“You just need some time to get use to it,” Alex said, his hands on my waist now. “Eventually no one will care. And the people who do aren’t worth it. There’s nothing wrong with being an omega, Jeremy.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, pushing Alex away and walking over to the couch. I sat down and put my head in my hands. “How would you feel if you were suddenly an omega? Not to mention pregnant. How do you think your friends and family would react?”
Alex came over and sat down next to me, but he didn’t touch me. He just sat there and spoke softly. “There’s no way I can answer the question. But I’d like to think that I’d be okay with it. I have a lot of omega’s in my life that I respect. And no, they’re not all big and strong like you are, but there strong in a lot of other ways. Ways that I’m not.”
“Like how?” I felt tears rolling down my cheeks again and wished I could just hide. I hated that this big alpha was watching me have a complete emotional breakdown. “I feel like I have nothing to offer anyone now if all I can do is cry like an idiot.”
“Stop it. You’re not seeing things clearly right now, Jeremy. I think eventually you’ll see that you’re still the same person, only maybe a little more emotional, and definitely more capable of creating new life. But that doesn’t make you, or any omega, an idiot or less than any other status.”
“I’m a freak of nature. I don’t want this to be happening,” I said into my hands. Just as I felt Alex’s palm on my back my phone vibrated in my pocket. “Fuck,” I said as I looked at the screen.
“Who is it?” Alex asked.
“My dads. They need a hand with their car. Fuck!” I did not want to go over there. They’d immediately know that I’d been crying, and I was absolutely sure that if Alex could scent me as an omega that they would be able to as well. At least my alpha dad would, anyway.
“Do you want me to go over there with you?” he asked, keeping his hand on my back as I stared at my phone.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. I stared at my phone for a moment longer, then turned to look at Alex. “Why are you being so cool? You don’t even know me.”
Alex smiled, then leaned toward me and wrapped his hands around my neck. “Because I feel it too.”
“What?” I asked, holding my breath and waiting for his answer.
“Whatever it is that’s going on between the two of us. I don’t know if it’s some sort of ultra compatibility or what, but I can feel it, and I have a feeling you can too.”
I smiled, then laughed out loud, partly because I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one that felt it, but also because what he said struck me as kind of hilarious. “I don’t think we have anything in common at all.”
“You know what I meant,” Alex said as he stared into my eyes, then slowly brought his lips to mine. When he kissed me I felt it again and I couldn’t deny what happened when we were touching. Every cell of my body tingled during that kiss. It was like Alex was giving my body something it had been craving for years. I had no idea how badly I needed what he gave me until I tasted it for the first time, and now I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to live without it.
I got up and splashed some water on my face and the two of us hopped in my truck and headed over to my dads’ house.
When we pulled up the two of them had the hood of the car up and were standing there staring at the engine like it was somehow going to fix itself. They were both pretty helpless when it came to anything mechanical and I was always happy to help. I just prayed they’d be too preoccupied with the car to notice anything different in me. “Hey,” I said. “This is my friend Alex.” My alpha pop was the first one to shake Alex’s hand. My omega dad introduced himself to Alex next, then came over and stood next to me. I didn’t want to get close to either one of them, but it looked like I wasn’t going to have a choice. “What’s going on?” I asked, moving away from my omega dad and over to the engine of the car.
“I think the battery is dead,” my pop said. “Nothing happens when I turn the key.”
“But it could be the solenoid. That happened once, remember?” my omega dad reminded him.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” my pop snapped.
“Well, neither do you or this car would be running right now.”
“Okay, okay, calm down and let me take a look,” I said as I glanced at Alex. The corner of his mouth was turned up in a smile like he’d experienced this same thing with his own dads before. “I’ll get the jumper cables out of my truck and try that first.”
While I pulled my truck up next to their car and hooked up the cables I noticed the two of them talking to Alex, and when I got within earshot I realized they were telling him about our financial problems. I couldn’t fathom how they got on that subject so quickly. I’d only been in my truck for a minute. It was just like my dads to embarrass me with the one new person I’d brought over to meet them in years.
“What we really need is someone to cut down about half the trees on the property. That would probably solve most of our problems right there. We could sell the timber at a pretty good price because a lot of the trees are fully grown and they’re badly in need of being thinned.”
“I’m sure Alex doesn’t want to hear about our problems, pop,” I snapped.
“Actually, I am interested in hearing about it,” Alex said. “I’d love to see the property. My family has been in landscaping for over thirty years and I’ve actually been involved in some jobs are we had to fell a number of trees.”
“Really?” my omega dad asked. “Do you think your family could handle a job this big?”
“Well, I don’t think my entire family would be able to take the job.”
“Yeah, Pop, his family is in landscaping. They’re not lumberjacks.”
Alex looked at me and laughed, then turned back to my dads. “Well, it’s not so much that. They have a lot of landscaping jobs lined up through the end of summer and need to get as much work in as they can. Come winter time the landscaping jobs all dry up and there’s not much money coming in. But, you know what, I’ll talk to them because I might be able to get some of the work done now, and maybe even bring my pop and brother in to do the rest throughout the winter.”
“You don’t have to do that, Alex,” I said as my alpha pop started the car up.
“I told you it was the battery,” he said as he got out of the car. My omega dad gave him a look but didn’t say a word.
“I know I don’t have to do it,” Alex said, his arms folded in front of him. “I want to. Can I have a look around the property?”
“Of course,” my alpha pop said. “Why don’t you drive him up the old logging road, Jeremy? It hasn’t been maintained in decades but the logging companies still use it to get to surrounding properties. The lean we have that allows them access is one of the only ways we make any money at all right now. The two of you should come back later. We’d love to have you for dinner.”
I ducked under the hood of their car to unhook the jumper cables. “I think I’m gonna be busy tonight, but I’ll give you a call in the morning.” I closed the hood of their car and put the cables away, then waved and jumped in my truck before they could say anything else.
I didn’t speak to Alex as we drove through my parent’s wooded property. But I had a feeling that even though we’d just met yesterday he could already read me.
“Are you mad?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes and gripped the steering wheel, then blurted out what was on my mind. “I just wish you would have asked me before you offered to work on my parent’s property.”
“Why?”
“I just … I don’t want everything getting mixed together.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, mixed together? You can fuck me and you can have my baby inside you, but you don’t want me to talk to your family? Have I got that right?”
I sighed and stopped the truck. I had to lay it on the line once and for all. “Dude, there’s no way in hell I’m having th
is baby.”
I didn’t look at Alex, but I knew he was staring at me. I could feel the intense vibe coming off of him and I had a feeling I knew exactly what he was about to say.
“We’ll see about that.”
Yep, typical fucking alpha.
Chapter 8
Alex
Some time over the last four hours I’d gone from silently panicking at the idea of Jeremy being pregnant, to one-hundred-percent determined that we were going to keep it. I felt in my bones that this baby was meant to be, and I was going to do everything I could to make sure I had the means to provide for my new family.
I knew it was going to be difficult. I was committed to helping my dads and my brother and his kids, at least through the rest of the summer and fall, and I honestly didn’t know where I was going to find time to help Jeremy’s parents.
But they needed the money from the timber, and I knew that money would help with the costs of raising our child, since they would be able to keep the land where Jeremy’s trailer sat. And even though it was small, the trailer would be a fine place to start out with our baby. Eventually, we’d have to find a bigger house, but for now, I could see the three of us together in this cozy little space.
Even though I didn’t actually live with Jeremy yet, I suddenly felt scattered between three different places. The room I rented in the house and Portville, my parents home where I crashed sporadically, and now, Jeremy’s trailer. And as the afternoon grew later I realized the only place I really wanted to be was Jeremy’s.
But I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me if I wanted to make any of this happen. I was going to have to work even longer days, and most likely seven days a week, in order to make sure my family’s landscaping business ran smoothly, as well as help Jeremy’s family cut down as many trees as possible before their taxes were due. And before Jeremy needed any new items for his pregnancy or the baby.
I figured we could skate by on food and bills until then, but I was definitely going to have to give up my room in Portville. That was a major money sink every single month.
But on top of everything I had to worry about there was Jeremy’s attitude. Even if I could convince him to keep the baby, I knew he was going to be a handful. But that was one of the things I was growing to love about him. He didn’t seem afraid to speak his mind or tell me how he was feeling, even if his opinions were pretty much the opposite of mine.
I still couldn’t get over the fact that I was now deeply involved with a redneck. I’d always thought of them as complete numbskulls with no brains and nothing interesting to say. Guys with nothing better to do than start fights and rev their engines to look cool. But after meeting Jeremy’s dads I started to think that maybe his family wasn’t that different from mine. They kept to themselves and stayed with their own people, and that’s pretty much what my family did too. But if and when our two families came together, it was sure as hell going to be interesting.
“I should probably get going,” I said when we got back to Jeremy’s trailer. “I can call a car to come out here and get me.”
“Oh, hell, no. Those guys charge you for the whole trip out here and back into town. That would be at least forty bucks. I can take you anytime you need to go, but …”
“But, what?”
“Well, I thought maybe you’d want to stay,” Jeremy said, looking insanely adorable as his face turned a little red. Here was this big, burly guy standing in front of me and blushing. It was so cute. Every single time this guy opened his mouth he surprised me and made me like him a little more. Okay, a lot more.
“I do want to stay,” I said, lifting Jeremy’s chin up so that his eyes met mine. “But I have to get going really early, and I don’t want to have to wake you up and have you drive me home in the morning. But I’d like to come back here tomorrow evening if that’s okay with you. I’d like to talk about everything that’s going on.”
“You mean the baby?”
“Yeah, that, and the work your dads talked about.”
“You’re not really thinking about asking your family to cut down these trees, are you? I told you, my dads don’t have the money to pay anyone. If they did, the trees would already have been sold to the local timber company. I don’t even know why they brought it up.”
“I’m not thinking about asking my family, so you can rest your mind about that. I haven’t thought it out completely, that’s why I wanted to talk to you tomorrow, but if you want, I can run my idea past you. Can I tell you about it now?”
“Sure,” Jeremy growled, looking like he wasn’t going to be happy with anything I said. I couldn’t believe how stubborn he was.
“Well, since I do have experience climbing trees and bringing them down, I figure one person in the trees and one or two on the ground should work. If you and one of your dads can stay on the ground and help, then I think we could get maybe an hour or two in each night after I get done with the landscaping job. And we could do a full day on Saturday and Sunday every weekend. If we did that we could slowly chip away at some of the bigger trees. It doesn’t all have to be done at once. A little at a time would work.”
“Yeah, I don’t know.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Jeremy, if you and your dads want to get that timber cut down and sold, this is pretty much your only option. You’re not going to find too many guys willing to wait weeks or months to be paid for this kind of job.”
“Look, Alex. I appreciate you wanting to help, but I just don’t think it’s going to work. I’m not even sure how I’m going to be able to pay for food now, since I’m not planning on going back to work at the steel mill. The money I made helped my dads out a lot and now that’s gone. I don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to pay you.”
“I’m not asking for anyone to pay me. In fact, I’d be into the idea of doing some trading. Maybe some vegetables from your dad’s garden or milk or chicken eggs. Or if you have any roosters that you don’t want to have to kill. My family would love that. You could even trade skills. Is there anything you can think of, a skill or something you like to do, that you could offer?”
“Yeah, well, there is something I like to do, and sometimes offer trades for with my family, but I doubt it would be helpful.”
“Really? What is it?”
“Nothing important. I don’t want to talk about it right now. Maybe I should just take you home.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to press Jeremy any further, so I just let him take me home and promised I’d see him soon.
The next week was insanely grueling. I got up at five o’clock every morning and met my pop at the site. We worked all day and I generally didn’t get back to my parent’s house until six or seven at night. We would eat dinner, then I would head over to Jeremy’s place with the leftovers. By some stroke of luck, I convinced Jeremy to let me at least try cutting down trees for a week to see what kind of money his dads could get.
We usually got a couple trees down before sunset, then the two of us would curl up in his bed. I loved the way it felt to wrap my arms around Jeremy and have lazy spoon sex before we fell asleep. It wasn’t anything intense like our first time, but being inside him always made my long days completely worth it.
There were times throughout the day that I would suddenly get a surge of energy and I would not be able to stop thinking about Jeremy. I would swear to myself that the second I got back to his place I would completely ravage his body, but after I ate and cut down a couple trees, all I really wanted was cuddling, quick sex, and sleep.
“This is crazy, Alex,” Jeremy said to me as I fell into bed on Sunday night. After a full week of working two very demanding jobs I still had all my clothes on and I didn’t even have the energy to remove them. I felt Jeremy untie my boots and yank them off, then slowly pull my jeans down. That should’ve been enough to get me hard, but there wasn’t even a twitch. “You’re gonna kill yourself working this hard. It’s only been one week and you can barely keep your eyes open. I’m afraid you�
�re gonna fall out of one of those trees and really hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I just need to sleep.”
That was the first night since we met that we didn’t have sex and I had to admit, even as tired as I was, it worried me a little.
The next day I didn’t feel any better, in fact, I felt like complete hell. Like I had hit a wall that even my alpha stubbornness couldn’t push through. I didn’t know what I was going to do, though. I couldn’t let either my family or Jeremy down. I had responsibilities for two families now, and more than half of the summer was still ahead of me. I went in to the landscaping job on Monday morning hoping I could pull off another day, but my dad could see how exhausted I was too.
“What’s been going on with you, son? You look like you’ve been put through the ringer.”
“I’m fine, pop. I’ve just got a lot going on right now.”
“Is it this new guy you’re seeing?”
“How did you know about that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Well, you haven’t been spending the night at home at all lately, and you used to sleep over on the couch at least once a week. I remember what I was like at your age when I met your father. There was nothing that could stop me from making sure that he was provided for and protected. Even now, when I don’t have anywhere near as much energy, I still spend a lot of my time thinking about how I can make things easier for him. Alpha hormones are a blessing and a curse.”
I looked down at my hands. I knew I couldn’t tell my pop a lie, even if I knew he wouldn’t like the truth. “Well, you’re right. It’s a guy. I was really stupid, pop. I found him at the drive-in. He was in heat and there were a lot of other alphas hanging around him. I swear, I intended to get him home safely, then leave, but …“
Portville Summer Series: The Complete Collection Books 1-4: (MM Nonshifter Omegaverse) Page 15
