by Rosa Swann
I turn the heating on, hoping it will heat up quickly, then I go to the bedrooms and open the windows there. There was a stack of bedding and towels and such on the kitchen table, so we’ll have to make the beds ourselves before we go to sleep.
After I’ve opened a few windows for some airflow and turned the heating on, I go back to the living area and sit down on the couch, leaning back and taking a deep breath.
Fuck. What did we get ourselves into? Mia was so angry when she realised I’d not just sent Destin home, but that I was going with him. She’s been taking care of me for two weeks, trying to get me to do anything, and Destin shows up and I just go off with him, like we’re not in massive trouble...
I tried to get her to understand, that I had to be with Destin this weekend, that I needed him, but she just got even more angry at that and wouldn’t listen to me anymore. I know she cares about me, she just wants to protect me, but she has no idea what it’s been like for the last three weeks. The realisation that Destin is my mate, the constant pain I feel when I’m not with him, which was even worse because he’s also my best friend.
The one person I’d be able to talk to about these things, and he was the source of these feelings. I felt so alone...
I know that spending the weekend here won’t solve anything. Spending the weekend with Destin won’t solve any of the trouble we’re in, but it’s better than being apart for another weekend. Being together is always better than being apart. And maybe that’s exactly what we need, to see each other every few weekends, just to stay sane.
For weeks I lived with the fear that I’d never see Destin again, that something bad would happen to me, or him, that either of us could die in a freak accident, and that I’d never know what it’s like to have a mate, what it’s like to spend my life with my fated mate. I feel so selfish when I think of it like that, that I don’t want to be apart from Destin for too long for the fear that if I don’t spend time with him now, I might not have that experience in the future.
Your best friend being your mate might have advantages when it comes to how well you know each other, but if they’re also the one you would normally talk to when you’ve got problems or when you need a shoulder to cry on, that’s definitely a disadvantage. How can I talk to him about my fears, of how scared I am, when he’s got a vested interest in this relationship, when he is the other party and doesn’t have an outsider’s view either?
And it’s not like I can talk to my dads, or my uncles, or anyone around us, because I already know their answer. It’ll be the same as Mia’s, the same as what Destin said that Saturday evening. We should wait, we should wait until we’re both older. We should just sit the next four years out.
Four years is nothing in the grand scheme of things. What is four years of waiting if we’ll be able to spend the eighty years after it together?
But I’m not sure if I can manage four years of being away from Destin... Two weeks was bad enough.
The sound of the truck pulling up in front of the bungalow makes me get up, and I quickly wipe my tears away. Right. Food. I really should eat something... I’ve not been eating a lot lately, I just haven’t been hungry and time has been slipping away so much that most of the time I don’t even realise I’ve missed two or three meals until Mia won’t leave me alone about it anymore. Not good.
Destin opens the door, holding out bags with food, a big grin on his face. “Anyone up for midnight dinner?” He puts the bags on the counter and turns to me, his eyes going softer when he looks me over. “Are you okay?”
I nod, going over to him. “Yeah, I’m good.” I don’t need to bother him with the twists that my mind keeps coming up with, not now anyway, maybe later this weekend. Now I should really just enjoy my time with Destin, however little of it we might have.
He slides his arm around my waist, pulling me against him and I lean my head on his shoulder, savouring his touch, his warm embrace. “I didn’t know what you wanted exactly. So I just ordered something of anything that sounded good. We can reheat whatever is left over tomorrow for breakfast.” He lets out a low laugh and nuzzles my neck.
A shiver goes through my body, heat pooling in my core, setting my whole body on fire at the intimacy of it. “Or maybe breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“Maybe.” He laughs again, then his arm around me tightens. “I’ve really missed you. I’m glad we can spend some time together this weekend.”
“Me too.” My voice comes out like a croak and I’m becoming more and more aware of how he’s holding me and how I want to kiss him. But if we start now, I don’t know when we’ll stop, and we’ve got food to get to.
I quickly break from his embrace and pick up the stack of bedding and towels and bring them over to the bedroom, where I take a couple of deep breaths. While I love being near him like that, we can’t get too distracted. We’re not here just to have fun, we’re here because we have to make a plan. We have to come up with ways that we can survive the next four or so years, until we’re in a place where we can really live like mates, until we’re old enough to take this responsibility upon ourselves.
When I walk back into the kitchen, Destin has spread out all the food over the table and I blink, laughing. There’s barely any space for us to actually sit at the table, it’s that full.
“What?” He looks up at me, smiling. “I told you I had no idea what you were feeling like. You eat like... Just about anything, so I just ordered the most likely options.”
“Thanks.” I sit down opposite him and grab one of the boxes with burgers. “Any chance you remember what’s in each box? Or even what you ordered?”
He shakes his head, grinning. “That can be a cheeseburger, a spicy burger with jalapenos, or one of two other ones I don’t really remember. I also got you two types of fries and enough tubs of sauce to last you the weekend.” He pours two bags of fries into different bowls he must have found in the cupboards. “And...” He points behind him. “We’ve got an oven. So anything that needs reheating in the morning, it should be easy enough. Not as tasty as the first night, but not as bad as having to eat it cold or heated up in a microwave.”
My heart swells. He’s really thought of just about anything. This is the good part of being mates with your best friend. He already knows what I like, what I like best, what makes me happy. And it’s hard to ignore how good that feels.
I ate one and a half burgers, Destin had the other half of the second one, and we finished a whole bowl of fries, the one with the skin still on them. It’s not a perfect meal, but it’s more than I’ve eaten in a long time, and I’m feeling a little drowsy from all the food.
“Come on.” Destin reaches out to me and I take his hand, letting him pull me up, his arms immediately wrapping around me. “I know that you’re exhausted, and we should probably go to bed, but I...” He lets out a slow breath. “Is it bad that I’m still too nervous to do that?”
I shake my head sleepily. “The couch is pretty comfy, you know.”
“Good.” He kisses the side of my head and then we stumble towards the couch, where he sits me down onto the pillows. “I’ll be right back.” He kisses my hand before letting me go and going back outside.
The door of the truck opens and closes and then he’s back inside, carrying a warm blanket. “I know it might not be perfectly clean, but it’s warm.” He sits next to me on the couch and then pulls the blanket over the both of us.
I turn to him more, putting my head on his shoulder, and he moves so he’s sideways on the couch, making it more comfortable to cuddle up. We often lie on the couch like this when watching movies or series or whatever, him in front of me, my head on his chest, his arm around my back, a blanket pulled up high.
It’s always been so normal for us, but this time, knowing what we know now, it feels different. Where it was just about hanging around and being comfortable together before, things that were really important to us, I feel like there are different expectations from me now. That if we’re this close tog
ether, we should be doing other things, sexual things.
“Destin...” I wrap my fingers around the top of the blanket, so I don’t just have it on his chest. It feels safer. “I don’t think I...” I have no idea how to even say it without sounding like a little kid.
He puts his hand over my hand and holds it. “I know.” His voice is low. “I know. I don’t think I can do any of that right now either. I just... I just need to be close to you. This is enough. Is that okay?”
I nod, closing my eyes. This is enough, for now. But for how long? My body responds very strongly every time he’s near, and the way his eyes darken, fill with lust, when he looks at me, I’m pretty sure he feels the same. I need his comfort right now, but when will I want more, when will he want other things from me?
And will I be able to resist him? Part of me doesn’t even want to resist him, and that scares me, how big that part of me is...
Chapter Five
Destin
I have no idea what time it is, but there’s light shining in through the windows and my neck is feeling all crooked from sleeping in the same weird position all night.
Then I become aware of the weight on my chest, of how Seb is half on top of me, fast asleep, his face against my chest, his arm around me tightly. Like he’s scared I’ll disappear if he doesn’t cling onto me. It makes me sad, that he’s so scared to lose me, that even when he’s asleep, he’s desperately holding on.
I play my fingers through his hair, smelling the product he’s been using for years now. It’s slightly sweet, but also a little lemony. Whenever I smell something like it, it always reminds me of Seb, of him doing his hair in the mirror and glaring at me for laughing at him when he tries to get his wild hair under control.
And now I want to wake him up, to watch him smile or glare at me, to talk to him, even if it’s about nothing in particular. But he looked so exhausted last night that I don’t want to wake him up yet. He needs a lot of rest. He should rest as much as possible this weekend.
I need to come up with ways to make life as easy as possible for him, then maybe he’ll get some colour back on his cheeks and maybe he’ll stop looking like someone just raised him from the dead. I’ll start with that this weekend. I’ll do anything I need to for him so that when I drive him home at the end of the weekend, he looks a little more like himself.
But no matter how much I want to stay here, all nice and warm and comfortable, my body is letting me know that I definitely need to get up. Nature calls.
“Seb,” I whisper in his hair. “Can you let me go for a moment?”
“Hmm?” He slowly opens his eyes and starts to sit up, his movements still sleepy, but he’s no longer holding me in a vice.
“I’ll be right back.” I get up and go to the bathroom, locking the door behind me and I relieve myself.
Hell, that’s what I get for eating so many salty foods and drinking one of those big jugs of fizzy drinks in the middle of the night. I desperately need some greens and good proteins in my body today, or it will go on strike. I can’t eat junk food all weekend... I might have been able to when I was twelve, but with a full-time job that’s pretty physically draining, I need better food in me or I’ll just crash.
I wash my hands and look at myself in the mirror over the sink. My eyes still look a little haunted, and my hair is a total mess, but at least I don’t seem to be constantly scowling anymore... Some form of improvement, I feel.
Seb’s knocking on the door jolts me and I step back. “You’re not the only one who needs the bathroom. Get a move on.” His voice is creaky, but there’s a spirit in it that I missed from him yesterday.
“Yeah, yeah.” I open the door and look at him for a moment, a sense of need overcoming me as I step past him, making my mouth water.
He wordlessly slips past me, locking the door behind him. “I’m not breakfast.” His voice comes through the door and while he tries to sound stern, I can hear the laugh in his voice. “But I would like something to eat.”
“I’ll warm up some things from last night.” I go over to the kitchen and turn the oven on. Then I open the fridge and take out the leftovers. Not that you can really call it ‘leftovers’ when it’s basically two-thirds of everything I got us last night.
I pour the rest of the fries and some of the different fried chicken pieces on a tray and then put them into the oven. They can warm up in there while the oven warms up.
Then I open the boxes with the last two burgers. What can I do with these... The buns are pretty soggy, and anything that was crisp last night is now looking all sad, but nothing that can’t be saved, I think.
We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got right now for breakfast. But one of us, or both of us, will have to go shopping today for some less-processed food. At least it will keep us busy, for a while.
After breakfast, Seb managed to find that they have a small store near the gate to the park, so, while he took a shower, I picked us up some food. Nothing fancy, nothing that requires any real cooking, some bread, eggs, some things to put on the bread and small packs of coffee and tea. Just enough to last us the weekend.
The weather is really nice today, and while the air is a little crisp, it’s not too cold.
“Let’s go for a walk.” I look out the window that looks out to the fence around the park and the fields and forest behind it. The trees are all shades of yellow, red and brown, and it looks so serene.
“Ehmm.” Seb is sitting on the couch, my blanket around him, staring at his phone, though I don’t really see anything on it.
“What’s wrong?” I kneel in front of him, looking up at him. “You don’t want to?”
He shrugs, closing his eyes. “I don’t know. I just...” He sighs and he suddenly looks very tired. “Can we just sit here for a while?”
“Sure.” I sit next to him on the couch and take him in my arms. “Do you want to talk about it?” When I hold him close, my body starts responding to him, and I have to purposefully think of something else, or this could turn awkward fast. I don’t need him to feel how hard I get for him when we’re trying to have a serious conversation.
“We can’t keep hiding here forever.” Seb’s voice is quiet. “We’ll have to go home after the weekend.”
“It’s Saturday morning, we don’t have to think about that yet. That’s for tomorrow, or Monday morning.”
“But... It isn’t.” He looks down, a tremble in his voice. “If I have to prepare myself to not seeing you for weeks, I’d like to know that now. I don’t like not knowing... I need to...”
“I know.” I kiss the top of his head. Seb likes to know what’s going on, I tend to just go with whatever, hence me showing up at his place last night. But he needs more structure than that. “What do you want to do?”
“We can’t keep renting a house or hotel room every weekend.” His voice is sad. “We don’t have the money to do that, and people will start to find out really quickly. There are other things, more important things, we should be doing with that money.”
“Nothing I could spend that money on is more important than you are.” I tighten my arms around him. “I’ll do whatever you need. But I also can’t not see you for months on end.”
“I can’t either...” He turns slightly, looking at me, tears in his eyes, and he gives me a quick kiss. “I really can’t.”
I don’t know what to say, so pull him into my lap more as I lean back, letting him rest against me. “I could get my own place to live. I could move out of the apartment above the cafe and get a place where we could be alone. That way nobody would have to know, and you can still visit me without it looking weird.”
“How would you pull that off? What reason would you give for doing that? Especially since you were so adamant that you didn’t need your own place at the start of the summer.” He’s talking against my chest, tucked under my chin, my arms comfortable around him. This is new. Holding him like this is new, and I like it, a lot.
“More privacy?”
He snorts. “For what? They’ll get suspicious.”
“I’m old enough to live on my own. It shouldn’t be weird that I’d want more privacy, that I’d want my own place and no longer live with my older sister. That’s normal.”
But even I know that my dads won’t accept it as a reason for wanting to move out. They’ll want to know why I want more privacy, and ‘just because’ won’t cut it. They’ll suspect that I’ve got an Omega, or that I’ll want to bring Omegas around to my place. They’ll be extra against me moving out if they think that I’m just doing it so that I can bring over Omegas.
And if I only bring Seb there... They’ll get suspicious why I’m not staying at his place instead, why he has to be the one to travel when I’m the one with the car and with more money to afford to go visit him. And they’ll wonder why we suddenly can’t stay in the apartment with Maddy anymore, as we’ve done for years. They’ll start to suspect that we’re both bringing over Alphas and Omegas to the place, and if we don’t... They’ll soon realise what’s really going on.
“They’ll know.” Seb’s voice is soft and I nod. “If they’re not suspicious at first, they’ll get suspicious really quickly once they find out that you only bring me there.”
He’s right, no matter how much I dislike it. “Isn’t there something else we can do? Take meds so we won’t mate yet? Doesn’t that exist? There’s stuff to make people mate who aren’t fated mates, so there should be the reverse too, right?”
“Only if you never want to be mated to me in the future.” The words are almost like they have to be pulled out of him and my heart hurts at the tone of his voice. “Once we take them, we can’t mate, ever. And I... I can’t do that.” He’s tense in my arms, slightly shaking and I pull him against me tighter.
“I can’t either,” I whisper into his hair. “I’m sorry, I won’t bring it up again. We’ll just have to come up with a different plan.”
