by Willa Okati
“About half an hour, at this point.” The attendant nodded at him with a sympathetic grimace before pushing his cart forward.
Half an hour. I can do half an hour.
Wishing wouldn’t make the wheels turn faster, but with nothing to look at outside in the dark, Zach adjusted his position so he could get a better view of the passengers in his car. Like most Omegas he wasn’t very tall. Some new folks had gotten on and others disembarked while he’d dozed, and he liked wondering what their stories were.
Two young Alphas who acted like frat bros; interesting, they weren’t the usual size for Alphas, but small and compact and they weren’t at each other’s throats but laughed and joked like best friends. A couple that had to be recently married from the way they could barely resist climbing all over each other; an Omega with a contented smile, probably on his way back home, and --
Oh.
Oh, God. Zach’s heart jumped into his throat and wedged there. Three rows ahead, a profile almost as familiar as his own turned to smile at the attendant as he refused the offer of coffee. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be, he hadn’t seen that profile in real life since he was eighteen, but --
Alex.
He’d changed -- no, he’d grown up, the way everyone did, the bones of his face maturing from soft boyish cuteness to strong, masculine definition. His hair had gone from somewhere between red and blond to full-blown ginger, with a slightly darker red beard that he’d trimmed and shaped to his strong, stubborn jaw. He wore the kind of casual suit that would have cost the equivalent of a month’s rent in a big city, but it wasn’t as lovely as his hands. Zach remembered them all too well. Elegant hands with sturdy knuckles and deft fingers. If Zach had closed his eyes, he could have felt those hands on the bare skin of his memory.
He did and didn’t look a thing like the boy Zach remembered but it was him.
Alex.
You never forgot your first.
“I love you. And I know you love me too.”
“I’m sorry. No. That’s not what I want.”
Zach had to stop staring. Alex would sense it any second now and look around.
Stop.
He tried looking at his tablet to calm down. Someone passed by, walking down the aisle and back again, but Zach barely noticed. He focused so hard it made his head ache, but even with the coffee humming through his veins the words swam on the backlit page, and he couldn’t help it. His gaze drifted back up, drawn like a moth to a flame.
Zach’s body twitched with the first pangs of arousal, wanting what he’d had once upon a time. He remembered it all, and he remembered it perfectly. He dreamed about it, when he slept. The taste of Alex’s skin, the softness and hardness of his mouth and how his eagerness had nearly rubbed the insides of Zach’s thighs raw. The fullness, almost too much and too tight, when he slid inside Zach.
“I love you. And I know you love me too.”
“I’m sorry. No. That’s not what I want.”
Anger slowly took alarm and unhappiness’s place -- anger, and frustration with himself. Zach should have sensed this train was to be avoided. Dodged. Something! And Alex, sitting there as if he didn’t have a care in the world -- it was everything Zach had wanted for him, the entire reason he’d left Alex in the first place, but seeing it in the flesh opened all those old wounds back up and made them bleed afresh. The pain from that moment of saying no to what Alex had offered with all his big, warm heart cut sharper than any knife -- but he’d had to. You didn’t do that to your first boyfriend. You didn’t take him up on a marriage proposal and tie him down to a shitty life based on a few promises made in the afterglow.
Alex…
No.
They must have been traveling farther and faster than Zach had realized, or he was more out of it than he’d known. Between one blink and the next the train’s PA system crackled to far-too-loud life again, announcing they’d reach their next station at Second Chance in ten minutes.
Second Chance? What kind of name was that for a town?
Alex looked up at the speaker, nodded in an absent sort of way, and stood to open the overhead compartment. He took out a bulging messenger bag, slung it over his shoulder and stuffed a pair of thick gloves and a warm knit hat in the pockets of his coat. Second Chance must have been his stop.
Zach caught his lip between his teeth, torn between his body’s demand that he go to Alex and the common sense of staying right where he was. His heart might be breaking all over again and he hated doing it. It made him so angry his temples pounded, and his hands curled into tight fists, but fury was better than grief. He’d rather rage against the dying of the light than cry over a candle.
Or what if -- maybe if he kept it to a simple hello --
Stop. Zach dug his fingernails into his knees. He knew better, for God’s sake, and he hadn’t kept his distance this long to crumble like a pillar of salt just from catching sight of Alex again. Let it go. Let it be nothing more than a missed connection on a connecting train.
Let him go as many times as you have to, until it takes.
And Zach would have. Really he would.
But as Alex walked past him -- always so eager to do things, that one; he would start heading for the exits before the train had even come to a halt -- he only made it two steps past Zach’s seat before he stopped. As Zach’s heart sank down past the pit of his stomach he sensed Alex pause, then turn to look back.
He stopped, almost exactly the way Zach had, blank with surprise. “Do I know you?”
Zach held his breath. Could he lie? Yes, but this new, matured Alex would have the life experience not to believe him, and he hadn’t changed nearly as much as Alex had. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“I do know you. I know your face,” Alex said. His voice had matured with the rest of him as he aged, going from sweet to firm with a rasp on the edges. “Zachary?”
“I go by Zach now.” That wasn’t what Zach had meant to say at all, and the annoyance helped alleviate the fluttering in his stomach. “And I know your face too, Alex.”
Alex grinned at him, as boyish as he used to look when seen from this angle. “I go by Alexander now. That’s funny, isn’t it? We did the same thing in reverse. I went longer, you went shorter.”
Without being invited, he dropped into an empty aisle seat across from Zach and turned at the waist so he could keep on looking. No, not looking, that wasn’t a strong enough word. Studying him, intense in a way he’d only started to be when he was young and it made Zach want to fidget, but he’d be damned if he showed his soft underbelly now. “I would say I can’t believe it’s you, but if I see a thing, I believe it.”
“An interesting philosophy,” Zach managed.
God, how awkward. He sounded like the primmest queen who’d ever quirked his pinky finger drinking tea, but he would swear he could feel Alexander’s body heat radiating gently away from him and all he wanted to do was lean in and finally warm up. He couldn’t. He daredn’t, which probably wasn’t a real word but ought to be.
He cleared his throat and tried again. “This is your stop?”
“I wasn’t planning on taking a flying leap off with my luggage like Superman.” The corner of Alexander’s mouth lifted in a sideways quirk. He leaned a little farther forward, closer to Zach. “Yes, this is my stop. Not yours?”
“No, I’m headed -- north,” Zach said, then pretended he hadn’t nearly slipped up. God, Alexander smelled so good, like some warm, spicy custom cologne that cost a king’s ransom per ounce. Every Alpha had their own unique fragrance, which got stronger as they aged. Omegas were the same, only their scent changed when they were were and weren’t with child. Or when they wanted to become that way. Alexander’s scent had been faint but addictive when they were young. It nearly intoxicated Zach now.
All the more reason to keep a cool head, he warned himself. And it was, by far, better not to let Alexander know exactly where he was headed. He made a vague gesture upward. “The New York area.�
�
“You would have to be, seeing as the train’s pointed that direction.”
Flip, flip, flip, wasn’t he? And so damn witty. Zach wasn’t at all sure he liked it. It made him want to tap his foot and scowl. But the train hadn’t come to a stop yet, so -- one more try. “You look well.”
Alexander snorted quietly. “Do I? You look tired. And cold.”
“A few days of not sleeping well. Nothing to worry about.”
“Mmm,” Alexander vocalized, a noncommittal noise. Suddenly -- so quickly and smoothly Zach didn’t see it coming in time to relax -- Alexander had reached out to brush the backs of his knuckles along Zach’s jawline. He’d come closer still while he was at it, so near that if he’d wanted to Zach could have counted his eyelashes. He wasn’t smiling now. “It’s been the better part of a decade. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Was he waiting for an answer? “Neither did I.”
“On purpose?”
The question hit hard and fast like a jab under the ribs, and Zach’s mouth dropped open for a startled second before his temper kindled. “I didn’t choose this train knowing you’d be on it.”
“Hmm. The whims of fate.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” Zach lied flatly. “There’s chaos, and there’s random chance, and sometimes things collide. Nothing else. What are you doing?”
He reached up to catch Alexander’s wrist, but too late.
Alexander had moved his knuckles to Zach’s cheek, his touch so light but so very there, so present, it nearly burned the skin. “Your face,” he said, turning Zach slightly toward the light. “I remember those cheekbones. They were softer then.” He traced the sharp line. “You grew into your bones. More beautiful than I’d imagined, and… I’ve imagined, Zach.”
An electric spark, not visible or tangible, yet still somehow very real, jumped between him and Zach, who couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He wanted to snap back something witty, something sassy, but --
Alexander wanted him. Maybe willingly, maybe not. Zach couldn’t tell. No Omega could miss those signals, and if they cared in any way, they couldn’t help but respond. Alexander would be able to smell it -- already had; he’d broken out that sideways quirk of his mouth again. Oh, he knew. But what did he expect to happen? This was his stop, not Zach’s. Ten more minutes and Zach would be gone again and besides, he couldn’t jump the bones of a man he’d broken up with years and years ago even if he wouldn’t mind!
Damn him for being himself.
Zach pulled away from Alexander’s touch and put his hand up between them to stop him trying again. “Don’t. Just -- don’t.”
Alexander opened his mouth, no doubt ready with another quicksilver retort, but he never got it out. With no warning, with a sudden and sickening lurch and the screaming of metal against metal, the train car jerked sideways and sent them flying one against the other, and both bodies against the window, hard. The lights buzzed, sparked, and went out.
Darkness.
Silence.
Alexander lay on top of him, chest to chest, breath to breath, in the abrupt and utter quiet of the night.
Chapter Two
Zach might have -- not screamed, exactly, though the noise was close enough to make no difference -- at the shock of impact and the vanishing light. It was too short a sound, cut off by the abrupt impact of Alexander’s weight on top of him, nearly full-length, his face pressed to the man’s shoulder. Blind in the dark, he reached up to scrabble for anything he could find to hold onto, and twisted his fingers into the thick, warm fabric of Alexander’s coat. Only enough to stop himself shaking quite so thoroughly. He’d dare anyone to blame him for it, though! After something like that?
“Shh,” Alexander said, his breath warmer still where it fanned against Zach’s cheek. “Shh. Don’t move yet. I’ve got you.”
He did. More than, Zach realized. The momentum might have started them off, but Alexander -- he’d thrown his body across Zach’s, hadn’t he? Shielded him from whatever was coming with his whole self.
Oh God.
“I love you. And I know you love me too.”
“I’m sorry. No. That’s not what I want.”
A trickle of something warm and wet ran down Zach’s cheek. Blood? No. Salt. Tears. He squeezed his eyes shut, ordering himself to not be so weak again, but he should have known he couldn’t fool this new Alexander. He pressed his forehead to Zach’s, murmuring quiet things, not really words, more like simple, soothing sounds. “It’s all right, sweetheart, I think it’s over. Don’t be scared. I’ve got you; I’m not letting go.”
Oh. God.
Zach didn’t do it on purpose, but he didn’t stop himself. With his hands knotted in Alexander’s jacket, he raised himself a few inches and it was easy, so easy, to tilt his head and press his mouth to Alexander’s. Alexander stilled for half a beat, made a brief breathless sound, and then -- melted -- into Zach, warmer and heavier, his hand cupping, cradling Zach’s cheek. He pressed his thumb to the soft spot beneath Zach’s ear, by his jaw, firm and gentle, as he deepened the kiss.
Alexander tasted like Zach remembered. Exactly the same. Even if he didn’t kiss anything like the boy he’d been, back when --
Zach jolted away from Alexander, shocked at himself. “I --” He stopped there, lost for words, but unkinked his fists and pressed his palms flat against Alexander’s chest until Alexander moved back far enough he could take a full breath. “I shouldn’t have -- I don’t know why I did that.”
He felt, rather than saw, Alexander’s sigh, and felt the brush of Alexander’s thumb over his lower lip too. “People do things, sometimes. Don’t they?”
Zach didn’t know what to say in reply. He shivered, colder still now the train’s heating had cut off, wishing he could see something besides darkness. There should have been emergency lights and there weren’t, and it frightened him. “What happened? Some kind of explosion?”
“No.” Despite the quickness of his answer, Zach couldn’t help noticing Alexander was still shielding Zach’s body with his own. He sounded thoughtful. “No flash, and the vibrations felt like they came from somewhere deep. Maybe something happened at the quarry.”
“There’s a quarry?”
Alexander wasn’t paying attention to him any longer. Probably listening for other things like the train creaking, maybe tipping -- no, don’t even think about the possibility, it’s over, he said so. “Second Chance has a quarry, yeah. And a mine. The old families built the town around them. They use dynamite and blasting caps to open up new seams. Something might have gone off when it shouldn’t, or it could have been a tree falling across the tracks. I don’t know. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“You couldn’t tell?” Alexander’s short beard scratched Zach’s cheek when he shook his head, and if his chuckle was a little unsteady Zach decided he could be kind enough not to call him on it. “Whatever this was, it didn’t hurt me.”
“Good. That’s good.” The emergency lights finally flickered on, pale blue and weak, but anything was an improvement. Zach could tell now they’d landed at a forty-five-degree angle, leaning sharply to one side. Sounds started to filter through the shock now he could see: screams, sobs, and the rumble-thump-scramble of panicked people. “The others in the car. The steward! He was so kind. Can you see if anyone’s hurt?”
Alexander went still again, though God only knew why because Zach certainly didn’t. “I don’t know, but if we’re all right I’m going to find out.”
Zach shot out a hand to grab him by the wrist before he could move. “Not by yourself, you’re not.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone, don’t worry.” A flash of white, a sharp smile, quick as lightning, darted across Alexander’s face. “You think I would, now? Hold still. I’m going to get up now, help you up too, and we’ll do what needs doing. See if we can find out what happened.”
* * *
It wasn’t as bad as it c
ould have been. Thank God. Once they were on their feet and steady enough to walk up the car’s new slope, everyone Zach and Alexander checked was shaken, but no one had taken any damage worse than a bump here and a bruise or a scrape there. The steward had broken or twisted his ankle and either bitten his tongue or split his lip. He made Zach think of a B-movie vampire with blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, but he was lucid. He’d found a lump of ice to tuck in his cheek and waved Zach off with a garbled directive of some sort.
“I’m sorry, what?” Zach asked, baffled.
Alexander must have been more fluent in muffled than Zach, because he nodded. “I’ll check with the engineer and come back, or have someone else come back to fill you in. All right?”
The steward gave Alexander a thumbs up, but the second his back was turned he gave Zach an impressed look and brought the second thumb up too.
Oh lord. But there wasn’t time to hang around and explain; Alexander had taken hold of Zach’s hand, not leaving him behind, and started forward. His legs were so long that Zach’s only choice was to keep up or get dragged, and he wasn’t quite badly off enough to let an Alpha go full caveman on him, thank you very much.
Ah. There was his backbone. Zach had missed it when it’d gone AWOL. He took as deep a breath as he could, and felt the steadiness come back to his legs too. He gripped Alexander’s hand tighter, and when Alexander looked back over his shoulder with one eyebrow cocked in a question, he nodded to the Alpha. I can do this. Let’s go.
Alexander grinned at him, approving, squeezed his hand back, and took off at top speed.
Together they hurried through cars that went from plush and passenger-oriented to greasy and industrial. Alexander stopped at the first man wearing what looked like an engineer’s name tag and got his attention with a hand to the shoulder. He held both hands up when the man all but snarled at him. “Whoa! Stand down. I won’t keep you, but the passengers need to know if you have any idea what happened.”