I busied myself with the file in my hand not wanting my emotions to show. How could Father still be on that train?
“I’m not going out with Andrew,” I finally said when the silence became too strained. How was it that my father could have me back into scolded teen mode so easily?
“I see no reason not to.”
I slammed the file down. So maybe I still was that petulant teen when it came to my dad.
“I do.” And before I could stop my self I added, “Parker Spears.” Inutile recently, I had prided myself on my honesty, but in less than one week I’d told so many whoppers, my nose was going to reach the next room well before I did.
“You said he was not your alpha.”
“Let me rephrase, he is not my alpha—yet.” I couldn’t believe the words slipping from my mouth. What had I just said and more importantly why did it not feel like a lie?
21
Parker
I had fully expected to spend the rest of my month firmly settled in one place, but I should have known better with so many projects in the midst of or nearing crucial stages. It was the third night, and I was tired, but the time change had turned my sleep schedule upside down. I didn’t want to get too used to Japan’s schedule, as I was flying back to the US late tomorrow, but I still needed to be alert during the morning here.
I flipped Miles’s card over and over in my hands. I’d kept it in my wallet, but still I’d freaked out several times, thinking that I’d forgotten it or that it’d slipped out. After the gala, I’d felt more mixed up about where we stood than ever. And then, as I prepared for my last minute flight the next morning, I’d thought that my four day trip to Japan would give me plenty of time to figure out what I was going to do about… everything, but instead I felt even more confused. Why had Miles given me his card before? Had anything changed for him after the gala? I thought I had sensed a shift between us, but I couldn’t be sure.
I picked my phone up for the hundredth time to punch Miles’s number in under a new contact and then tossed it on the bed, just like I had the other ninety-nine times. I don’t know why I was so hesitant. I wished I could call Harold. This is the kind of thing I had always been able to go to him about. I’d never been able to go to my parents.
In fact, he’d been the one I’d gone to when Miles had fallen pregnant. He’d urged me to tell my family like Miles had wanted, but Mom and Marcus were in the middle of one of their spats, right before he disappeared, and I hadn’t wanted to subject Miles to that. That was probably one of the only good decisions I’d made in our relationship. I loved my parents because they were mine, but I knew how they could come across to outsiders. Marcus couldn’t handle that shifting of their masks, even though he and I were the same way. One thing to each other and something else entirely different to the world. We had been closer than close. It hadn’t shocked us when we’d tested as different designations, but it had seemed surprising for everyone else, especially our parents.
I jumped as my phone buzzed in my hands. The caller ID said Unknown, followed by a US number I knew all too well. I’d been staring at it for the last three days.
“Miles?” My voice was breathless. I attempted to quietly clear by throat. “What can I do for you?”
There was silence on the other end, heavy breathing, and then Miles sputtered, “I’m so sorry, this was a bad idea. I’m going to hang up now.”
“No, wait!” Damn it, my voice broke. “What’s going on? Is it something I can help with?”
Miles groaned. “Parker, I fucked up.”
His words unearthed a pile memories where he’d said the same words, flopping backward on my bed in my dorm room. Back then it had been something like one question on a test or eating two-day old leftover tacos. I doubted he would call over something so trivial now.
I responded the way I always had. “Tell me.”
It took him a moment to start talking again. I wondered if he was remembering the same old times I was. Were they good memories, or had I soured everything between us?
“I know I don’t have any right to ask anything of you, but… I need you to pretend to be my mate.”
What. The. Fuck.
“A potential mate, I mean.” His words spat rapid fire over the phone. “My parents have been on me to settle down, and they’re still pushing Andrew. I mean, he’s old and ugly. Okay, maybe not actually ugly, but he’s no prize. And I’m not saying I am, but surely I deserve something better than a creepy old dude who has to resort to trying to buy a younger omega or whatever it is. Probably some business deal. Anyway, you seem to know more about him than I do and—”
Miles was starting to blab. He did that when he was angry or nervous. That’s what made his silences so terrifying. Silences from Miles were emotions I didn’t understand.
“Miles, I’ll do it.”
That shut him up. “You will?”
“Of course.” I owed him so much, I could never begin to repay even a small percent of it. “If you need me to parade around to chase off an old alpha, I have no problem. What do we need to do? Dinner at your parents?”
I could hear him sigh in relief. “That… that would be amazing.”
“Done. I’m in Japan one more day, but I’ll be back sometime Thursday. If it is amenable to your family, would Friday work for dinner?” If it’s amenable—this was Miles, not a business deal. But I’d lost the right to be completely informal with him. Even the ease we’d seemed to find at the gala hadn’t returned that right to me.
“Friday? As in, this Friday? Ah, that’s probably, that’s really soon. Why don’t I ask my parents when would be a good night to have you over and I’ll let you know?”
I already had my finger poised over my calendar to add it to my schedule, but I reluctantly closed it and pushed it away. When I made a plan, I set goals, I set deadlines, and I got them done. That’s how I had reached such an influential position so young. It made me feel… unsettled… to let plans float ambiguously in thoughts. That’s how you forgot things. Not that I would ever forget Miles, or anything connected to him. Whenever worked for him, I would make it work.
“Sure. That’ll be great.”
“Thank you, Parker. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
We hung up, and I collapsed on my bed. Miles’s nervous energy had been catching, and any possible thought of sleep had fled. I would be seeing Miles again. Soon. He’d asked me for help. He could have asked me for the moon and all the salt in the ocean and I would have killed myself trying to make it happen.
Mr. Schofield has barred your entry from the hospital. The nurse’s words from that night at the hospital stung nearly as much in memory as they had in reality. This is why I had gone so long without thinking about him. I couldn’t change the past. The past only hurt. But if I could give Miles any aid… it was the absolute least I could do.
I picked up my phone and pulled up my recent calls list, pressing down on Miles’s number to pull up a list of options. Add to new contact. Miles Schofield. I deleted that. Atticus. Save.
22
Miles
Parker had said yes. Which was both great and horribly, horribly awful. In my panic to get out of the mess with Andrew, I had set my pants on fire. I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass. I mean, how could it not? The best I could hope for was they would let it go, which was ridiculous. When it had slipped out, I assumed the worst that could happen was that my parents would find out I lied. How naïve I’d been.
I was still reeling at the audacity of Andrew inviting me on a date through my father while he could see me with my date. I was in the very same room as Andrew, with a sexy, successful, and intelligent man, who had his arm wrapped around me most of the night, and Andrew thought that was a good time to see if he could weasel his way into a sporting event with me? In an enclosed box no less. Asshole. His boldness apparently knew no bounds. Worse, it put the very real idea into my parents’ heads that they could decide whether
my chosen date was acceptable or not. Not that they needed much prodding in that department.
On paper, Parker was great, and when Dad had come clean about his follow up conversation with Andrew, I laid it all out. Parker was rich and successful, or at least his family was rich, and he had a great career. He was good looking and educated. And we’d known each other since college. Perfect mate material.
Not even just on paper, but I tried not to dwell there too long. Thinking of Parker finding someone else for even a nanosecond was too long, even if Parker had been the one to abandon me when I needed him most. Parker would always be “the one.” That was just the reality of it.
It perplexed me that my dad could think Andrew was worth a second glance. Sure, they were friends, or at least that was my guess, but come on. He was my dad’s contemporary and leered at his only son unabashedly. On a checklist for perfect mate material for your only child, I was confident those qualities were absent.
Now, I was spending my lunch break waiting in a diner for Parker, hoping we could fill in the last few years’ of distance with enough knowledge to get through family dinner this weekend. I even made him a list of important facts about me. As the waitress brought my coffee, I glanced at my phone. I was still ten minutes early and shouldn’t be allowing all of the what ifs to spin up my thoughts. What if he didn’t come? What if he changed his mind about dinner? What if he still hated me for what happened? What if I couldn’t emotionally handle being around him?
I scented him the moment the door swung open: vanilla and cinnamon. The man was just begging to be licked. Which was not going to happen. Nope. If I could restrain myself through the entire gala, I surely could restrain myself for a mere lunch break.
I turned to see him walking my way. He was wearing a suit similar what he’d been wearing that first time I’d seen him at Om, his tie my favorite shade of green. I tried to not read too much into that, but it was hard with him smiling at me.
“Hi,” I greeted him lamely. What did you say to an ex who was going to fake being your future as a favor?
“Hi.” He slid into the seat across from me.
“I really appreciate you doing this. I made a list.” I handed him the paper that had taken me hours to create. I had no idea what might come up at dinner, and I needed to cover every base to keep my parents from uncovering my lie. It hadn’t been easy; figuring out what I wanted Parker to know versus what he needed to know had raised me to an entirely new level of stress. “You know, so you could know things about me they probably would expect you to.”
He took the paper without a word and stared at it for what seemed like forever. The waitress came by and we ordered coffee and pie. We had done that nearly every Thursday my final semester with him. There was a cure little diner down the road, and they always had my favorite—coconut cream—on Thursdays, so after our last class of the day, it was almost guaranteed we ended up there. I pushed the memory down. I shouldn’t be thinking of him as the sweet guy who made sure I got my favorite pie on Thursdays to make Friday more bearable. No good could come of it. I needed to remember him as he was near the end, or I chanced forgetting that this wasn’t real.
“Thorough.” Parker laid down the list. “You even mentioned where we met. I do remember that, you know.” A small smile crept on his face and I began to blush. “You, running out of the commons with your backpack slung over your shoulder and your sandwich in your hand, bumping into me and stealing my heart.”
That was not what he was supposed to do. I just couldn’t go there. Not now. Probably not ever.
“Don’t.” My voice was weak, far from the firm command I intended it to be.
“Don’t what?”
I saw the moment he put it together. He hadn’t even realized the line he crossed. He’d never been great at holding in his thoughts when it came to me. Oftentimes it was good, but then there were times… no I wasn’t going to allow my memories to travel that path.
“Don’t bring back all the feels.” My words were but a whisper.
“The feels?”
Was he that clueless? He’d always been more open than me when it came to emotions, which from what I saw from the rest of his life, had been exclusive to me. He had to grasp that now just wasn’t the time.
“You know what I mean. Let’s stick to the facts. Facts I can handle.” That was my first slip. My first emotional slip, anyway. I wanted to kick myself. I’d worked and planned so hard to avoid this. I’d even created a stupid list, and then I showed him my weakness.
“Done.”
My shoulders relaxed. He didn’t flinch at my confession that anything more than facts were still too raw for me. He simply moved on. That was the Parker I remembered, from before things turned south.
“I see you were working for a very good firm before coming here. You skipped why you left.”
I had hemmed and hawed about putting that on the list. It was embarrassing, and something I highly doubted my folks would bring up… ever. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a topic Parker could inadvertently bring up, though. It was need to know. I just didn’t want him to. I wanted him to think well of me, for some perverse reason. I wanted him to see I was more than the typical omega, the kind my parents wanted me to be.
“I was let go.”
“I can’t picture that.” He leaned in closer, his eyes showing an emotion I couldn’t quite place, his face almost blank. Had I disappointed him? I couldn’t handle that. As sick as it was, I still craved his approval. “You were always so capable.” He stumbled on that last word.
“And I was.” Which was the truth. I was the best non-partner lawyer in the firm. Had I been an alpha, or even a beta, there was no doubt I’d have been offered a partnership. That was ultimately my demise, because jealousy over a mere omega getting better cases had been the true seed of my firing. “Excellent, even, but then I went to work a little too close to my heat and… let’s just say, the alphas made it known to the partners that I was not professional enough to be there.”
What they had said was that I “was a fucking whore trying to seduce them to get their clients,” which was not something I wanted to repeat to anyone, much less Parker.
“I sense you skipped a lot there.”
“Intentionally. Anyway, that is how I ended up back here, working for my dad’s firm. Bar reciprocity is tricky, but it doesn’t matter because my dad thinks I should spend the time looking for an M.R.” I flinched at confessing the low opinion my father still had of me. It was one thing for him to feel that way about a young unaccomplished graduate, but I was an attorney, and I had earned the right to be thought of more than just a potential spouse for some alpha.
“I remember you complaining how they wanted you married off young. Is that why—never mind.” He took me aback with his recollection of our past. Did he remember everything like it was yesterday, too? If so, I felt bad for him. Being unable to forget sucked and made for a lonely life.
“Is that why what?”
“Is that why you never told them about our baby?” His hushed tone was only for me and he didn’t even try to hide his hurt. It was easy to forget we both lost that night, even if things hadn’t been all sunshine and roses before I stupidly crossed the street trusting the walk light and not even looking first.
“Yes. I needed to be more than a house omega.” How could he remember the little things, but not something that huge? It had shaped so many of my decisions back then, including the decision to transfer schools.
“Even if you choose to be one, you will always be more.” He reached out for my hand that was fidgeting with my glass, and I gave it to him, soaking in the comfort he offered, the familiarity of his touch not waned at all over the years.
We snapped apart as our pie was delivered, but his touch lingered on my hand. This was so not good.
23
Parker
I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the list Miles had given me, though most of it was useful. Like I would ever forget that h
is favorite desert was coconut cream pie. But his job history, where he’d gone on to graduate school, all that I hadn’t known, though I had wondered in the brief moments I allowed myself to remember him.
I felt petty, realizing that Miles hadn’t told them he was expecting not because he was getting back at me when I wouldn’t introduce him to my parents, but because he was trying to exceed their expectations. And yeah, that had been an actual thing I’d screamed at him that last fight. Not for the first time, I realized what an ass I had been. As if I needed more proof.
“Any other questions?” Miles asked, startling me from my thoughts.
“Um, yeah. What about your friends?”
“Friends?”
“Yeah. If your parents ask, I need to know something about your friends, right? It would be a bit unbelievable if I haven’t met them at all.” I was absolutely fishing for information. I knew I could BS something easily enough, but Miles’s list was only the surface. I wanted to know how he’d really been doing the last few years. I didn’t need to know, I didn’t deserve to know, but I was selfish.
“Well that’s easy, then. I don’t have any. Well, except for Jace, but I’ve only seen him twice. Once when I was buying my suit, and the other time at the gala.”
“No one else? You grew up here. Surely you have people you went to school as a kid who are still around.”
“None that I’ve stayed in contact with,” Miles said shortly. “And I haven’t exactly had time to make new friends since I came back. What about you?”
“Me? Friends?”
He nodded.
“Well. Hmm. I guess all my friends are from business now. Do you remember Ethan and Aiden?”
Miles cocked his head, trying to place the names.
Reclaiming His Omega Page 7