance to have a life I never thought possible—if I just got out of my own way.
Listening to her laugh, watching the two of them be so close, seeing the real emotion on Greer and Rylan’s face last night… all of it made me realize that I wanted to be a part of something like this.
Something I didn’t just leave behind at the end of the day.
“Roxie… I owe you a major apology,” I found myself saying before I could overthink it again. “The way I acted when you arrived was childish and unlike me. I’d worked my ass off to build my reputation, and them hiring you to watch over me and the team felt like a slap in the face. I shouldn’t have taken it personally or out on you.”
This omega was far too feisty to reassure me. She simply watched me, arms crossed, eyebrow raised, waiting for the rest.
“I was unprofessional and putting my own reputation on the line. It was ridiculous and it won’t happen again. I’m not sure where that leaves us, but I don’t want to start anything with that hanging over us.”
This time when I stopped, she started speaking, her voice harsh.
“Would you have apologized for this if I wasn’t your scent match?” she challenged.
“Eventually,” I said with utter certainty. “I was already creeping toward it when you arrived here. I’m just a stubborn bastard.”
Her shoulders dropped a little. I think she needed to hear that, and honestly, I needed to say it.
“For the sake of transparency… I dug into you. I spent hours looking into your past posts and tried to get to know who you were. At the time, I was just looking for some kind of reason to show Kingsford that you had no business working with the Narwhals. Maybe expose you, even. I was convinced that you had to have a grudge against us. It was common knowledge that Lana Flynn was your close friend and I just knew this could never turn out in our favor.”
Roxie didn’t get angry at my confession. Hell, she didn’t even seem hurt. In fact, she let out a laugh.
“Funny enough, I met her because of what the guys put her through. My cousin is in her pack and he contacted me because of my reputation. He thought I could give her a platform to say her part before they had a chance to twist it. So, that’s what I did for her. Then I found myself tangled in the drama of them trying to kick deltas from the league. She was against that, too, and we both refused to let those jerks twist her trauma into a movement it had no place in. If she had no grudge, how could I?”
When she put it like that, it all sounded so reasonable. I knew I was the asshole in this situation but this made me realize I was blinded to more than I thought. This omega was forever throwing me into a loop.
“It was definitely not my finest moment. Also, I found nothing on you,” I admitted.
She snorted. “That’s because I know how the internet works and I take pride in my reputation. Even when I was in high school working on the paper I kept my posts clean. The internet is forever. I keep all my skeletons firmly in the closet.”
“Well,” Kota said, interjecting like he couldn’t keep quiet a second longer. “As long as you’re good to my omega, I have no problem with you, Coach. You’ve done a good job with the team.You may work us a little hard, but this kind of made up for it,” he said, gesturing around the resort.
His usual smile was back in place. I swear that kid could find the bright spot in anything.
Fuck. I had to stop referring to them as kids.
“Why does it look like you’re having a battle with yourself?” he asked, calling me right out. This delta had no filter whatsoever.
“Because, apparently, fate thought it would be cute to match me to an entire pack that’s half my age.”
“To be fair, Greer is closer to your age,” Kota mused, making me groan. That did not help the way he thought it did.
“We go back in the morning. We can handle everything else the world throws at us after that. I just want to know where we stand before we go,” Roxie said. “I’m not going to make you be a part of this.”
“Just for the record,” Kota said, holding up his hand before I could answer her. “She doesn’t care how old you are, alpha. Your age has nothing to do with your integrity or your chemistry with her.”
“I haven’t done a good job of showing my integrity,” I admitted, my voice rough.
I fucking hated that my own words had come back to bite me. The fact that I’d felt confident enough to say them in the first place made it even worse. I had tried to ruin her reputation, while trying to defend my own.
“Look, I get it. I can understand that you were threatened by someone being here to show the world exactly who your team was. The team that you didn’t know very well yet. How could you predict just how this was going to turn out?”
She’d gotten right to the bottom of my fears before I even realized what they were. The team was new to me, and at thetime, we hadn’t even had a chance to prove to each other that we were going to make the right choices.
I wanted to start over from the beginning, but that time has passed.
