2. Aria

2

ARIA

By the time I convince Destiny to come back in tomorrow afternoon for a keratin treatment, it's nearly nine at night. I am never here this late, because it always makes me feel panicked.

It isn't just that the sun is gone, and it isn't even the fact that Newbury Street is terrifying. It's the thought of being in a public place and someone scenting me that terrifies me.

All right, it's also because of the dark alleyways where a deranged alpha could lurk, lying in wait to attack me and rut me on the street.

I read that it happened to someone on the internet, so I'm pretty sure it's a possibility. No lie. The omega went into hiding, like the witness protection agency or something.

The bell jingles as I shut and lock the door, the metallic click of the lock echoing in the empty salon. I arm the security system, my fingers trembling slightly as I punch in the code. When the light blinks from red to green, I take a deep breath and turn around, hoping like hell I smell like perm solution and bleach and not like a delicious, snackable omega. The cool night air hits my face as I step outside, the distant hum of traffic and occasional car horn punctuating the relative quiet. My shoes click against the pavement as I begin the hike to the bus stop, shadows stretching long under the streetlights.

Nerves tickle my belly, and I know there is no freaking way I'm getting through this walk without calling someone. Tugging my phone out of my jacket pocket, I dial the world's most incredible bestie.

"Talk to me," Cayenne answers after one ring, because she's amazing like that. It might be nine here, but on the west coast, it is only six. Yes, her real name is actually Cayenne, and yes, her hair is a natural bright red. She looks just like Jessica Rabbit.

I'm jealous of her sunlight and curves. "Heading home, and I just wanted to look busy."

"Noted," she murmurs, and I hear clacking in the background. "Late night?"

I snort as I round the corner, heading toward the bus stop. The lights flicker overhead, casting long shadows across the busy street. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks, and another person screams at someone to press the gas pedal.

"Client wanted to go from box dye black to Elsa blonde." I'll never forgive Pinterest for giving people false hair perceptions.

"Impossible." She gets it. "So you gave in and worked late."

"I tried so hard to be mean too," I tell her as I get closer to the stop. Luckily, no one is there when I get to the bench seat, and I toss my ass onto it while I stretch out my aching feet.

"No, you didn't."

"I swear I did."

"Let me guess, you told her no when you hit your limit," she accuses. "Bus is at the light two blocks away."

I sigh in relief. "Thanks."

Cayenne is a hacker, which isn't politically correct. She's a digital specialist. By day, she's an IT lady, and everything is above board and legit. Don't ask me who she works for because she literally has corporations bidding for her. She recently told me she works for some medical conglomerate.

By night though, she's like a female Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. At least I see her as this vigilante queen. Once she told me she hacked one of the biggest banking companies in the United States for a solid year, and every time a bank charged a fee, she reimbursed it.

They still haven't caught her.

The fact that she is tracking me as I head home makes me feel relief, especially after my ex-mistake.

We don't call him by his name, just the mistake.

"I did," I admit, because she isn't wrong and lying isn't my thing. Okay, at least I'd never lie to Cayenne.

"Baby, what did I tell you about boundaries?" she asks. "Bus."

I turn and see the thirty-two chugging down the street just in time for it to backfire and stall as it rolls to the stop, a giant cloud of smog following in its wake.

"Who did I piss off in a past life?" I mumble to myself.

"What's happening?" Cayenne questions in her no-nonsense voice.

"Hold up." I press the phone to my chest as the driver opens the door, and a gentleman in his late fifties sighs at me.

"Hey, doll, you're going to have to find another way to get to where you're going," he yells down to me. "Big Bertha just gave out."

His face disappears behind the few passengers on the bus.

"Thanks," I tell him as he gets off to make a call. I press the phone back to my ear. "Bus died."

"Really, who did you piss off?" she asks. "I'm on it."

"I'm going to start walking toward Back Bay." The very last thing I want to do is get up and walk fifteen minutes toward the rail line, but my choices are limited here.

"It's down," Cayenne mutters.

I flop back on the bench and pinch my nose. "All right, the bus and the line are out. What's left?"

"Taxi," she says absentmindedly, her keyboard clacking away. "Bluebikes, Uber, Lyft."

"Ma'am," I hear to my left. My whole body instantly feels like fire ants are marching across my flesh as I turn to find an older gentleman with kind eyes standing ten feet from me with his hands up. "A few of us are going to use a ride share. What direction are you going?"

"No," Cayenne says into the phone.

"I appreciate the offer, but I have backup on the way." I hold my phone up.

"Liar," Cayenne tells me.

This time? Yes, I am.

Clearly, he doesn't believe it, because he opens his mouth to say something.

Unfortunately for him, I have Cayenne in my ear. "Ride in three, two" —I hear a wild clack on the keyboard just as a sleek black SUV pulls up— "one. Damn, I'm good."

"See?" I jerk a thumb at the car and give the older man a fake smile. To Cayenne, I mutter, "Creds?"

"Quinn Clarke. I've never met her, but we play together," Cayenne says. By play, she means those shooting games she gets lost in. She's competitive by nature, and I love her for it.

I nod, relief washing over me. Standing up on my sore feet, I begin to wobble past the bus and stop at the license plate that I read off to Cayenne, then I approach the passenger seat. As I reach for the door handle, a flicker of uncertainty crosses my mind. What if Cayenne's online friend isn't who we think they are?

"I paid the driver," Cayenne says jolting me back to reality.

"You didn't have to do that," I tell her with my hand on the door handle. "But thank you."

"You're right—I didn't," she replies, and I damn well know she isn't done, not by a long shot. "I'd just prefer to have my friend in one fucking piece. One extreme emergency per lifetime, Aria. One."

I wince as I slide into the car. She's right. She once found me beaten to within an inch of my life. If it weren't for Cayenne, then…well, I probably would have died that day.

I don't argue with her. She's right.

"Aria Collins?" a man asks after I shut my door, and he takes off.

"Um…Cayenne?"

"I'm on it," she says in a very quiet, delicate voice.

"Hey, is that Cayenne?" the guy asks me. All I see in the rearview mirror are dark, soulful brown eyes. "Tell her this is my last drive, and I'll log in."

"Male? Quinn is not a male. Quinn is a female," Cayenne says over the line. "I don't make mistakes."

"Well…" I admit, it isn't a good look for me. "It sure as hell looks like you did."

"Fuck," she curses over the line.

"What do I do?" I hiss as he drives down the street. It's a half-hour drive home, an hour by public transport. I want to get home safely, not in a tight space with a random person I don't know.

I'm not panicking.

I'm hyperventilating.

"Put me on speakerphone," she demands. That's fine by me, because I can't breathe. "Quinn," Cayenne says as I hold my phone up, "and for fuck's sake, breathe, Aria."

His eyes flick to me questioningly as I hold the phone up.

"Cayenne?" he questions.

"I thought you were a woman," she says, not holding her punches. I mean, it is what it is, but it also sounds terrible. She's kept me alive this long though. "You led me to believe you were a woman, otherwise I may not have allowed you to pick up my precious cargo."

For a moment, the guy, Quinn, just blinks while focusing on the road, clearly dumbfounded. "I…"

"Did not have any gender specs on your profile." Her fingers clack away. "Damn you, there it is on your license."

"Okay, but it's not like I have a soft voice," he retorts.

"How dare you?" Cayenne says, and I know she is three seconds from throwing down. It doesn't matter how many miles sit between her and the man in the front seat.

She will fuck him up somehow, and I'm not going to lie, a part of me wants to know how she'll do it, but alas, I should diffuse the situation.

I interrupt their bickering. "Cayenne, am I safe?"

She pauses. If it were a solid no, she would not have paused. Finally, she answers, "You're safe," and then she rushes out, "I'll be tracking you." The line goes dead.

"She's like one of those rottweilers." Quinn chuckles nervously.

Same, dude. I feel the same anxious energy.

"She's protective," I hedge while looking out the window.

"Gathered as much. Cayenne has talked about this mysterious bestie for a long time. Honestly, I thought you were an invisible friend." He laughs nervously again.

Sighing, I shift in my seat. "I didn't know she knew anyone in Puritan City." I'm not mad at him, but I'm annoyed that she knew people here and never told me when she thought this was the best city for me to hide in. Now I'm feeling all kinds of suspicious, because clearly she had some trickery bullshit going on in that mind of hers.

"Looks like Cayenne played us both," he says softly. "Listen, let's start over. I'm Quinn Clark. I'm twenty-seven and a Virgo. I live with—" He pauses, glancing back at me. "My roommates. I have three."

"I once had a goldfish," I tell him as I ease into the seat, relaxing a little, but just a little. No more.

"A goldfish." He smiles in the rearview mirror, and it's damn near disarming. "What was his name?"

"Goldie." I shift again because this car is fancy but also really uncomfortable.

"How very creative," he teases me, and the banter feels nice. I usually don't talk to men.

"The third Goldie just died." I frown, because clearly I'm a terrible pet parent.

Quinn thinks I'm hilarious though. "Goldie one, two, and three. I like it." He nods to himself. "We had a hamster once."

"Past tense," I note.

"Well, yes. They bite a lot." He chuckles to himself. "See, this one time—" His phone rings. "Oh, excuse me, I need to answer this." He presses a green button on his little screen labeled Dash. "Bro, what's up?"

Loud music blares through the speakers, and Quinn glances at me in the rearview apologetically. "Q!" someone who's obviously drunk slurs on the other line. "I need you…" There's a long pause. "To pick me up."

"Dash, are you drunk?" Quinn clenches the steering wheel with white knuckles. "Dash?"

"Hey, baby," the other male coos at a girl.

"Don't fucking touch my girl!" an angry voice yells, and it instantly makes me crouch in the back seat.

"Dammit, Dash." Quinn turns the volume down. "Where the fuck are you?"

"Aw, you're just mad I have what she really needs." Dash clearly has zero self-preservation. "Right?—"

A thud sounds, and the line goes silent.

For a few minutes, neither of us says anything. It's obvious what just happened.

"Aria, right?" Quinn chuckles nervously again. I note the tell as I meet his gaze in the rearview mirror again at a red light. "That's my pack brother, and I am going to have to pick him up."

Oh hell no.

"I very clearly need to get home." Just the thought of being anywhere near a bar makes my skin itch.

That's where I met the ex-mistake, so all of the bars feel like the same shady space.

"Listen, let me check his location. If he's on the way, then I'll roll past. He probably got kicked out. If he's nowhere near us, then I'll call him a cab." Quinn uses a soft voice to talk to me like I'm a rabid animal.

I am, but only a little.

"Check," I say through clenched teeth, my heart racing as I weigh the risks. Every instinct screams at me to refuse, to demand he take me straight home. But a small voice in my head whispers that I'm being paranoid. Cayenne is going to be pissed.

"All right, he's above Hyde Park." Quinn taps the screen and looks back at me by turning around at the next red light. "On any other day, I wouldn't do this, but…Dash has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth."

"I can tell," I mutter, my fingers digging into the seat cushion. The logical part of my brain argues that it's just a small detour, but my omega instincts are on high alert. After a moment of internal struggle, I give Quinn a curt nod. "Don't make me regret this," I say, my voice tight with tension.

"I promise you are safe with us," he says.

I let the words roll right over me. I know just how empty promises are, especially those uttered by very handsome men, but for some reason, I believe this strange man. It's how he says it that makes me believe him. It isn't with an alpha's bark, an omega's docile nature, or even a beta's sass. It's neutral and soft and gives me all the warm fuzzies.

I resist the urge to cry as he turns down the road right as my phone starts going off. It doesn't matter that I believe him, I really wanted to go home and crawl into my bed.

I regret getting out of bed this morning. I turn my phone off and toss it in my bag. Cayenne will only keep calling until I answer, but she damn well has eyes on me right now. She just wants a verbal confirmation of life.

Just this once, I'll ask for forgiveness from Cayenne. I'll deal with the consequences later, but her overbearing nature is getting put in time-out.

I just hope I don't regret that choice.