by Aiden Bates
Mission accomplished.
I finished pouring the water, relieved the incriminating evidence had been stashed, and I walked back into the space between my living room and kitchen to hand it to Dad.
Without really looking at me, Dad precisely curled his hand around the glass and raised it to his lips, drinking deeply and emptying it in only a few gulps. He placed the glass back into my hand, signifying he was finished, and I took the glass back to the sink and started running water to wash it out.
Behind me, I could hear Dad’s footsteps as he gave himself a tour of my tiny kitchen.
“You know,” Dad said, as he stood in the middle of the tiled floor. “When Roland was pregnant, he ate like a goddamn workhorse. He lived off weird things, too. He’d easily polish off two pints of ice cream and a jar of pickles per day while he was pregnant with you. Chocolate ice cream and pickles, specifically. I ran out for emergency restocking supplies often enough to remember until the day I die.”
He snorted softly as he spoke. I didn’t dare turn around, but I could imagine he was shaking his head at the memory.
“Pregnancy does a number on your taste buds, they say. I’d believe it, too. Chocolate ice cream and pickles. Crazy.”
I kept on washing as deliberately as I could to avoid dropping the glass into the sink in shock.
“Ha, yes, sir. I’ve heard that too,” I said in what could only pass as the weakest of cheerful tones. I finished rinsing the glass at last and set it upside down on the counter to dry.
Turning to face my father, I wiped my hands with a cloth that had been laying nearby and tried to think of some other way to continue the conversation.
“Well, sir, I admit I don’t have any chocolate ice cream to offer, but if you’re hungry we can order in. If you haven’t eaten already. But you’ve usually eaten already because you’re usually in bed by now. Not that I don’t want you to be here, it’s just…different from your routine, that’s all. Please, have a seat,” I said, gesturing awkwardly toward the couch behind the filthy, cluttered coffee table where all my snack wrappers lay.
Dad seemed to accept the invitation to sit because he crossed back into the living room and sat himself on the couch. I immediately and quickly followed behind him to begin clearing off the coffee table.
“Your Papa’s ankles swelled up something fierce too,” Dad said, as he sat ramrod straight on the couch while I gathered up armfuls of trash.
“Interesting,” I tried to say as neutrally as possible, burying myself in the task at hand if for no other reason than to avoid having to sit and to entertain Dad.
“No, Teddy, it isn’t,” Dad said, decisively.
I felt as anxious and as uncomfortable as if a complete stranger had been sitting in my living room. Dad much preferred Jason and I to belly up and tell him the difficult truth before trying to sugarcoat any sort of lie or politeness, so I swallowed and decided to take the bait.
“No, sir, it isn’t,” I admitted. “If I’m honest, I’m not sure what we’re doing right now. Is this… Is this making small talk right now? Is that what we’re doing?”
Dad sighed heavily and allowed himself to lean back onto the couch cushions. “I suppose that makes sense,” he said, without fully explaining what ‘that’ was meant to be. “Sit down, won’t you, Teddy?”
I sat.
“Now, you know I’ve never been one to beat around the bush. I won’t do it myself and I don’t take kindly to others who won’t get to the point. So, I’m going to get straight to it. I recognize that you and I have never been…close…”
Ha, that was a laugh, I thought, but did not evince my opinions on my face or in my movements. If there were ribbons or medals to be awarded for having made the understatement of the year, surely Dad would have received a new ribbon to put up on the mantel.
“We’d always had a clear conformity of duties, your Papa and me. He’d seen to you two and I’d worked. When Roland left, I didn’t know what in the blue hell I was doing in regard to parenting in general. The only thing that seemed to work out to my advantage was Jason.”
Jesus. That was blunt. Unsurprising, but weirdly blunt, even for Dad. I let him go on though. Whatever he was going to say, it seemed important for him to say it. Like he had to get something off his chest.
“Jason was easy. Jason was every inch an alpha from day one. You could see it and people would talk about it well before he grew up and proved us all right about how much of an alpha he really was. He played sports, wiped the floor with the other brats at school, and then enlisted. I knew exactly what he was going through any time he was going through something, and I knew what to do in every new situation he encountered because they sure weren’t new to me. Jason followed in my footsteps exactly, and I couldn’t have asked for a better son, more squarely in my home territory. Do I make myself clear, Teddy?”
“Yes, sir,” I nodded definitively. Jason was an alpha through-and-through and you definitely enjoyed parenting him in comparison to me. Copy. I read you and have read you loud and clear for years, Dad. Over.
“If I knew anything, it was how to raise an alpha. And I was damn good at it. You, on the other hand—”
“It’s fine, Dad,” I said. “It helped me grow up into who I am today. I don’t think I’d have turned out the way I am if it hadn’t been for your pushing Jason and I in roughly the same ways.”
Dad seemed skeptical as I spoke, so I shrugged and searched around for examples I could provide to support my statement.
“Coming early, leaving late. Working hard. Putting in the hours. Never giving up. Those are all lessons you taught me right alongside Jason. Not to mention that I literally wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for you. I know you helped get me this job, but it was important to me that you didn’t feel I was resting on my laurels. From day one, I’ve had something to prove as an omega in an alpha field and I’ve done good work. Work you could be proud of, if I could tell you about it. Even if it sometimes gets me pushed in the basement, I’m not sorry about who I am or how hard I have to work to stay neck and neck with the alphas. I learned that at your side, with Jason, and I’m happy I knew it before I got out into the real world.”
The reality was that my appreciation of Dad’s parenting was…complicated, to say the least. On one hand, he toughened me up, on the other, he coddled me by helping me get a job at SynergyNow with his Department of Defense connections. Something I may or may not have got on my own. He clearly preferred all of Jason’s talents and ignored all of my academic achievements, but he got me well and truly used to being perpetually ignored as a smart omega. It wasn’t all good, it wasn’t all bad, it was realistic and stark. It was just Dad.
“Well, Teddy, there are certain things a young man needs to learn that I wasn’t forthcoming about. Things an omega needs to learn…”
What the fuck? Really? We were going to have this talk now? Oh man, if he was about to launch into the birds and the bees, Dad was super late to this party.
“Hell, maybe alphas need to learn those things, too. How to—” Dad gestured aimlessly in front of himself as he found the words he wanted to say. “How to talk to people. How to compromise. Things your old man is no good at and your Papa wasn’t around to help you learn. Might have been useful for you to have a grown omega to look up to, but you know that business never worked out for me. If you’d had an adult omega presence in your life, you might have learned to connect with alphas better, might have gotten comfortable in your skin, you know. Your role.”
Man, we were doing so well, too. I mean, I’d pretty much given up hope that Dad was ever going to adopt more enlightened attitudes about alpha and omega binaries but this was… This was pretty archaic even by his standards.
“I wouldn’t worry,” I said. I began to suspect Dad was falling into the whole ‘me-alpha, you-omega” caveman routine because he knew something primal and archaic was happening. Regardless, I didn’t want to imply too much in case I was wrong and he didn’t re
ally know what was up, so I deflected. The old man could still just have gotten a little soft after an extra beer or two, after all. An extra beer or three. Or four, maybe.
“I have friends, and co-workers. I hang out with girls and omegas and alphas. Things are fine, Dad, really. You’re a good dad.”
“Son, you know I appreciate honesty and I detest bullshit. So, tell me this. If I’m such a good father and you’re so appreciative, how come I wasn’t the first person you turned to after you knew?”
Fuck. Fuck my life. Fuck my life, entirely. The pickles and ice cream interlude hadn’t been such random conversation after all.
“How do you figure? After I knew what?”
Dad huffed. “I might have expected as much. It sure is sad you evidently can’t talk about it after it’s pretty clear we both know what in the hell we’re talking about. Part of why I came here tonight is to give you Roland’s phone number and to encourage you to reach out to him if you need that omega presence I was trying to tell you about. You can talk about ice cream and ankles and all the kinds of shit I wouldn’t know shit about. You have a good night, son.” Dad abruptly got to his feet, straightened himself, and prepared to leave.
“Wait! Dad!” I said, suddenly overcome by the desire to not have to watch the other alpha in my life leave tonight.
He’d already made it a few paces toward the door when I called out, and though he didn’t immediately turn around, he stopped in his tracks and stood stock-still.
“I’m sorry,” I said, in a voice not much above a whisper as I apologized for the thousandth time tonight, it seemed. “I should have said something. I’m sorry. I thought—”
“You thought I was going to blow up at you and you thought I was going to kick Carpenter’s ass. Well, you both thought wrong and you both need to stop thinking like you were a couple of high school kids that got in trouble with each other behind the bleachers. This parenting business, this whole marriage-and-family deal is serious, and you two had better be serious about it. It’s the best, hardest, most worthwhile thing that can happen to a person, and I don’t think Carpenter will waste it away stupidly like I did, but you let me know if he starts to, and we’ll see about him, do you understand me?”
I stared at Dad’s back watching his shoulders rise and fall as he spoke, and I realized I’d started letting tears stream down my face as he said words to me that I’d never—not once in a million years—expected to hear him say.
I clamped my hand to my mouth to choke down an involuntary sob, which made him cast a glance over his shoulder.
“Dad?” I asked through a sniffle.
“Sonofabitch,” Dad swore before he turned back on his heels, slammed himself down next to me on the couch and picked me up in an enormous, firm, all-encompassing bear hug as I cried.
25
Roman
After I left the cemetery, I was left with another predicament. If I went home to my apartment, I’d just run into Teddy. I just knew it. That’s how the universe, and my luck, worked these days, it seemed. After everything that had happened tonight, I doubted anything in the world would be worse than coming face to face with him while I was still so mixed up. I paced around for a bit, and then decided there was nothing else for it, and made my way in the direction of Silas and Garret’s house for the night.
Garret answered the door, scrubbing at his face. “You trying to make this a habit, Carpenter?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Y’all mind?”
Garret shook his head. “Hell, you know better than that. Get in here and I’ll grab us some beers.”
One of the things I loved about Garret was that he didn’t actually need to talk to you. Jason would about talk your ear off. Maybe that’s what Marcos had meant about Garret being a gossip. I wondered just how many of us sat here beside him before spilling our guts. But not tonight. I wasn’t in the mood for any more talking. Garret didn’t push, so we sat there on the couch, drinking cold beers. Eventually, he yawned and got up.
“Morning comes early. I’ll tell Silas you’re here. You know where everything is?” he asked.
I drained the bottle and wiped my mouth with my hand before nodding.
“Well, make yourself at home. Not that you asked or anything,” Garret grumbled.
“Fuck you. You just like your… What did Marcos call it this afternoon? Oh, your ‘sad bastard’ routine. That’s it. You like me being here.”
“Like’s a strong word,” Garret responded before going down the hallway to the bedroom he shared with Silas. “‘Night, Roman.”
“Night, Garret.”
Jason’s blue eyes tried to focus on me as I bent over him. I’d slept like shit in Silas and Garret’s guest room, everything about it unfamiliar and stiff. I’d woken up in the morning with my head buried in a pillow, immediately disappointed that nothing around me smelled like home or like Teddy, which I guess at this point was sort of the same thing.
Silas hadn’t given me any indication anything was off this morning over cereal, talking about the day and wondering if I could entertain Jason for a few hours while he and Garret went out and ran some errands.
So, here I was on the floor of the nursery with Jason on my lap, looking up at me. He reached up for my nose, got hold of it, and giggled in mad peals of laughter at his own cleverness. It was hard to be stressed out with a gurgling baby in your arms, looking at you like you were the best thing they’d ever seen. It helped a lot, but now, there were also all these other complicated feelings I’d never had before. It wasn’t that hard, sitting here, to picture myself in another nursery, sunny and cheerful, looking down onto another baby’s face, big eyes just starting to turn brown looking back up at me.
Parts of it were impossible to picture though. Would we have a girl? An alpha? An omega? So much of what that kiddo could expect out of life, how life would treat them would be determined by something so random. I thought about all the things Teddy had told me about his work, all the comments Logan had made about omegas, and all of it seemed so unfair. On top of that, it seemed so much of how people turned out to be was determined by their parents. What would our kid see when it came to Teddy and me? Would we be together in name, but really spend most of our time apart from each other? Would Teddy just leave? What would happen if he left me with our baby to raise on my own? What if he took our baby with him? What if I was left with nothing?
“I don’t know, kid. You have any ideas what I should do?”
Of course not. Four-month-olds weren’t known for their communication skills. Jason just looked up at me and laughed again before gnawing on his fingers.
“You know he’s just a baby, right?” Silas asked from behind me. I’d been so wrapped up in my thoughts I hadn’t heard Silas get back to the house. I turned to nod at him, but he was looking at me with a slight frown.
“So, what’s all of this about alphas, omegas or girls?” he asked, and I both sighed and groaned. I didn’t realize how much I’d said out loud.
Silas sat down right next to me, and before I even realized what I was doing I was telling him everything. About Teddy and the baby, about Logan and Montana, about both of our careers, the fight. Everything, all of it laid out there for him. Silas didn’t say anything, just heard me out through the whole jumbled mess of it.
“That explains a lot, actually. You’ve been, I don’t know, in your head more lately? Well, when I’ve seen you, that is,” he said, arching a brow. It was true. Since Teddy and I started seeing each other, I’d kind of got caught up in him and only him.
“Yeah, and now I don’t know what to do,” I added dejectedly.
“Well, it’s better for a kid to have parents that split up than to have two parents who don’t love each other.”
“Hold on, Silas. That’s not, well, that is, I do love Teddy. More than anything. I’m pretty sure I always did.”
“Oh,” Silas said, bluntly. “Well, in that case, that makes everything a whole lot easier. Make it work. See? Simple.” Silas sh
rugged.
I looked at him blankly. “That’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say? That’s your big advice? Make it work?”
Silas shifted to take Jason off of my lap, giving my knee a quick pat. He offered Jason a bottle, which was approved of with much cooing and grabbing before Jason was complacently guzzling it down in Silas’s arms.
“Yeah, Roman. That’s it. That’s the secret. You just make it work. If it’s worth it, if you love him, if you love each other, you’ll make it work.”
“Well, how do I go about doing that?”
“Well, for starters, you get over there and tell Teddy how in the hell you feel about him. The poor boy’s only been waiting half of forever to hear you say it to him. And then, once he’s heard it, you go to Logan O’Rourke’s house with Teddy and face it together like grown-ups. And if he gives you too much mouth about it, you put your foot down. He’s not your boss here, he’s not your Sergeant. Jesus, between you and Garret talking about him, it’s like he’s both the devil and the benchmark you all measure yourself against. He’s your omega’s father. Put your foot down like you’re supposed to. Teddy will be grateful you did, although he’ll never say it, and I’d bet you anything in the world O’Rourke will respect you more for it.”
“Wait, wait, wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. What makes you think Teddy’s gonna want to hear anything at all from me at this point?”
“Teddy’s always been about you, Roman.”
“Yeah, yeah. So was everyone else back in the day. You know, before all this,” I said, gesturing down in the direction of my leg and all my scars.
Silas shook his head. “No, it was never like that for Teddy. Not then, not now. He never loved you because you were pretty, Roman. I mean, first off, gross you’re making me talk about my brother’s attractiveness. But second, he wasn’t ever like everyone else. Everyone else got so wrapped up in the outer package. They never cared to know who you actually were. Teddy wasn’t like that, and I’m sure he’s not like that now.”
