Page 17 of Omega’s Fold

Why does he keep asking me questions? I’ve made it clear it’s fine with me. How am I supposed to speak when he keeps looking at me like that?

While he keeps looking like that?

“No,” I manage finally.

“Okay,” he says.

He doesn’t move. My body has its own opinion about him standing five feet behind me and not moving. I have a visceral awareness of the exact point in space where he is. The wind brings his scent straight over my neck and into my lungs on every inhale.

I have a sudden, humiliating, vivid awareness of what it would be like to turn around and close those two feet and take hold of the front of his clean white shirt in both of my fists.

I do not do it. Instead I turn back to the post. I hear him turn and walk away. I keep my hands on the driver and I do not move until I can no longer hear his feet.

Then I put my forehead against the top of the fence post for a count of five.

“Fuck,” I say, out loud, to the post.

The post doesn’t answer.

Caleb and Matthew get home around four pm, walking in from the drive so Donna probably worked late and they’ve caught the bus.

I get back to work.

By the time the sun starts dropping, I’m sore and everything is aching.

I should have a surprise alpha in my house more often. It’s making me so much more productive.

I wash at the outdoor pump, cold water over the back of my neck and down my forearms, and I pull my flannel back on.

I come in through the back door and I know, before I take a second step, that something is different.

The house smells like food.

It’s not my food. I was planning on pulling stew out of the freezer and warming it up in the microwave.

It smells amazing.

I stop in the mudroom with my boots half off.

Somewhere Matthew is laughing. I finish with the boots and walk through into the kitchen.

Julian is at the stove. He has a wooden spoon in his hand and an actual apron around his waist that I recognize as belonging to my mother.

He has changed his clothes. He is in dark blue denim jeans, the kind Halsey’s sells and a plaid shirt, red and black check, also from Halsey’s, with the creases still in it from the plastic wrapping it came in.

It’s not a great surprise. It’s the only place to buy clothing in Parish Ridge that you don’t have to order out for.

The thought suddenly strikes me that Halsey’s only sells two kinds of underwear for men, which are plain blue cotton boxers and black briefs.

All of a sudden, my eyes are doing something they have no business doing because I am desperately curious to know which ones he chose. I tear my gaze off his backside and I fix them on the wall clock above the stove. The wall clock says seven.

Matthew is on a kitchen chair pulled up to the counter beside Julian, a tea towel tucked into the waist of his jeans. He has a bowl in front of him and he is stirring something in it, very serious about the stirring.

“Wyatt!” Matthew says. “Julian’s making pasta.”

“I can see that.”

“With mushrooms and cream and garlic. He asked if we liked mushrooms and I said I liked everything. I said you liked everything too.”