38. Resa

Chapter 38

Resa

T he kitchen is empty.

Lex has his cell phone clamped to his ear, calling out, "Help yourself," as he wanders out, leaving me alone with a table full of food.

I'm the last one here, though. There are signs people have helped themselves to breakfast and moved on, and I'm sure I heard the soft murmurs of conversation drifting from the hallway that leads to the Lucas Security meeting room.

Next to Garrison's usual seat is a newspaper. Today's paper.

The only thing about all this, it's six in the morning.

Six, and it's like the whole house has been awake for hours and hours while I only just rolled out of bed. It was, as usual, unpleasant. A long night punctuated by troubled sleep interspersed by jerking awake with the sound of Rupert's head cracking open like an egg. And, more randomly, a pink flamingo floating in the sky. Dreams are weird.

What time do people get up around here?

I make up a plate for myself. Scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, a waffle, and I drizzle more maple syrup over the lot than I probably should.

Isaura will definitely notice how much more I've been eating the second I take a step on the scales. Her weakness is chocolate. Mine is… everything . All the things I've missed out on for years. I carry it over to the kitchen island and take a few bites before the newspaper—and truth be told, boredom—drives me back to my feet and over to check out the news.

As I pick the paper up, something thumps to the table, scaring the shit out of me.

It's a book, and it has numerous colorful tabs in it.

Not just any book. A pregnancy one. One that details what a woman can expect during her pregnancy. Not the expected reading material for an alpha.

I pick it up and flick through the pages.

When I stumble across the yellow Post-it tab highlighting lower back soreness, a symptom of pregnancy, I have a sudden flashback to Vaughn's insistence I use a back pillow.

I'd wondered why, and it looks like I just got my answer.

Porn, he said , I mentally snort.

I'm still flipping through the pages when the sound of conversation moves this way.

Returning the book to the middle of the newspaper, I scurry over to the kitchen island. I'm back on a bar stool, digging into my breakfast when they file in, eyes bleary and tired, looking like not one of them got any sleep.

They smile as they take their usual seats, and I try not to notice Garrison pick up the newspaper and open it.

He isn't reading the newspaper.

The real question is why. Why are the men in this house reading a pregnancy book, and why don't they want me to know it?

"Everything okay?" Vaughn sounds suspicious.

I stick my fork into my eggs. "Good."

"You look like you were thinking hard," Vaughn says.

"Yeah," I murmur. "Just thinking about porn."

" Porn ?" Vaughn echoes.

"Uh-huh." If Vaughn wants to play the porn card with me, I'll play it right back.

"Do you maybe want to talk about it?" Vaughn asks with a hopeful note in his voice.

Pretending disinterest, I pick up my glass of juice. "Not really."

"Are you sure?" Garrison asks. He doesn't sound as hopeful as Vaughn, but there's a definite hint of interest in his tone.

"We wouldn't mind if you did," Blaine adds.

"I'm sure." I glance over at the dining table.

No one is eating breakfast.

Garrison is holding his newspaper open as he stares at me with simmering intensity. Blaine's glasses have slid down the bridge of his nose, but he's making no attempt to push them back up. Vaughn is in danger of knocking his coffee into Blaine's lap if he doesn't start paying attention to where he's leaning.

I put down my glass and resume eating, leaving them to whatever they're imagining that has them forgetting all about their breakfast. And I have to say, it's more satisfying than it should be to know how thoroughly I've distracted them.

I stand awkwardly on the mat in front of Blaine. He's in his usual outfit, and I'm in a pair of black sweatpants and a baggy white tee, hoping all the bagginess will help me not be so aware of Vaughn's body when he grabs me again.

Vaughn had been the one to arrange this after breakfast self-defense lesson. I hadn't hesitated to say yes. Blaine had been a little slower to agree.

"He said he was coming after changing, right?"

Blaine glances at the black clock hanging over the doors. "He did."

I'm aware I owe him a thank you for building my nest. I'm also actively trying not to think about Henry or ask Blaine what else he discovered. The pain yesterday was excruciating. I have no desire to go through it again.

Seconds tick into minutes, and Vaughn doesn't show up.

"Maybe something came up?" I suggest.

"Hmm. I guess." From Blaine's slightly narrowed eyes, I can guess exactly what came up.

"He set us up, didn't he?"

But why? At our last lesson, Blaine all but sprinted out of the room. Why would Vaughn set up a self-defense lesson, conscious that Blaine doesn't like to be touched and I'm still not exactly comfortable around alphas, and then not show up?

"He probably thinks he's helping," Blaine says.

Helping who?

I flash him a false smile, hiding my disappointment as I turn to leave. "I guess we can do it another time. Maybe when Vaughn isn't busy setting us up."

I've taken two steps when Blaine stops me. "Wait."

I turn around. His discomfort is so visible I'd have to be blind not to see it. "Look, it's clear you don't like being touched, and I'm not about to push you into it. So I'll just go."

"That obvious, huh?" His tone is wry.

His glasses slide down his nose, and he pushes them up with his index finger.

The movement draws my gaze to the scar on the back of his right hand.

"Because it hurts?" I ask, curious. "Because I know I said I'd kick your ass if you ever did something to deserve it, but maybe it's Vaughn's ass I should kick."

Smiling faintly, he shakes his head and takes a seat on the mat, cross-legged. "My scars don't hurt."

I have no reason to stay here. Vaughn's absence has put an end to a practice neither of us is eager to do. I could be spending the rest of the day thinking up how I intend to get Dexter Pieter to call me. Instead, I fold my legs under me and sit on the mat as well.

Not too close, though.

He is still an alpha.

Even if I'm forgetting my knife on my bedside table with increasing regularity.

"I was in a car crash," he explains. "I was trapped in the car for some time."

His voice is calm, unaffected.

"It was on fire," he continues in the same calm voice. "My right side was the worst, as that was where the fire was."

I don't believe he's the least bit calm. And he's looking in my direction, but he hasn't met my gaze once since he started talking.

"That sounds…" I struggle to imagine what that might be, "…like hell."

His eyes dart to my face, and after a searching look, his shoulders relax. I'm not sure what he expected my response to be, but he seems relieved. "It was. I was in the hospital for a long time. Every part of my skin felt like it was on fire, and any time someone touched me, it was agony."

So touch became pain, and pain became something to avoid. "Does it still hurt?"

He shakes his head. "Hasn't for a while. Sometimes I get what the doctors will call phantom pains, but there's no reason for it. I'm healed. When someone moves to touch me, I have to remind myself?—"

"That it doesn't hurt at all?" I softly interrupt, and he nods. "My first instinct when I see an alpha is to curse him to die a painful death. My second is to kick him where it hurts. But eye gouges are better, right?"

"Eye gouge is better." He smiles. "Or a punch to the kidney."

I wrap my arms around my knees. "Have you ever been punched in the kidney?"

"Once. Actually, by accident. Vaughn got a lucky shot in." He winces. "I went down like a house of cards. He nearly died laughing."

I can actually picture that happening right here. Though in my imagination Blaine is wearing what he is now, a turtleneck and black sweatpants. If he was sparring with Vaughn, that must have been before turtlenecks became his uniform.

Giving a shit about an alpha hurting is new. I look away, not sure what to do with my guilt that I've pushed him into giving self-defense lessons he didn't want to. "Vaughn shouldn't have set you up like this."

"Don't judge him too harshly. He's trying to help."

"Help?"

He nods. "This is his less than subtle way of helping me. Probably you too, given he knows it's easier for me to teach directly than through someone else."

"It sounds like something you've done before. Teaching."

"It is. I taught Vaughn and… someone else." His eyes slide from me to the drum kit.

Violet. Why do I think he was going to say Vaughn's sister?

His scent snakes toward me then. Pine, sandalwood, and rich vanilla.

My fault. I've been getting better at breathing in through my mouth and out of my nose. But Violet distracts me and I inhale through my nose and want to crawl over to his side of the mat, press my nose to his throat and inhale some more.

I push myself to my feet and make my retreat before I give in to this growing need. Because I would not stop at inhaling. I would need to touch him.

I'm halfway to the door when he speaks. "It's hard to stop feeling that way."

"What way?" I peer over my shoulder.

He's still not looking at me, and I'm not sure if he's speaking to me as much as he's thinking out loud. "That touch doesn't equal pain."

I know exactly what he means.

In my heart and in my head, the same certainty plays on repeat: all alphas will hurt me and they deserve to die. I can't trust even one of them.

That has been my truth, my world, and my reality for so long. But that isn't what I'm starting to think anymore.

Blaine touched me, correcting me in practice, even though he's learned touch equals pain.

Maybe his conditioning is starting to crack the way mine is.