28. Resa

Chapter 28

Resa

S omething buzzes on my bedside table and thumps to the floor, scaring the shit out of me.

Two words keep playing on repeat in my head.

Your men.

Isaura called them my men, and with the speed they all spun to the door I pushed open, eyes concerned, looking all for the world like they were the anxious fathers of my child.

After the tension of this morning, my absolutely shocking display with the greasy fries and burger, and the nap that soon followed, I was in no fit state to do any of the research I'd been so eager to do before.

I'd come up to my room and gone back to the bedrest I'd complained I didn't want to do anymore.

Now it's night, and I can't sleep.

I hang over the side of the bed, sticking my arm in the gap between the bedside table and the bedframe to root around for the thing that scared me to death.

My cell phone.

I haven't called the people in my life who must wonder what happened to me, but I have reasons.

One word from my mother and I would abandon this mission I've set myself to find Dexter Pieter, go home, crawl into her arms and let someone else deal with this mess.

I can't do that.

No one knows what I know, so until I've done what I need to do, I have to stay strong.

I pick up the cell phone, note the near dead battery and plug it in to charge.

But I don't put the phone down.

I don't call Henry for other reasons, but maybe I should. Maybe listening to his voice, even if it won't compel me to go home like Mom's voice will, will remind me of something I'm in danger of forgetting the longer I remain under this roof.

This isn't my life, and these men are not mine.

Garrison and Blaine might be my scent matches, and my attraction for Vaughn might be deepening into something distinctly not friendly. But Pack Lucas is not mine, and I should not forget that.

So I call Henry.

It's the middle of the night, and he would have left his phone to charge in the kitchen, on his counter the way he always did, before he went up to bed.

There's no danger he will answer this call, so his voicemail will pick it up.

You've been gone for two years, Resa. No reason he still has the same habits now as he did back then.

The only thing about calling someone I haven't seen in two years is the number. I get that wrong twice. First time, an old lady picks up and I immediately hang up. The second time, it's just one long beep, signs this number doesn't exist.

I sit for a moment, thinking, and then I try again.

As expected, it doesn't ring at all. It goes right to voicemail.

"You've reached Henry. Please leave a message and I'll call you right back."

He sounds the same. Exactly the same. Brisk, a little cheerful, but professional.

It's like being picked up and shoved back in time.

Back to when I was Resa, the new real estate assistant, and Henry was the experienced realtor who caught the new hire cursing and kicking the photocopier.

He suggested checking the manual for instructions.

"This is more fun." I'd grinned. "Want to kick it with me?"

He'd looked confused. I could understand why. He was serious and nice. A beta, and I liked those.

I'd perfumed three years before and knew to stay away from alphas, not wanting any to take over my life. I liked my independence, so I didn't go to Haven Academy. Instead, I stuck with betas and did everything I could to dodge alphas.

Haven Academy, the finishing school for omegas, came with the opportunity to learn any instrument, a luxury gym, dance classes, small classrooms with a personalized teaching experience, meals prepared by gourmet chefs, and the biggest prize of all: leaving at the end of those four years matched with a handsome, wealthy alpha.

I spent hours poring over the glossy brochure Mom gave me. It hadn't taken long for one thing to stick out as I took in the boarding school with the black metal gates: for a building so pretty, why did it feel like I'd be stepping into a cage?

I liked my independence too much to give it up. What if I got to Haven and decided I didn't like it? Could I leave? The glossy brochure was frustratingly vague about that part.

There was no Haven Academy when Mom perfumed. Just free heat clinics, and she briefly went to one until she met Dad.

Mom thought Haven Academy would give me an opportunity to have the wealth that she never did. When you become a parent, you want better for your child than you had for yourself, she and Dad would tell me.

But when my parents gently pushed for me to go, I pushed back. "No. That's not the future I want."

I wanted to choose my own.

They loved me enough not to push me to do something I didn't want.

Now I wonder.

If I'd gone to Haven, I wouldn't have needed to visit my regular free heat clinic. I wouldn't have found it full and desperately hunted out another.

And I wouldn't have been in that suite when the door opened and…

My hand tightens around the phone and my breathing turns shallow as my throat closes up.

A tear splashes onto my cheek and I swipe it away, lifting my head to stare up at the ceiling as I will the rest away. I could cry an ocean of tears and nothing would change. It would still hurt. I would still be stuck trying to meld together the broken pieces of my life.

And those people who hurt me, every single one of them, will pay for it.

I turn off the phone to preserve the charging battery and I get up since I've lost yet another battle with sleep tonight.

Sleep, as always, promises nightmares and dried tears on my cheeks.

I have no wish for either, so I put it off to head downstairs to the computer room for another fruitless search for the elusive Dexter Pieter.

At the bottom of the staircase, I hesitate. The same light is on, warning me I'm not the only one with difficulties sleeping.

I look the other direction. The way to the computer room where I can spend the next couple of hours digging up whatever I can about Dexter Pieter's assistants in the hope they'll lead me to the man himself.

But I don't walk toward the computer room.

He's in the same position as he was before, hunched over a table, his elbow resting on his thigh, and the suit-style jacket he was wearing earlier tossed over the back of his chair. The cream armchair I bled on is missing in action. One, matching Garrison's, sits opposite.

"I could do with a little help," he calls out, without lifting his head.

I should have guessed he would know I was there.

I've taken two steps toward him before I remember something important. Something I cannot believe I left behind.

My knife.

Do I go upstairs to get it?

The guy took you to a clinic at midnight and replaced a chair because he must have suspected it would upset you to see it. How about easing back on this reliance on your knife?

I walk toward him, taking a seat in the armchair across from him. "What happened to the other chair?" I ask, curious about his response. Will he expect me to be grateful for having removed it?

"It was time to replace it," he says, still focused on his puzzle. "I never liked the way these chairs didn't match."

Yeah, right.

I snort at his barefaced lie and focus on the puzzle. It's the same one he was putting together before, only he's had to start again.

He's created several small piles on each corner of the table and he's halfway through putting together the corners and sides.

"You must be pissed at having to start again."

"Finishing it isn't the point," he explains, looking at me for the first time.

"And if you learn at the end that one of the pieces ended up in the fire and you never get to finish it properly?"

"I would have had several months of restful sleep. Which is the point."

"Do you have an answer for everything?" I feign irritation but I like his answer.

"Yes."

I snort, shaking my head at his confidence as he returns to his task.

As he works on the puzzle, the fire seeps into my bones, warming me from the inside out. It's not as hot as it was before and I soon realize why.

He's moved the table and the armchairs a little farther away from the fireplace and there are fewer logs in the fire. It has the same glowy, ambience as before, but it's not so intense.

For himself? Or did he do it thinking I would come down again?

I need to apologize for bleeding on his couch and ruining his puzzle. Garrison seems not to be expecting an apology at all, but he deserves one. But I don't know how to apologize to alphas. I only know how to hate them.

"How do you have the patience not to fling that thing into the fire?" I eventually ask. Ten minutes of watching him with it, and my fingers itch to do just that.

The muscles in his cheeks pull. A sign he might be smiling. "I sometimes wonder that myself. You can take the reds if you want?"

I nearly smile, liking his dry sense of humor. "If I did that, your puzzle would be in the fire five minutes later. I'll leave it to you."

"It's relaxing. Helps to focus on something external."

"I'll take your word for it."

We fall back into silence.

I watch him pick up a piece, hold it over the table, and sometimes return it to the pile of blue pieces, or add it to the slowly forming puzzle.

I don't recall feeling tired or even closing my eyes.

Something light and soft settles over me, startling me.

"You're safe." Garrison's voice shouldn't reassure me.

Yet it does. But not nearly enough as the delicious scent of the thing covering me. I drag the material closer to my nose, inhaling as I relax.