23. Aleks

ALEKS

I thought I liked this alpha but maybe I was wrong.

"Why is your face doing that?" I asked him grumpily as I speared a fork into my fruit salad. It was primarily cantaloupe and Ben's face had an incredibly unsettling moon-eyed grin plastered on it.

Two reasons my break was already going badly.

"Things are finally progressing with my scent match." He opened his tupperware with an actual flourish.

I gave him a squeamish look. "I don't want any further details."

"Seriously?"

I stabbed another disappointing orange melon.

Ben didn't seem to take offence, his happiness immune to my rainclouds. "Why have you got bees up your butt?"

"Is that your official diagnosis, doctor?" I asked flatly.

"Sure is. I recommend you tell me what the hell is going on."

Where was I supposed to begin?

Should I start with how my grandma called me by my father's name the other day? She had been disproportionately angry when I tried to explain that she couldn't open a tin of tuna with a teaspoon.

"I've been cooking longer than you've been alive, Ivan. Don't tell me what to do," she scolded me.

I had to push her to attend appointments and drive her to tests. She fought me the whole time and I hated how it strained our relationship.

Her doctors confirmed what I already knew.

How do I even begin to explain that the final tipping point for moving her into a care facility came when I returned home one day to my grandma sitting in her own waste because my fucking father thought it was beneath him to help her?

Every emotion tied to those awful walls I had to call home was suffused in shame.

Shame that I'd failed her.

Shame that I was failing her still somehow by needing others to care for her.

"My grandma hasn't been well," I said, stabbing the tines of my fork repeatedly into a watermelon.

Ben's spoon paused halfway to his mouth. He put it back down and regarded me thoughtfully. "I assume you would've already checked but I gotta ask — is it anything St Elizabeth's can help with?"

I shook my head. "Not more than they already have. She's been seeing Dr. Lewis from the DCHP."

His eyebrows shot up. "Dementia. Fuck."

"Yep."

"Well, Frank's great. She's in good hands." Ben dipped his head and searched my face. "Are you ok?"

My melon was basically mush now and I moved onto mutilating a grape. "I'm helping her move into a care facility tomorrow."

"Which one?"

"Willowbrook."

"Your grandma's name if you don't mind me asking?"

"Yelena Sokolova."

Ben flipped open his notebook and jotted down something quickly. He did a double take and tapped the page with the end of his pen. "Not Sokolov like yours?"

I shook my head. "Russian surnames are gendered."

"Gotcha. I'll see if there's anything that can help make her transition as easy as possible," he said, like it was a given that he was part of this too. He shut his notebook with definitive smack. "Now, would you like a distraction so you don't have to think about it anymore?"

I almost did a double take. "What kind of distraction?"

"A gossip-y, dumpster-fire distraction."

I wasn't a saint. "Hell yes."

Ben glanced behind me at the bustling cafeteria. "Patty!" he called, waving his arm in the air. I looked behind me to see the charge nurse and one of my mentors waltzing over.

"Hello my sweets," Patty addressed us affectionately. She was probably one shared shift away from heading into hair-ruffling territory.

"Patty, tell Aleks about hm-mmm coming in and finding hm-mmm with hm-mmm in Room 302. Oh and don't forget to mention how they were—" Ben made some sort of complicated charade that was definitely something inappropriate.

The chair made an awful screech as Patty rushed to pull it out and plonked down. "Honey, you are in for a treat."

I gave Ben a grateful look and he gave me an understanding nod in return.

I sat my grandma down in Willowbrook's waiting room and went up to the front desk.

"I'm here for Yelena Sokolova's intake today," I told the receptionist.

A clipboard of forms was handed to me and I sat down to fill everything out.

She was a little confused about what was happening which made me feel even more awful.

"Is this another scan? I already had one yesterday."

She didn't.

"No, babulya," I told her gently. "This is where you'll be living from now on."

"Oh." She crossed her hands over each other and her eyes went distant. I wasn't sure she fully understood. "The green is very nice," she said, glancing at the Willowbrook branding everywhere.

"Yes, it's very calming," I said, half-listening as I continued to write.

"But blue would be better," she sniffed.

I chuckled lightly in spite of myself.

"Yelena!" a familiar voice called out.

My grandma beamed. "Dr. Lewis!" She started to try and stand up and he immediately rushed over to stop her, sitting in the empty seat beside us. We'd seen a lot of doctors and specialists over the years but Dr. Lewis was by far her favourite.

He also had a moustache. It was bordering on porn-stache levels of indecency.

No wonder my grandma loved him.

"I'm so glad I made it in time to help you get settled in," Dr. Lewis and his moustache informed us.

"Alyosha. Look who it is!" I had not seen my grandma smile like that in…well, maybe ever.

This had to have been Ben's doing.

Thoughtful fucker.

My grandma was much more lucid when she was given a tour of the place and shown her room. Leaning on Dr. Lewis' arm a little too heavily, like the opportunistic lady I knew and loved.

I suddenly wondered what she would think of Hazel.

I thanked Dr. Lewis profusely when he apologised and said he needed to get back to another patient. It was priceless, what he'd done.

The heaviness in my gut returned when I realised it was my time to leave.

I couldn't do it. But it wasn't like I could stay.

So there I remained, stuck in the chair in her room staring at the door.

"It's ok, Alyosha."

I turned to her, surprised.

"This is for the best," she told me firmly.

Fuck, she was going to make me cry.

"Babulya, I—"

"You'll visit?" she asked.

"So often you'll be sick of me," I choked out.

She patted my cheek. "Good. Work and study hard for me, ok?"

I held her hand and didn't let go. "I will," I promised.

Without my grandma, the entire home turned into a battlefield. My father and I, drifting from one room to another. Testing, watching, not yet engaging.

I just didn't realise how soon the first offensive wave would come.

At dinner no less.

"Now that your babushka is gone, when are you moving out?"

I stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"It's not like I need you here anymore," he scoffed.

I set my fork down with a little too much force. "You are unbelievable," I told him in a low voice.

"You're 25, Aleksey. Too fucking old to be living at home."

"What are you talking about?" I retorted. "I pay rent. Don't fucking make it sound like I'm here because of your charity."

He had the gall to give me a smug grin. "Whose name is on the mortgage, son?"

My blood boiled in my veins. "So that's it, huh? I took care of grandma for years because you could never be bothered to learn how to care for your own mother. Now when she's sick enough that I can't do it myself, you're kicking me out?"

"You should thank me, Aleksey," he said carelessly. "Maybe now you can finally act like a ma—"

I blacked out momentarily.

One second I was seated at the table eating dinner.

The next I was being tackled to the ground by my beer-soaked father after having thrown an entire glass of it in his face.

"Just for that," he barked, twisting my arm behind my back and shoving his knee into my spine. I cursed as pain shot through me like lightning. "You can get the fuck out right now."

Yeah it was fucking stupid.

But I was also done.

He was trying to drag me along the corridor when I ripped my arm from his grip. Got my face smashed into the wall for my efforts.

"Pissant beta thinks he can take an alpha can he?"

The stench of his breath was gag-inducing.

I should let him know.

"You. Fucking. Reek," I bit out against the stained, off-white paint.

I only just managed to duck my chin just in time to avoid his fist. The blow glanced off my head and pulverised the plaster instead of my skull.

Not only did he reek but he was absolutely certifiably insane.

Self-preservation, Aleks.

"Fuck this. I'm out," I surrendered.

Keeping my brain intact was more important.

I stumbled away, blocking out his rabid spitting and swearing as he shoved at me. Didn't even look back as my own father made me homeless with a single slam of the door.

Now what?