63. Resa

Chapter 63

Resa

I fell asleep surrounded by my pack, and honestly, I can't help but feel disappointed to wake up alone in my nest.

But hold up, what's with the blue Post-it note?

It's stuck to my wine cooler, with an arrow pointing at the sliding door where bright morning light streams in.

The day I can ignore a curiosity like that is the day I am dead.

I get up.

Finding my dress when I don't have naked men spread across the cushions is more successful than it was last night. I slip it over my head and leave my nest.

Someone has been busy leaving Post-it notes through the house, up the stairs, and to the door next to mine. I consider knocking. But there are strange scuffing noises going on and, wait, was that Vaughn cursing?

I push the door open, hoping to surprise them.

Garrison, Blaine, and Vaughn are standing just inside the room, blocking my view of anything important.

They're all in sweats with bare feet, except Vaughn, who is in his usual black turtleneck. Since they're looking so disheveled, and I might be wrong, but also a little flustered? I don't worry about the fact I haven't brushed my hair, my teeth, or even stopped to check in with a mirror on my way up here.

"It's not finished," Garrison warns, holding one hand out to stop me from stepping around him. "But we didn't expect you to come back so soon."

"What isn't finished?" I try to peer around them.

They step aside and I will never in a million years understand how I don't immediately burst into tears when I see what they did. "It's a nursery."

The walls are a soft, buttery yellow with the most beautiful white crib and a star and moon mobile hanging off the top. There are stacks of boxes along one wall, some open, some not, like they were in the middle of putting something together—maybe a dresser?—when I interrupted them.

"We were waiting for the paint to dry before we started the mural. And we still have more furniture to build, so all of that is coming. But you woke up earlier, or we got up too late, so we ran out of time to do more." Vaughn watches my face closely, as if waiting for me to admit I don't like it. He will be waiting forever because I love it.

Something is lodged in my throat. I swallow and swallow, but it doesn't move. "Who built the crib?"

"Joint effort," Blaine says. "We all have different skills, but?—"

"—the ability to put together flatpack furniture is in none of our arsenals. We have sworn ourselves to secrecy, so you'll never learn how many hours it took us to build." Vaughn mimes zipping his mouth, locking a key and throwing it away.

"Hours?" I ask.

Blaine gives Vaughn the side-eye. I tamp down my smile at his less than subtle warning that Vaughn might have said a little too much.

Vaughn's expression is sheepish as he shuffles from foot to foot. "Uh, did I say hours ? I meant seconds . It took us exactly ten seconds to put together a crib with instructions that don't make sense, and we have two extra screws that we desperately hope won't mean the baby will fall through it and… well?—"

"We tried," Garrison takes over. "What Vaughn is trying to say is that we tried."

The lump in my throat gets bigger. It's accompanied by a prickle behind my eyes so intense I blink rapidly, yet the urge to cry doesn't fade even a little.

I left, and they made a nursery for my baby, never knowing if I would even come back.

I clear my throat to dislodge that gigantic lump. "The, uh, the extra screws are spares."

Vaughn tilts his head. "Huh?"

"It's so manufacturers don't have to keep mailing out extras when people accidentally lose one." They all stare at me. "My dad would always build stuff when I was a kid. Postage is expensive. Cheaper to add a couple spares than pay for postage."

They visibly deflate.

"Thank fuck ," Vaughn breathes. "I was trying to get Garrison to climb in to make sure that it would hold the baby, but he wouldn't do it."

I look at Vaughn, then I take in Garrison's heavy shoulders, and I have to look away before I laugh. Or cry.

"Why yellow?" I ask, wandering over to the crib.

I spin the mobile, sending gold stars, white half-moons, and fluffy clouds in a slow circle. It's sweet, delicate even, in contrast to the sturdy crib itself. No chance of a baby falling through, despite Vaughn's fears.

All the windows are still open and there's not a hint of paint fumes in the room. I like the yellow, though it was never my favorite color. It feels hopeful and warm.

"Ah. The book said a neutral color was a good option unless you know if you're having a boy or girl. But if you don't like?—"

"I love the yellow," I gently interrupt Blaine, turning away from the crib. "And what book do you mean?"

I have a feeling I know exactly which book he's talking about when I have a flashback to discovering a pregnancy book tucked within the pages of a newspaper.

"Give me a minute." Garrison isn't gone long, returning with the Post-it tabbed book I was expecting. Despite holding my hand out for it, he doesn't offer it to me.

"You said you didn't know who the father of your child was. You were wrong. They have three. They have us. Whatever you need, and whatever the baby needs, both of you will always have us."

Years ago, I swore to myself I would never let an alpha see weakness, let alone my tears. That's about to change. "I'm going to cry now. I've never cried in front of an alpha before, so?—"

"Are they happy tears?" Garrison asks softly.

I nod.

He opens his arms wide and closes his eyes. "Then I promise I won't look."

I walk into his chest, bury my face in his shirt, and proceed to soak the front of it as he wraps his arms around me and strokes his hand down my hair. Blaine and Vaughn wrap themselves around me in another Lucas Security huddle. Except this one isn't about keeping me safe. This makes me feel loved. I must be the luckiest girl in the world.

"Are you okay?" Blaine asks, several minutes later, when I peel my damp face from Garrison's wet shirt.

He looks concerned. So does Vaughn, who hands me a thick wad of tissues he must have emptied out of a box.

"I'm okay. Just… thanks. You didn't have to do this, but thanks."

"Resa?" Garrison pulls my attention from my gigantic pile of tissues, thumbing a tear away before I can wipe my face.

"Yeah?"

"You never have to worry about hiding your tears from us. Happy tears are fine. But sad tears…" He gives me a long look. "Can I ask you to promise something for me?"

It's a measure of how much I trust and love him that I'm ready to agree before he tells me what it is. Because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever it is won't be something that hurts me.

"What do you want me to promise?" I ask.

"If the thing making you cry is something bad, promise you'll let one or all of us fix it."

"And if you can't fix the thing that made me cry?"

"We built the crib with the instructions that made no sense. After that motherfu…" Vaughn's voice trails off when Garrison lifts his brow. "Anyway. We will fix it."

"Can I see the book you kept hiding in your newspaper now?" I ask Garrison.

He blows out a resigned sigh as he presses it into my arms. "Here. That morning when you said you were thinking about porn, that was when you found it, wasn't it?"

"Nope." I take the book from him and sit cross-legged on the floor, setting my pile of tissues aside, so I can see what else they tabbed as important need to know information. "It was before then."

"So you weren't really thinking about porn?" Vaughn flops to the ground beside me.

"Nope," I say. Blaine drops down beside me, and Garrison stretches his long legs in front of him as he sits with his back to the window. "Why didn't you just tell me about the book?"

"Sadie said it was better to let you decide when you wanted to talk about the baby," Garrison explains. "She guessed early on that you were still in flight or fight mode. None of us wanted to do or say anything that would make you run."

"She also said not to overwhelm you with stuff." Vaughn eyes the boxes of flatpack furniture with the intensity of a person psyching themselves up to scale a mountain.

"I can help," I offer. "I used to help my dad, and I always liked it."

Vaughn stares at me like I'm a stranger. "You like it?"

"Anyway, we figured this is stuff you and the baby need," Blaine says. "And we'd be failing you if we didn't give those things to you."

I look at him, but I'm not really seeing him.

I'm back to that night where I hobbled upstairs, terrified I'd tip backward down them and everyone would see just how weak I was. It feels like a million years ago, and now I'm here, still in the same house, with the same men.

A gentle nudge on my right side startles me.

Blaine peers down at me through his black-rimmed glasses. "You okay?"

I nod. "I'm okay."

I refocus on the book I have open in my lap. I get to the childbirth chapter, and I wish I'd stopped the chapter before. "That, uh… that doesn't look like it's going to be fun."

Before I can dwell on it, I snap the book close and decide to speak to Isaura about it. She has a way of making the terrifying seem a little less scary. At least when it comes to childbirth. The three men sitting around me do the same for every other part of my life.

"Have you thought of any names?" Vaughn asks.

Mom asked me the same, and I told her no. That I wasn't ready to even think about it. I didn't tell her why, not wanting to worry her. "I was afraid something would go wrong."

I'm still not sure if Dexter Pieter will change anything in the city, but I have this strange feeling something is in the works. And I have his number now—unless he gave me a fake one—so I guess I can call him and insult him again.

The sort of change I want is big, and it will take time. So I'll wait a little while, and in the meantime, let myself think about having a baby I didn't think I would survive long enough to have.

"Maybe you could help with names?" I suggest.

"Probably not a good idea." Vaughn stretches out on his back, pillows his head with his arms, and turns to look at me. "Garrison will go for something old-fashioned like Linda."

"What's wrong with Linda?" Garrison asks, a line forming between his brows.

Vaughn bolts upright. "My fucking god, you were actually considering it, weren't you?" He stares at him in abject horror. " Linda ? For our kid? No fucking way." He looks at me. "Unless you like Linda?"

"Um, not really."

"See?" Vaughn lies back down, pleased.

Garrison's lip quirks in a half-smile, clearly not insulted by Vaughn's violent rejection of Linda. He's relaxed as he reclines against the wall with one leg bent, disheveled in gray sweats and his dark hair mussed. Content. I like the look on him. "Vaughn will want something different. He'll go with Neptune or Forest."

I laugh. " Neptune ?"

Vaughn hums thoughtfully. "I know he made those up, but I'm not against Forest. For a boy or a girl, it could work."

"So we've got Linda or Forest," Blaine sighs. "How about we leave those extremes and try something sentimental?"

We sit on the nursery floor, discussing names and flipping through the pregnancy book. Blaine terrifies the shit out of me when, white faced, he warns me to never watch any birth videos on the internet.

And laughing.

We do a whole heap of laughing.

When I feel a gentle touch on my back, I look at Blaine. He's shuffled a little closer to me, so I move closer to him and rest my head on his shoulder as the sunlight streams in from the window and over all of us.

"Nola-Grace," I say, when a name blindsides me.

Garrison, Vaughn, and Blaine stop talking and look at me.

"If it's a girl, I think I'd like the name Nola-Grace. Nola, for my grandmother and Grace just feels…"

"Hopeful?" Blaine offers when I fumble for the right word and can't find it.

I nod.

"Nola-Grace Lucas," I say. An omega always takes the pack's name as her own. "I know you haven't bitten me, so I'm not really your omega until that happens."

"You were our omega the moment you chose to be, Resa," Garrison says. "A bite means nothing to me."

"Or me," Blaine adds.

"Or me," Vaughn adds.

We all look at Vaughn.

"Yes, I know betas don't chomp on throats, but I could do some chomping," he declares, winking at me. "Just say the word."

I grin at him.

A claiming bite was always something that terrified me. To be under the power of an alpha who could order me to do whatever he wanted was a fate worse than death.

But now? Now the thought of having their marks on me, of other people seeing them, and knowing I'm theirs and they are mine… That sounds like something I might want.

"Well, a bite might not be the worst thing that ever happened," I say slowly.

"We'll talk about it again." Garrison's eyes are intense. "After the baby is born and before your next heat. But only if that's something you want."

"Okay," I agree. "We'll talk about it again."

"I like Nola-Grace Lucas," Vaughn says.

"So do I," Garrison agrees.

"And me," Blaine says.

"I fell asleep on a lounger beside the pool one summer," Garrison says suddenly. He's studying the crib as he speaks, so he confuses the hell out of me. "It had been a long day, and I'd just finished up an exhausting case, so I was out cold. When something crashed on top of me, I thought I was under attack."

He looks at me as Vaughn and Blaine stare at the ground, their shoulders shaking, which confuses me even more.

I lift my head from Blaine's shaking shoulder and meet Garrison's blank gaze. Where is he going with this story? "Uh, okay."

He resumes staring at the crib. "My first instinct was to fight. I didn't know at the time that Vaughn had thrown his new flamingo float toward the pool and it landed on me. So that was what I was fighting. Naturally, since this happened next to the pool, I slipped and fell in. When I eventually climbed out, Vaughn and Blaine had nearly killed themselves laughing."

I haven't taken a breath since he admitted to fighting a flamingo pool float. My face is hot, I'm fast running out of air, and I'm shaking as I desperately try to contain my laughter. When he looks at me, I nearly lose it.

"And that is the story of the flamingo float, which occurred on the day we decided to be a pack. Now you know the story we must all take to our graves."

Those last words delivered with devastating seriousness nearly kill me. Vaughn and Blaine pointing their laughing faces at me is what finally breaks me. I laugh so hard tears stream down my face and my side hurts.

After I've stopped crying with laughter, Vaughn, Garrison, and Blaine make me breakfast and look at me like I'm superwoman when I build a dresser in under twenty minutes.

I spent two years imagining what my life would look like when I escaped my captors.

Nothing comes close to this.