Page 4 of Final Drive

Then I put the phone in my pocket and walk into the kitchen, where my future is being worked out in spreadsheets.

Zane looks up from the stove. “Finally. These are getting cold.” He slides a plate across the island. “Eat. You had nothing yesterday except adrenaline and lake water.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re deflecting, which is a different thing.” He gives me a look sharper than his usual grin. “You okay, Cox? Actually okay, not the kind where you say fine so everyone stops asking.”

The question catches me sideways, and for a second I consider telling him the truth. That I’m drowning in a room full of people who would die for me. That I keep waiting for one of them to say he wants me and not just that he intends to keep me safe.

“I’m tired,” I say instead. “It’s been a lot.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t buy it, but he lets it go. “It has.”

Around me the pack keeps planning. Tyler runs numbers, Gray frowns at a text, Bo and Jackson talk low at the far end of the island, and Cameron makes coffee while he listens to all of it.

Beckett catches my eye across the room and raises an eyebrow.

It’s been happening more since the bonds started forming, this business of reading each other without saying anything, and I’m still not used to it. I give him a nod he doesn’t believe either.

So I eat my pancakes and smile when somebody looks my way. Jackson claimed me. Beckett claimed me. Cameron knotted me in a way that still makes my hands unsteady when I think about it. Gray stood on a dock and burned his family down for what we’re building here.

I have a pack to help build and a championship to win, and I can want the rest of it later.

Zane slides the syrup across the island without being asked, and I take it, because it’s the only thing anybody has handed me this morning that wasn’t a strategy.

CHAPTER TWO

Gray

The Magnolia Club hasn’t changed since I was twelve, dragged here in a blazer two sizes too big to learn which fork went with the salad course. The same dark paneling, the same oil portraits of men who built fortunes on other people’s backs and called it legacy, and the same weight coming down off every square inch of the place.

My father is already seated when I arrive, centered at his usual table with a clear line to the door. He taught me to do that.

“Gray.” He doesn’t stand or offer his hand, just gestures at the chair across from him like I’m an associate arriving for a quarterly review.

“Harrison.”

His jaw tightens at the first name, which is the only thing I’m going to get out of this lunch.

I sit and take the menu from a server who has known my family for three decades and has the sense to vanish. The crowd is thin for a Monday, mostly older members doing deals over crab cakes and bourbon, and nobody is paying attention to us. That’s deliberate. My father doesn’t have public confrontations. He has private conversations that leave no witnesses.

“I’m glad you came.” He unfolds his napkin. “I was concerned you might let emotion override good judgment.”

“I’m here to listen. That’s all I promised.”

“Fair enough.” He signals the server and orders for both of us without asking. Filet, medium rare, asparagus, the same thing he’s ordered me since I was old enough to chew. “I’ve had time to reflect on Saturday.”

“You mean when you tried to drag Reese away from her own team.”

“I mean when you made a spectacle of yourself in front of half the rowing community.” His voice stays pleasant. Anyone watching would think we were comparing golf handicaps. “Do you have any idea what people are saying?”

“I don’t care what people are saying.”

“You should.” He leans back and studies me the way he studies quarterly reports. “The Lockwood name carries weight in this state and in this sport. You’ve spent twenty-two years building a reputation and you’re prepared to throw it away for a girl you met in February.”

“She’s not just a girl.”

“No, she’s an Omega who has managed to entangle herself with an entire crew of Alphas. Quite the accomplishment.” He lets that sit. “Tell me, does she keep you on a rotation, or is it more of a free-for-all?”