Page 71 of Omega’s Forward

“It’s true though.”

“No, it isn’t.” He doesn’t shout it. That’s somehow worse. “I’ll tell you what is true. You came back from that coffee run and locked yourself in the basement — that night, I called Priya. The next morning she called the league office. The club’s public position didn’t move, because I was not going to stand in front of cameras and bless what you did. But I told them their best player sitting in the stands helped nobody, and I asked them to keep it as short as they could defend. They were talking about eight, Callahan. You got four. Maybe my call mattered, maybe it didn’t, but I sure as hell didn’t try to screw you over.”

I can’t say anything. He isn’t finished.

“And Dorn. My lawyers have been on the league about Dorn since the week of the hit. Formal complaint, liability, the lot. It’s still crawling through their legal department and it costs me an obscene amount per letter. Priya can forward you the entire file.”

Oh crap. Is that true? It might be. It has to be. He’s not going to lie about something so easily checked. Surely, he wouldn’t?

That means that I came back to him just post-heat and turned cold for no good reason.

I am a complete dickhead. And I told everyone he did it. The whole room thinks that Everett Rourke tried to fuck me over because I told them he did.

I’m the one who screwed up. No wonder he just left. No wonder he doesn’t want me as a father to his child.

The fury dies inside me in an instant and all that is left is shame.

He’s still looking at me, his face flushed and angry.

I only have one option left. “Fuck, Everett. I’m sorry. I am really sorry. I was wrong. I apologize.”

Surprise crosses his face like it’s the last thing he expected me to say.

I let out a sigh and shake my head. “I can’t believe I’ve screwed this up so badly. Look, I’m still in about the baby. I have to be. I want to be a good father. I’ll move over here if I have to. Give up the Barons. And I don’t expect anything from you but the opportunity to be that good father.”

He’s still staring at me like I’ve grown a second head.

But now that everything is coming out, I can’t seem to stop. Not with that insane honey orange scent driving me mad. Not with those bright eyes looking at me.

I have no filter left. It has completely disintegrated. “But if you want more, I still want to try. You are the most beautiful maddening thing I have ever met and despite everything I still want you.”

The room goes quiet. All the anger has burned off. What’s left is the two of us and six months of wanting with nowhere to hide. His scent has been climbing this whole time — the orange gone rich, that new warmth underneath — and mine must be answering, because his nostrils flare and his knuckles are white on the counter’s edge.

“You should sleep,” he says. He doesn’t move. “You look half dead.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“No,” he says. “Neither do I.”

He comes around the counter. It’s the first time since the doorway that there’s been nothing between us, and neither of us pretends we don’t know what the last step is. He takes a fistful of my shirt, tips his face up, furious about every part of it, and kisses me.

I groan into his mouth. My hands find him — waist, back, the firm new curve of him pressed between us — and both our scents go up at once, orange and woodsmoke twisting together into the thing that belongs to nobody else on earth. Six months. I could live a hundred years and not be made to forget what he tastes like.

“Bed’s behind you,” he says against my mouth. “You can sleep after.”

I pick him up. He makes the same noise of protest he made the last time I did it, with the same total lack of force, and wraps his legs around me anyway.

I set him down on the edge of the bed and go to my knees on the floor between his. He drags my shirt over my head. I start on his buttons and make myself go slowly, one at a time, because he refuses to let me tear anything. He’s changed. Fuller through the middle, softer at the hips, a curve where he was flat, and my hand goes over it without asking me first. We both go still.

“Later,” he says, low. “You can be soppy about it later. Right now I need—”

I put my mouth on his throat and end the sentence for him. The gland there is swollen, hot under my tongue, and when I drag my teeth across it — not biting, never that, not without being asked — the sound he makes goes through me like the crowd after a goal.

“Off.” His hands at my waistband. Same order as the first time, same voice. I have never obeyed anything faster.

There’s slick down the inside of his thighs already, and the scent of it fills the room, sweeter than I remember. When I get two fingers into him he drops back on his elbows, swears at me in that accent, and orders me to stop being careful.

“You’re pregnant.”