“Do you need a ride or anything?”
He already had his phone out and was staring down at the blank screen. “I’m not sure. I parked my car at a restaurant called Michelle’s, right by that jerk’s car. It’s probably not safe for me to pick it up, but I don’t live around here, so I don’t want to leave it.”
I knew exactly where that was. It was only a block away, but the parking lot would probably be deserted this late at night. I considered my options and did what seemed most logical. I pulled out my phone and ordered my ride home. “I was just about to call for an Uber myself. You can ride with me to your car, and if that asshole is hanging around, I’ll have a little chat with him while you take off. Does that work?”
He looked into my eyes, and I was able to fully see the layers of green in his for the first time. They were like emeralds sparkling under the neon lights. “Yeah, I guess that’s okay.”
I ordered the car and was almost disappointed to see that it would arrive in two minutes. I’d hoped to have a little more time to chat with my omega before making the short trip to his car, but it only gave me enough time to say goodbye to my buddies and let Danny know I’d see him at home. He almost didn’t let me leave until I pointed to the waiting omega. Danny obviously thought I was hooking up with the guy, and I wasn’t about to correct him.
I was still hoping for that myself.
“I’m Ren, by the way,” I said, holding the door open for him when I got a notification that my car had arrived.
“I’m Thad.” He walked tentatively out front and looked around. The asshole he’d been with wasn’t around, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. If he was hanging out at Thad’s car, that could be even more trouble. “And I’m not usually this helpless.”
“You’re not helpless, you’re smart.” I placed my hand on the small of his back and pointed toward a white Prius. “That’s us.”
He smiled and let me lead him to our car. Thad slid across the backseat, and I slipped in beside him. As I explained to the driver that we’d be making at stop at Michelle’s Thad put on his seatbelt. And I’m not one hundred percent sure it happened, but I would swear he leaned in at took a whiff of my neck as he did it.
“So, who was the guy?” I asked, curious about their status and if this was just a lovers’ quarrel or something else.
“Ugh.” Thad threw his head back against the seat and groaned. “My friends talked me into using some stupid dating app. I knew it was a bad idea, but it’s my birthday.” He paused and turned to me. “Oh, happy birthday by the way.”
“Wait, how did you know it’s my birthday?”
He peeked at me with one eye. “Your friends weren’t exactly subtle.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“Anyway, it’s my birthday too, so I figured a date might be fun. I was so wrong on so many levels.”
“Oh.” I felt even worse for how bad his birthday was turning out. “Happy birthday to you too. Maybe we should—”
“Fuck!” Thad interrupted my train of thought, drawing my attention out the front windshield. “John’s at my car.”
That asshole was sitting on the hood of the only car in the front of the parking lot with his arms crossed over his shoulder. “He doesn’t know where you live, right?”
“No, thank god.” Thad pulled his phone out and was ready to call 9-1-1. “We only talked through the app.”
“Good.” I told the driver to pull up on the left side of the Thad’s car so I could intercept this guy before he could get to Thad. “I’ll deal with him, but as soon as you have a clear shot to your car, take it and get out of here.”
“What about you?” he asked, placing his hand on my shoulder.
I wanted to pull him into my arms and kiss him and tell him he never had to worry about me because I’d always take care of him, but we didn't have time for any of that. I had to settle for that one and only touch. “I’ll be fine. I live close by, so I’ll just call another car as soon as you’re safely out of there.”
He nodded, his eyes locked on John.
“Okay, Thad. Wait until I get him away from the car and then take off.”
“Thanks, Ren, and be careful.”
I opened the door and walked straight up to John, pushing my chest against his to knock him away from Thad’s car. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I don’t know what that little twink told you, but it was a misunderstanding.” He tried to shove me out of his way so he could get to Thad.
I didn’t give him the chance. I cocked my arm back and punched him straight in the jaw, making him stumble back a few steps before falling on his ass.
A small trail of blood smeared across his cheek and when he wiped it on his hand, he really got pissed. “You’re gonna pay for that.”
The Uber driver peeled out of the parking lot so I knew Thad was exposed while getting into his car. To keep John at bay, I tackled him, falling across him with all my weight and pinning him to the asphalt. “You’re gonna fucking pay for what you did to him.”
“It was one fucking pill.” He grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled it back so it was choking me. “I didn’t kill anyone...yet.”
I couldn’t reach for my shirt without realizing the grip I had on him, so I used the resources I had at my disposal. I kneed him in the nuts.
John rolled to his side just as Thad’s car screeched out of the parking lot.
I hit John once more in the face to stun him a little then I got up and jogged around the corner and back toward The Fallen Nut.
The night was a hell of a lot more exciting than I expected. I would have rather been knotting Thad than helping him escape a psycho rapist, but meeting him gave me hope.
Maybe there were still some good omegas out there. I just needed to look in the right places.
4
Thad
I knew the plan.
It made sense, but as I peeled out of the driveway, my stomach fell and guilt slammed into me. From what I’d seen, Ren was kicking that asshole’s ass, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get hurt. For all I knew, he already was. I had run so fast, following my own sense of survival, that I wasn’t thinking about what the right thing to do was.
I stopped at the red light and found myself turning on my blinker to go around the block only to find myself on a one way road maze from hell. Mapleville had a lot of things, but at least it wasn’t filled with one way streets that emptied into more one way streets. Eventually, I got back to where I’d started and went back toward the parking lot, very grateful to see Ren meandering toward The Fallen Nut...or maybe he was just on his way home. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter because he was alright.
Pulling to the side of the road, I rolled down the window and called out to him. “Need a lift?”
His head snapped in my direction, and as his eyes met mine, his smile grew.
“Yeah.” He stepped up to the window. “If you’re sure it’s no trouble.”
He sounded fine. Thank goodness. If I’d have let him get seriously hurt to save my dumb butt, I would not be okay with that.
“Get in here. You just drew blood for me. Least I can do is drive you home.”
As he climbed in, his scent hit me. All balsam with a hint of mint—two scents that shouldn’t blend so beautifully together but somehow made this perfect blend of yum.
I cracked my window.
Absolutely no good would come of me getting lost in the scent of him. None. Tonight wasn’t a night for that. He was my knight in shining denim. That was that. It wasn’t a date or even a hook up. I was just giving him a ride home.
Not that my dick understood my intentions.
He had a whole different set of ideas brewing, and all of them began with me doing a lot more than just dropping off the sexy man beside me.
“Sorry I ruined your birthday.” I began to pull away and realized I didn’t have a clue where he lived. “Umm, where should I go?”
&nbs
p; “Oh, sorry,” he sputtered. I turned to see him examining his knuckles.
Shit.
I pulled over again. “Let me see.” I flicked the overhead light on and grabbed his hand, going straight into nurse mode. It was habit, something I did daily at the NICU. But there, my patients were babies usually born too soon into this world and not sexy, and possibly tipsy, hotties who share my birthday.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. Aside from a little bit of swelling, I had to agree with him, even if it meant letting go of his hand. “I was just making sure I didn’t have any of his blood on me.”
And for some reason, that made me far more giddy than it should. John the “asshole- wannabe-rapist” was bleeding. A lot, I hoped.
“Thanks.” I gave him back his hand, hating doing so. “I mean for that...with John. You didn’t need to do that—any of it.”
“I kind of did.” He shrugged. “That guy was an asshole. No offense, but your taste sucks.”
He so very much wasn’t wrong.
“I used a stupid dating app.” I still couldn’t believe I’d let myself get talked into that one. “And yeah, he was awful. I swear, the asshole tried to put something in my drink.”
I turned off the overhead light, knowing we were on borrowed time. Technically, we were in a no standing zone, and possibly a fire lane, which meant people were circling around the block to get our spot, probably suspecting that we were leaving soon.
“He confessed as much to me before I kicked him in the nads. You should report that.”
I envisioned the jackass huddled on the parking lot pavement, writhing in pain. Perfect. He deserved every ounce of pain and more.
“I can’t report it to the cops because I don’t even know his real name or anything.” I’d already had that discussion with the bouncer at the club who had encouraged me to call as well. “I seriously doubt he is John Juan.” And if that really was his name, his parents so shit the bed on that naming.
“Seriously… You made that up.” Ren’s rich laughter filled the car. It was a beautiful sound and exactly what I needed given the night I’d just had.
“Wish I did. But I’ll report him to the app.” Before I could continue my train of thought, someone in a small VW Beetle laid on their horn, giving me the finger and most likely calling me some choice names. “So, which way?”
“The easiest way is to go down three blocks, turn right, turn right again, and it’s just a bit up there.”
I put on my blinker, and the honking blissfully ended as I turned onto the street. We passed the parking lot John had been left in, and from the looks of things, he’d left—hopefully to go find some ice for his very bruised junk.
“Those directions sound like we’re driving extra,” I teased as we went backward to go forward.
“Although, I won’t lie and say that’s not a bonus, it’s the stupid one way street cluster of a road layout that makes all journeys in this part of the city twice as long as necessary.”
“This I noticed. Uber drivers must make a killing here.” I stopped at the light, waiting for some drunks to cross the street before turning down the block.
“Probably, although most places are within walking distance from my apartment complex, so I haven’t had to deal with that much.”
“I’m from Mapleville, so you know—there’s nothing there to Uber to.” It was mostly true, although the town had been growing slowly over the past couple years.
“I’ve never been—”
“—but you feel like you know it.” I continued on with the television commercial he was quoting. Mapleville’s only claim to fame was one season of a cooking show my friend Harrison’s husband was the star of.
“I guess people say that all the time.”
I turned again, not loving that our time was almost over.
“It happens.” I slowed down as a crowd was deciding whether or not they really were crossing the street. “So, Ren, what do you do?”
“I’m a tax preparer. Oh, I’m up here on the left. In front of the broken desk is fine.”
Sure enough, on the side of the road in front of an apartment building entrance was a broken down desk with half the drawer hanging down and a sign all but begging someone to take it away.
“Wait, a broken—oh. Do they really think someone will pick that up just because it has a free sign on it?” I put the car in park, knowing that I was in front of a fire hydrant and needed to be heading out of said spot right away, even if the sexy man next to me invited me in, which he’d given no indication was in his plans.
“They’re hoping, I guess.” He unclicked his seatbelt with one hand and reached for the door handle with the other. “Thanks for the lift. It was nice meeting you, Thad.” He hesitated slightly before climbing out of the car.
That hesitation was just long enough for me to get the courage to roll down the window and call to him, “Hey, Ren?”
“Yeah.” He twisted his body in my direction but took no steps to get any closer to me.
“Happy Birthday, and I’m Thad Heart on the app.” I called out the stupid name I’d thought clever at the time before checking my rearview mirror and driving off. After the night I’d had, sticking around to see if he was going to accept my offer to reconnect, as lame as said offer was, just seemed pathetic.
It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized I forgot to tell him which of the four thousand dating apps I was talking about. I was such an idiot.
Happy Birthday to me.
5
Ren
Thad Heart. Easy enough to find a cute omega with a name like Thad Heart, right? Uh, no.
Wrong. Very, very wrong.
I assumed he meant Omega Match because that’s what all my friends were using for hookups. But there wasn’t any Thad Heart or Tad Heart or Thad Hart or any other variation I could come up with. So, I tried OmMatch and AlphaMe and GrindIt and Knotted and about twelve other recommendations from the iTunes store before finally giving up the search.
If he was on any of those apps, I would have found him. And that was a big if. Chances were good that he’d immediately deleted his profile and decided to take a break from drunk alphas altogether.
I wouldn’t blame him after what he went through with John.
But why would he tell me his name if he didn’t want me to contact him?
I texted Jason, calling in a favor I’d been saving since the Halloween party when he pissed all over my bathroom because he saw the rubber rat I’d hidden behind the toilet. I was hiding in the shower with my phone and swore I’d delete the video if he did something for me… And now it was time to pay for my silence.
Can you do a name search for me? I set my phone on the sofa and picked up the remote to find a show. When he was on duty, he wasn’t always quick to respond to random texts.
Who? Lover boy from the other night?
Shit. Of course he’d go there. And he’d be right. Maybe. I need to find Thad Heart or Hart. From Mapleville.
Yeah, OK. I’ll see what I can find.
Thanks, man. I’ll even buy you a beer if you can make it happen. Shit, I’d buy him a keg if he could get me a good number for Thad.
Yeah, you will.
With that taken care of, I propped my feet up on the coffee table and settled in for an episode of Ink Masters. I didn’t have any ink on my skin personally, but I’d always been fascinated with the art people used to adorn their body.
Maybe one day I’d have something or someone in my life special enough to warrant a permanent reminder, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up. Even if Jason did find that contact information, using a cop to hunt Thad down was more than a little creepy.
But creepy or not, I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew if those full lips were as soft as they looked, and if those emerald-green eyes saw in me the same potential I saw when I looked into them.
It was two full days before Jason called me with the information I wanted. Well, with information that could have been what I w
anted.
“There were two hits in Mapleville.” Jason chuckled to himself over the phone. “But I’m not sure either of them are your guy.”
“Why do you say that?” I dug a pen out of the junk drawer in my kitchen to take notes.
“Well, the first guy is Thaddeus Andrew Hartman, age 45, an unmarried podiatrist from Maplesville.”
“Forty-five?” I held the pen over the paper, hovering in place. “That’s not my Thad.”
“Your Thad?” Jason laughed out loud. “I knew it. And yeah, probably not him, but do you want his number anyway?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I blew a deep breath out between my teeth. “What about the other guy?”
“A seven-year-old with a promising little league future and missing teeth.”
Dammit! I took down the number of the old guy who definitely wasn’t my Thad, but maybe it was his grandpa or an uncle he was named after. I had to at least try to find him.
And maybe my Thad just looked amazing for his age. I didn’t mind going out with an older guy. Seventeen years is a bit much but it’s not like it’s never happened before.
And if he is my omega, I’m going to find him.
He wasn’t my omega.
In fact, he wasn’t even an omega at all.
I know this because I made an appointment with the man to make stalking him seem less weird. Unfortunately, lying about plantars fasciitis just for an excuse to see a guy from a bar again isn’t less weird at all. It’s much, much weirder...and borderline illegal if you consider the insurance fraud aspect. Which I tried not to do.
It wasn’t until I was sitting in the waiting room with a couple old people who were there to get their toenails trimmed that the gravity of my situation hit me. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
And creepy.
When I was finally introduced to the doctor after sitting in an exam room for ten minutes, the nerdy alpha in front of me practically drooled. Like, literally, he wiped the corners of his mouth three times in the first five minutes of our talk.
Birthday With His Omega (M/M Non Shifter Alpha/Omega MPreg): A Mapleville Novella Page 2