Page 19 of Omega’s Fold

The three of them stay at the table. I hear Matthew starting up again as I leave the kitchen, asking Julian about something new, the tone of his voice already back up to delighted. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.

I head straight for the shower and let the water beat the dust of the day off me, then I scrub myself until I’m pink.

Yeah, I was avoiding Julian but I am also exhausted. I realize it as I step out of the shower, and it suddenly hits me.

I don’t put the lamp on when I get into my bed. I just drop the towel and get straight into bed naked.

I’m asleep in moments.

I don’t know how long I’ve been under when a creak on the landing pulls me back up. Footsteps sound and then the door to my mother’s room creaks open.

He is on the other side of the wall. I hear him set something down on the dresser. The floorboards give as he walks to the window and he opens it up half an inch for air. The springs of the bed squeak as he sits on the edge of it.

I shut my eyes.

The house settles into the quiet it settles into every night.

I can smell him.

It is faint. The door is closed but that doesn’t matter. His scent is coming through the seam of my own door, and it’s in my bed now, in my lungs, in the air above my pillow, every time I breathe.

I can’t do this. I need to think about something else. Anything else.

I reach across and turn on the lamp, then open the drawer of the nightstand.

The mortgage letter is on top. I don’t need to take it out to know what the figures say.

I shut my eyes. I don’t know why I did that: tried to take my focus off one problem by reminding myself of my other one.

I put it back and close the drawer, then I lie on my back in the dark and I listen to my alpha breathing through the wall.

No, not my alpha. He’s not mine and he’s not going to be.

I am not going to do this.

I am going to do this.

My hand moves under the covers before I’ve decided to let it.

I push my shorts down over my hips. I am already hard. I have been hard since I sat down to dinner, and I have been pretending I wasn’t.

My body is not willing to pretend any longer. I wrap a hand around myself and my own breath catches at the first stroke, already too sensitive.

I think about him at the stove stirring the pan with his sleeves rolled up. I think about his forearms. I think about the clean line of his jaw when he turned his head toward me earlier. I think about his voice, deep, careful, saying my name. I think about what it would be like if the door between our rooms opened right now. If I heard his feet on the hallway floor. If the handle turned. If he came in, and stood at the foot of the bed, and did not say a word.

I think about him climbing onto the bed over me. The weight of him. His hand pinning my wrist down above my head. His mouth on my throat. His scent, warm and green and close, in my lungs from every direction at once. That does it. There is nothing left in the world but his weight and his hand and his mouth.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek and I come into my own fist with my face turned into them.

For a long moment I just breathe.

Then I get up, clean up quickly and get back into bed. I turn onto my side with my face to the wall between my room and his, and I shut my eyes, and I tell myself I am going to sleep.

6. Julian

The satellite company is right on time. I see the white van turning into the yard as I rinse my coffee mug under the faucet. I check my watch. Eight forty-five. I have not seen Wyatt this morning.

The walls in this house are thin enough that I heard him breathing through mine half the night, or thought I did, and at some point that must have slid over into sleep, because when I opened my eyes at five there was birdsong and gray light and his truck was already gone.