by Meg Bawden
I should have stepped up and been a better big brother to Emily.
I should have been there to share the burden of the farm with Bristol.
I should have told my parents I loved them more.
I should have. I should have. I should have. The should haves never stopped.
I’m sorry. Instead, I said, “Because then we wouldn’t be the Scott brothers.”
We fell into silence again, but this time it was anything but comfortable.
Grayson
The first thing I did when I went into the house was go upstairs to my home office to find my after-heat pills. Even though I took contraception meds, I’d rather be safe than sorry when it came to this sort of thing. I’d spent a couple of heats with a heat locum, but that had been near the beginning of the year, and I hadn’t had anyone for a few months. I sat down, popped the pills out of the blister pack, and dry swallowed them. They scratched the whole way down, but I didn’t care. The last thing in the world I wanted was to have a fuckup when there were two different guys who could be the father of any future children from what had just happened.
I could see myself now on some cheesy talk show—“ Disgraced Small-Town Mayor Seeks Baby Daddy” would be the headline. Not that I ever watched trash shows. I shook my shoulders and stared at my desk. Yes, the heat I’d just had was probably the most fantastic sexual experience of my entire life. I wanted it again, and again, as long as I could get with Bristol and Blair, but there was no way the relationships could end well.
I stewed on how I could actually date two men, what it meant for my career, and tried to get myself behind the idea of changing clothes to go start the massive cleanup of back work that always happened when I had a heat. My time off would mean a few late nights of doing nothing but sit at my desk and respond to email, paperwork, and other frantic, usually unimportant, phone calls, but at least this time I had the warm memories of being sandwiched between two strong, muscular bodies to make it all worthwhile.
Then I sneezed.
Frowning, I groaned and rubbed at the bridge of my nose. The back of my throat tickled.
“Hell,” I grumbled. Apparently spending an entire week and a half fucking and not eating properly was going to take a toll on me. Maybe next time we’d do better. My stomach grumbled. I picked up the phone on my desk and called down to the kitchen. About ten minutes later I was blowing my nose as Bonita brought a tray of soup and sandwiches into the room.
“You decided to scare us all.” She glared, and I ducked my head. Bonita had been my maid at my parents’ house, before their divorce. The moment I returned to Cherry Hollow after college and started working in politics, I found her again, and she became a part of my team. She’d always been a mother to me.
“I’m sorry. I should have called.”
She glared as I sneezed again and snatched up another tissue out of the box I’d placed at my elbow.
“You’re sick as well. Those alphas are greedy and didn’t keep your health up.”
I rolled my eyes. “They didn’t infest me with germs. This has probably been brewing since before my heat.”
She puffed out her wrinkled cheeks, walked closer, and whapped me on the head as if I was still ten. I ducked when she tried to do it again.
“Why?”
“You’re important, that’s why. What were you thinking?”
“You’re worse than Papa.”
“That’s because you’re his moon and stars. I know what a little terror you used to be.”
“Used to be his moon and stars. Not anymore.” I dragged her close for a quick hug. “Thank you.”
She dropped a kiss on my head. “You get yourself to the doctor.”
“It’s only sneezing.”
She harrumphed and took herself graciously from the room with her head high. “You’ll see. After being gone so long with two huge alphas? You’re going to need the doctor.”
“Tosh and nonsense!” I called after her with a laugh. I turned to my computer and fired it up, deciding maybe I’d just work from home for the rest of the day. I let myself get lost in the rhythm of answering emails. The first thing I did was let Todd, the nice guy who helped run the office, know that I would be playing serious catchup, and thank him for handling things for me while I was gone. He sent back his typical friendly email, assuring me he never minded helping out. I smiled to myself and thought about what I might do to thank him properly. Gift cards were so impersonal.
After that I got lost in the rhythm of work. There were over three hundred emails, somehow, in my inbox. I’d never come back to this much crap before. Most of it didn’t need my personal attention, but I wanted to let people know they could speak to me directly if they needed to, so this was the result.
I sniffled and sneezed my way through the evening. Bonita forced dinner on me at seven and by then my nose was good and clogged. She tutted and made other noises the entire time she hovered in my office. At nine, while I was still plugging away at the emails, she brought me coffee. She glared. I blew my nose and shrank down in my seat.
“I’ll go tomorrow.”
She didn’t say I told you so—oh no, Bonita was too good for that—she simply smiled and came over to pat me on top of my head. I still hadn’t cleared out my inbox by midnight, and I felt enough aches and pains settling into my body that I caved and went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up and felt terrible. I texted Todd and Blair both to apologize and let them know I was headed to my doctor this morning. I sneezed so much, driving was an issue, so Bonita asked her husband, Felix, to take me to Doctor Tanner’s office. I didn’t see her, but rather one of the nurses.
He looked me over and frowned. “We don’t usually hand out antibiotics anymore, but there’s been a strain of strep making its way around the courthouse. The doc has been prescribing one to everyone who comes in who works there.”
I nodded miserably. “Okay. Please. My throat does hurt.”
“You can pick it up at the pharmacy.” He didn’t even bother writing me a prescription out. “I’ll call over right now.”
Bing, bang, boom, I was out of there in under ten minutes and popping yet another pill in less time than it would have taken to change a flat tire. After that, I didn’t see a reason not to go to the office, especially if whatever I had was already making the rounds. Felix dropped me there, and I told him not to bother picking me up. I planned to work into the wee hours.
I strode into my office, and the wind was knocked out of me when I saw Blair in his well-cut suit, sitting at his own desk, reading over the Cherry Hollow Bulletin, which was actually part of his job and not him slacking off. He kept me up to date on anything I should know about, and oddly enough, in this town, reading the paper was sometimes as informative as anything else.
He glanced up and smiled at me, the grin slightly mischievous in a way Bristol’s never was. How had I ever dreamed they were the same person? As much as Blair had pissed me off with the way he was a jerk to Bristol, there was something about the bad-boy vibe he gave off that called to me too. It wasn’t healthy to enjoy something obviously destructive so much, but in the end, I couldn’t help myself. I just wished he didn’t take it out on Bristol. I smiled at Blair as I walked through to my own office, but he got up and followed me.
As he closed the door behind us, I sneezed over and over until I was curled in on myself. A handkerchief was thrust into my line of sight and I took it gratefully, dabbing at my eyes. I used it to blow my nose, and mumbled, “I’ll buy you a new one.”
He laughed and sat down easily on the chair in front of my desk. “You’re sick?”
“Yes, and I was informed we have an epidemic here at the office.” I winced with how terrible I sounded. “So if you start to feel sick you should go get antibiotics.”
He nodded but didn’t seem at all under the weather. I felt bad and wanted a hug but hesitated in going to Blair. We were back at work now, and he hadn’t indicated he wanted anything from me other
than sex. If this were Bristol, I wouldn’t have thought twice about curling up against him and resting my head on his shoulder.
A weird ache thumped in my chest, around about where my heart was. I only left his house yesterday, how could I miss him so much? I must have stared too long because Blair frowned. “Can I get you something? Tylenol?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Any disasters crop up while we were out that I haven’t heard about yet?”
“Not really. There was a string of shoplifting in town, but the person was caught already. Markie Gibbs, a stupid omega kid who went and had a baby without an alpha was behind it. He cried all over everyone and said he was lifting things because his mom kicked him out and he didn’t have money to take care of the baby.” Blair rolled his eyes, but my heart twanged in sympathy.
“So, the businesses are pressing charges?”
He snorted and settled back into his chair with his arms crossed. “In Cherry Hollow? No. One the local busybodies, Mrs. Miller, set up a fundraiser, took him to her house, and convinced everyone to drop the charges against him. I swear, Cherry Hollow is enough to give anyone a cavity. In Fort Pitt, he would have been in jail and the kid would have been with social services by now.”
“It’s not bad a bad thing that the community comes together for people.”
He ducked his head and his jaw worked. “Yeah, I suppose,” he said quietly. “Maybe you should go over there and we could get a few pictures of you holding Mark’s baby and handing over some diapers or something.” He sat up straighter in his chair, eyes sparkling at the opportunity. He wasn’t wrong, it would look good, but I cringed inside.
“Why don’t we go over there and take him some things for the baby without turning it into a media blitz? It isn’t as though people won’t hear I did it anyway.”
He sighed. “You take all the fun out of my job.”
The banter was familiar and put me back onto more solid ground with Blair. I sneezed again and groaned, going around to sit down hard in my chair. Todd poked his head into the office and frowned when he saw me, but outright glared when he noticed Blair sitting there doing nothing. Blair beamed at Todd, and he had a very photogenic smile, but Todd only kept up what I’d dubbed his “boss snarl” until Blair stood, slowly stretched, and brushed by him on the way out the door. Todd closed the door firmly behind himself after stepping inside.
“What are you doing back already? I thought you were sick. You should take care of yourself.” He made his way closer, and I held in a groan.
“Not you too. Please, I’m certainly well enough to sit behind a desk. I’ve already seen a doctor. I can’t lie around anymore after a week and a half in bed.”
Todd’s eyes went wide, and the color drained from his face. I wanted to bite off the tip of my own tongue.
“About that, sir. Are you well? Was this… a discreet meeting of the minds with an alpha?” Todd made a face. I had long suspected he had something against alphas but chalked it up to the fact he had worked in the office under Jacob Harlow as well. Harlow’s egotism and mean streak were legendary here.
“Very discreet.”
“Anything permanent?” he asked. He’d been asking this same question for a while now. At first, I’d thought he was pushing hard for me to settle down, but lately I’d begun to wonder if there wasn’t more to it.
“Not so much, no.”
He nodded and stepped closer to my desk with his hands behind his back. Nearly always composed, he was a wonderful person to work with, but I could tell by the set of his shoulders and the way he took a deep, shuddering breath I wasn’t going to enjoy what he was about to say.
“Sir, may I speak outside of my position as your public relations manager?”
The urge to say no was strong. I didn’t need anything piled on me at the moment, especially since I was still trying to sort out what I might want to do about the whole Bristol-Blair situation, but I shored up my courage and nodded.
“Go on.”
“You’re worth more than being some pleasure boy for an alpha.”
I’d heard some ludicrous things in this very office. None of them had prepared me to hear something so spectacularly atrocious come from Todd’s very respectable mouth.
“I… um….” My throat hurt, and I tried to clear it, but only ended up coughing.
“You’re one of the best mayors Cherry Hollow has ever seen. You’ve increased tourism in one year by twenty percent, which is almost unheard of anywhere. You’ve helped fund the fire station so they could add more permanent positions. You secured funding from Harrisburg to increase our school programs during a time when other areas are cutting back.”
“I want to get Trent Miller back as sheriff soon,” I added offhandedly, still reeling from being called “a pleasure boy.” Was that really what normal men thought about omegas? I cringed inside and my face felt hot and sweaty, even more than it had already.
“My point is, sir.” His eyes blazed with something that felt almost radical as he studied me. I shrank back into my seat and told myself it was because I didn’t feel well, even though a deep discomfort seeped into my gut. “My point,” he said louder, “is you should be with someone who appreciates the effort you put into your job, and the finer qualities you possess. You’re worth so much more than what I’ve noticed you’ve been up to.”
“I… you’ve noticed me up to things?” My eyebrows shot up all on their own.
“I’ve noticed other people situating themselves to be in a position to influence you,” he said darkly, shooting a long glare toward the closed door. “I want to urge you to be careful, sir. And protect yourself. You’re….” He glanced away sharply. “You’re a beautiful man and I don’t want to see you ruined by someone crass and selfish. You deserve to be protected.”
The sheer tumult of well-meaning, misogynistic garbage that Todd had just laid on me kept me silent. He must have thought that meant he’d gotten through to me, because he smiled, prattled on about something to do with some meetings I needed to go to tomorrow, which had been rescheduled because of my heat, and then he left the office.
I tried not to let my temper get the best of me. My younger years had been spent at Cherry Hollow Prep where I’d been told over and over, during my sex ed courses, which were mostly just thinly veiled ways to make myself more acceptable for my future alpha husband, that I needed to stay a virgin for the alpha my family decided to align with.
I hated that old-fashioned trash then, and even worse, I could see some of the boys in my classes taking it to heart. On the other end of the spectrum were the omegas who went to Fort Pitt out of spite to fuck away their weekends. Some of them came home pregnant. Some of them ended up married off to random alphas their families found for them out of town because they didn’t want the rumors at home.
I didn’t go that far, but I’d watched people burn their worlds down and silently applauded it, even as the horror of being ostracized scared me into behaving. Thankfully my parents were progressive. No one had forced me to do anything. I was able to pick my own college and live my life a little in Chicago before I came home and settled down. I was no virgin, but I’d certainly never done anything like what I did during this last heat.
I carefully lowered my head until my chin touched my chest.
What exactly had Todd noticed that would motivate him to say all that to me?
Shaking my head, I decided to keep an eye on him. He was good at his job. Obviously, I’d have to take his advice with a little more salt than I’d already been.
I noticed the time, took another antibiotic, and went back to work. Around nine o’clock that night, I felt lonely. The building was quiet. Blair had stuck his head into my office to say good night; however, he clearly seemed distracted, and hadn’t even flirted on his way out.
I took out my phone and texted Bristol: Would you want to meet for coffee tomorrow at two?
Before Bristol could even respond, I texted Blair the same thing.
I rec
eived a yes from them both at exactly the same time, and a weird thrill mixed itself up with anxiety and they settled into my stomach.
I messaged them both I miss you, closed down my computer, and decided to walk home. I needed the time to clear my head, and even if I felt as though my nose, throat, and joints were on fire, I wanted to move. I slipped my phone back into my pocket, put on my coat, and left for the night.
Bristol
Emily and I spent the afternoon with Quinn, King, and their two sons. They’d come over to the farm for a visit, and H.J. immediately headed straight to the barn to see the animals. To my surprise, Quinn hadn’t followed him out there, concern directing every action. Instead he sat down at the table, Reece pressed tightly against him in a baby carrier, Quinn’s arms wrapped around him for extra support. King sat beside him, arm around the back of Quinn’s chair and happily accepting the coffee I offered him with a smile of thanks. He wore a white t-shirt, the fire station’s emblem printed on the right pec in a maroon color and even though he looked a lot healthier than Quinn, he still squinted at me as though his body worked hard to keep his eyes open. His short black curls were cut shorter than usual and I couldn’t help but think it was because of Reece’s hair tugging habits.
Quinn didn’t look half dead as he had the last time I saw him. He had a glow about him, with a brighter flush of his cheeks, and he had his hair loose around his shoulders today.
“Has Reece been sleeping lately?” I took the seat on the opposite side of the table, next to Emily, who was playing on her phone. Typical teenager. She posed for her camera, holding her fingers up in a peace sign, and would probably upload it to that app teenagers used to share photos. I didn’t even know what it was called, but I bet Blair did. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he used it too.
Quinn glanced at Emily, amusement curling on his lips. “He always sleeps a little better when Daddy’s home.”
“These shifts have been killing me lately, but I have a couple of days off now.” King leaned over to bop Reece’s head, earning a gurgle from their cute baby. Something ached inside me, want consuming my heart. I craved what they had. Someone to love, to have a family with. I loved Emily, but she was my sister, not my daughter who I’d created with someone I cared about.
