Page 3 of The Last Great Omegaverse

“I don’t actually know where home is,” I say, which comes out more honest than I meant it. “I mean… I do. It’s a house full of dust sheets and a fridge with something unidentifiable in a jar. That’s not really home.”

“Give it time.” He’s already got a hand under my elbow, steadying me, and it’s a nice hand, hot through my coat sleeve. “C’mon. I’ll walk you.”

The walk back is cold and clear, stars doing their overachieving small-town thing, no streetlights past Main to compete with them. I’m tipsy enough that the gravel drive feels longer than it did the first time and shorter than it should, both at once. Asher keeps a hand at the small of my back the whole way, not pushing, but present, and by the time we reach the porch I’ve somehow ended up facing him instead of the door.

“Well,” he says. “Home.”

“Thrilling.” I look up at him. The porch light—is it on a timer?—catches the side of his face. Up close he’s even more unfairly put together than he was across a bar stool. I am tipsy and lonely and touch-starved in a way I haven’t let myself feel in months. I reach up and fist a hand in his flannel and pull him down before I’ve made any kind of formal decision to do so.

He kisses like he means it. Slow at first, testing, like he’s giving me every chance to change my mind, and when I don’t, when I press closer instead, he makes a low sound against my mouth that goes straight through me. His hand comes up to cradle the back of my head like I’m something worth being gentle with. I back us into the door, or he walks me into it, I genuinely can’t tell whose idea it is. The wood is cold through my coat and his mouth is very warm. I fumble the door open behind me without breaking the kiss, which is an impressive feat of coordination for someone who’s had four or five ciders.

We stumble inside. Dust sheets and all. His hands are at my waist, mine are working the buttons of his flannel. It’s getting flushed and faster and less tender. Some small sober part of my brain is standing very far off to the side going this escalated while the rest of me is entirely uninterested in slowing down.

He pulls back first.

Just enough that his forehead rests against mine, both of us breathing hard, his hands going still at my waist instead of anywhere further.

“Wren.” My name again, delicate, the way he said it at the bar. “Hey. Wren, look at me a second.”

“I’m looking.” I am, technically, though the room’s doing a slow, pleasant tilt.

“How much did you have to drink tonight?”

“Not that much.”

“You had three ciders on an empty stomach after a long bus ride and no sleep. That’s not… I’m not trying to be a buzzkill, I promise you I don’t want to be a buzzkill right now, but I can’t—” He exhales, and I feel it. Something in his voice has gone rough, like this is costing him something to say. “I can’t do this with you tonight. Not like this.”

“I want you to.” I mean it. I also recognize, somewhere under the cider and the fatigue, that meaning it isn’t quite the same as it counting.

“I know.” His thumb brushes my jaw, gentle, almost apologetic. “Come find me and tell me that again when you’ve slept and eaten something that isn’t Dot’s stew soaking up cider, and we’ll see. But I’m not going to be the guy who took advantage of the new girl on her first night in town. I’d like to not hate myself in the morning, if it’s all the same to you.”

I want to argue. I try to summon the argument. What comes out instead is something closer to a laugh, small and startled, because it’s such a decent thing to say, and decent isn’t a word I was expecting to need tonight.

“You’re annoying,” I tell him.

“So I’ve been told.” He steers me, gently, toward the stairs, an arm solid around my waist. “Water first, then you’re off to bed.”

I don’t remember much after that. A glass of water pressed into my hand, the room tilting less once I’m horizontal, his smooth voice telling me he’s going to sit downstairs a while, make sure I’m alright, no funny business, scout’s honor. I’m asleep before I can decide whether I believe him.

I wake up to gray morning light, a headache that’s more warning than reality, and the disorienting knowledge that I am not alone in the house.

Chapter 2

Asher

Here’s a thing nobody warns you about: keeping watch over someone sleeping off too many ciders is a lot less romantic than it sounds in the books Dot keeps stashed behind the bar for slow nights.

It’s mostly just lying very still on a couch a floor removed from where she actually is, listening to an old house settle and creak around a stranger who isn’t strange enough anymore, and trying very hard not to think about how it felt with her fist in my shirt and her mouth soft and certain against mine, because thinking about that while I’m supposed to be behaving myself feels like cheating at my own good deed.

I found the couch by process of elimination. There’s a dust sheet balled up in the corner where I dragged it off before I sat. Underneath it the couch is decent—old, but clean, good bones, like everything else in this house—and I’ve got my boots off and my feet up. I’ve also absolutely no intention of sleeping, because somebody in this house should probably stay upright in case she needs water, or the bathroom, or somebody to tell her it’s alright, this is a strange bed in a strange town and she’s not alone.

I could’ve told her last night. That’s the thing sitting on my chest, heavier than the couch cushions. Three separate times—once at the bar, once on the walk, once with her hand fisted in my shirt and my better judgment hanging on by a thread—I had a perfectly good opening to say hey, funny story, I’m actually your new neighbor, my whole pack’s been keeping half an eye on this place since your grandmother passed, we’ve got a complicated legal interest in whether or not you manage to save it and every single time I let the moment slide past instead.

I tell myself it’s because the timing was bad. Girl’s exhausted, girl’s grieving a grandmother, girl’s had a long bus ride from hell. You don’t lead with property dispute on a night like that.

That’s true. It’s also not the whole truth, and I know it, lying here on her dead grandmother’s couch at one in the morning with my conscience doing laps.

The whole truth is I liked being just a guy at a bar. Nobody’s business rival. Nobody’s obligation. Not “one of the Ashworth pack,” not any of the shorthand this town’s had me filed under since I was seventeen years old and figured out that being liked was easier than being taken seriously. Just Asher, buying a pretty, furious, exhausted woman a cider, making her laugh so hard cider nearly came out her nose. That felt like something worth protecting for one more hour.