Page 55 of Final Drive

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Eli

“Quinton tried to kiss me.”

I set the tablet down and take the extra second I need to get my face under control before I look up. Reese is in my doorway with her arms wrapped around herself, and the last thing she needs is another Alpha making this about him.

“Close the door,” I say.

She does, then stays near it like she’s already reconsidering coming here. I nod at the worn leather chair across from mine, the one Jackson takes when we’re both in this room, and I wait until she’s in it.

“Start at the beginning.”

It comes out in pieces. The library, the project, the dinner she knew better than to agree to and agreed to anyway because she is starving for one hour of ordinary. The way Quinton talked about the pack like a condition she could be treated for. The careful work of positioning himself as the alternative, the exit, the decent man who only wants to help.

Then she tells me about the slip.

“He called me an Omega,” she says, and her voice goes on the word. “He tried to cover it. Said he meant Beta. We both knew. He knows what I am, Eli. How does he know?”

I’ve been running it since she started talking. Kinsley had the restaurant footage. Kinsley hates her. Quinton has history with Gray and has been circling Reese for weeks, and the line between those three points is short and straight.

I don’t say any of it yet.

“What happened after he said it?”

“I tried to leave. He grabbed my arm.” She looks down at her own wrist. “Then he tried to kiss me. I shoved him and got out.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Her laugh comes out brittle. “I made a scene in a restaurant. People were staring. He’s going to tell everyone I’m crazy, or paranoid, or⁠—”

“You defended yourself against an Alpha who put hands on you without asking. He’s the one who should be humiliated.”

She goes quiet. I’ve watched Reese apologize for taking up space in a boat she commands, for needing things from men who would give her anything, for reacting badly when somebody gives her a reason to. Somewhere along the way, she started treating every reasonable response like another thing she has to justify.

“I need Tyler on this,” I tell her. “If Quinton knows your designation, somebody told him. If somebody told him, there’s a trail, and Tyler will find it.”

“You think it’s Kinsley.”

“I think she’s the connection that makes the most sense.” I put my elbows on my knees. “Go back over the last few weeks. Has he turned up anywhere he shouldn’t have been? Asked anything too specific? Known something before you told him?”

She works at it, and I can nearly watch the memories reorganize.

“He texted me during practice once. Said the lacrosse team was running the lake trail and he saw us.” She stops. “He’s their captain. He sets the routes.”

“What else?”

“He knew about Kowalski. He brought up the articles before I did, and they’d been up a few hours.” She shakes her head. “He had a whole position ready about how the team was handling it wrong. How we were making it worse by closing ranks.”

“He was isolating you.” It’s textbook, which is somehow worse. Find somebody who’s already tired, separate them from the people holding them up, install yourself as the only safe place left. “Making you doubt us so you’d come to him.”

“And I let him.” Her voice goes flat with self-disgust. “God, I’m so stupid.”

“You’re exhausted and you’re frightened and you wanted one thing in your week that wasn’t a negotiation.” I get up and crouch in front of her chair so we’re level. “He used that. That’s a fact about him.”

Her eyes are wet and she doesn’t let any of it fall, which is the part I’ve never known what to do with. I’ve watched this woman take hits that would put most people on the floor, set her jaw, and call the next twenty.

“What do we do?” she asks.