by Aiden Bates
“It was just a few hours of your day, Logan. Don’t tell me that Sergeant Major Walters couldn’t even spare you for a couple of hours to see your baby for the first time.” I glanced down at the picture between my fingers, fighting back the urge to crumple it up so Logan couldn’t see it at all. It wasn’t like he cared enough to see the baby in person. I couldn’t imagine that a picture would make much difference either way. “You say that we’re going to raise this baby together, but right now it genuinely feels like I’m going to be doing this all on my own.”
Another long pause. “I’ve got obligations, Bennet. You know that.”
“I know you have obligations. But you’ve also got obligations to me. You said you’d be there, and you weren’t. Bottom line, Logan.”
“I don’t understand how you expect me to—”
“Oh, I don’t expect anything from you right now.” My voice was growing icier by the second. “I don’t need any more excuses, Logan. I think…” I swallowed hard to stop my voice from breaking. “I think I’m going to spend some time back at my place. Obviously, I’m going to need to get some experience on doing this by myself.”
There was a final pause, this one longer than all the others combined. I could hear Logan’s breathing faintly through the phone, so I knew he hadn’t hung up on me. But whatever words he might’ve tried to conjure to make this right again were obviously failing him.
Instead, all he had to say back to me was, “I understand.”
I hung up right after. If he really understood, then he understood he was reaching the point where there would be no making this up to me. And that…understanding was going to break my heart even more than he already had.
He could have fought me on it. Could have sworn to get in his truck immediately—blocked in or not. Run over a few hedges if he’d had to. Could have shown me he was serious about this—or tried to make it look like he was.
But he hadn’t even given me that.
And worst, at this point, I didn’t even know if I wanted him to put up a fight anymore.
I packed my bag in silence. Clothes that weren’t even going to fit me a few weeks from now if my belly kept swelling the way it was supposed to. My toothbrush. My cologne. I left the shirt of Logan’s I’d been wearing to bed recently. It had been insanely comfy from the moment he’d first given it to me; two sizes too big for me and still smelling faintly of him.
The ghost of what we could be—or what we could have been—would be present enough without it. If I was going to be alone in my apartment I didn’t need Logan’s scent hanging around any more than I needed him.
23
Logan
For years, when I was in a bad mood, I’d haul myself over to Simmer and pour myself onto a barstool to let Hank pour me a stiff drink. Sit and sip at my whiskey. Watch people. Brood. Talk to Hank until I felt a little less like I’d managed to ruin not only my life, but the lives of those around me as well. I’d done it when Roland and I would have fights—before our marriage decayed to the point where there wasn’t even anything worth fighting over anymore. After that, I’d done it when he left. When, god forbid, I missed him, though I hadn’t been to Simmer over those particular emotions in very long time. I’d done it when Jason died. I wasn’t the kind of man who could cry in public, and I’d very much wanted to avoid tears for as long as I could.
Simmer was, for lack of a better turn of phrase, a safe space for me. Somewhere I could tune in or out as the night required me. Distract myself if I wanted. Get lost in my own thoughts if that suited me better.
But as I pulled into the parking lot and headed toward the door, I found that I couldn’t actually bring myself to go inside. Watching slender omegas dance to music I didn’t even like wasn’t what I needed right now. I didn’t know what it was I did need—but it certainly wasn’t that.
Drowning my sorrows in a glass of whiskey wouldn’t help anything. Neither would looking at other omegas, for that matter. It didn’t feel right. Plain and simple. Not when I only had eyes for one omega in particular. An omega who might not ever want to see me again.
I tucked my hands into my pockets instead of reaching for the door, clenching a fist around my keys and letting the sharp edges dig into the lines of my palm as I headed back to my truck.
“Logan? Hey! Logan!”
I slowed but didn’t stop. Turning slightly, I saw Hank coming around the corner of the bar, holding a hand up in greeting while he stubbed out a cigarette on the edge of a trash can. When the ember had disappeared, he flicked it into the bin and jogged to catch up to me.
“Hey, Hank. Smoke break?” As it turned out I didn’t feel much like making conversation, but Hank was good people. A friend. Not making some semblance of an effort would’ve felt impolite, and I felt bad enough about myself as it was.
“Just a smoke. I’m off for the night.” He cocked his head to the side, taking me in. “Haven’t seen you in a while, Sergeant. How’s the ticker?”
“Ticking on.”
“Yeah? Good to hear. When I hadn’t heard from you in a while, I thought maybe…” Hank’s dark, brushy brow knitted together. “Well, here you are, so I suppose you must still be kicking.”
“Like a mule.” I paused, wondering if I should bother explaining my absence. Normally, I wouldn’t have. It wasn’t like it was mandatory, coming around to Simmer and shooting the shit with Hank. But the fact that he’d worried about me was kind of touching, in a way. Not that I liked the idea of being fussed over—not at all, actually. Still… Better for him to know the real reason why I’d been out of commission. It was either that or he might go on thinking my heart couldn’t handle a few whiskeys now and then anymore. “I’ve been, ah… It’s been a rough few months, is all. Ticker status unrelated.”
“Oh?” Hank arched a brow, then shrugged. “Well. I feel that, Sarge. You know… This is gonna sound a little weird coming from your regular bar tender, maybe, but do you wanna go grab a drink?”
I glanced at the neon sign over Simmer, then shook my head.
“I don’t think I can do Simmer tonight. Thanks for the offer, though.”
“Not here, then. Somewhere else. Believe me, I get enough of this place from working here. There’s a dive bar not too far, if you’re up for it.”
I could’ve hemmed and hawed about it until my face turned blue, but Hank looked genuinely earnest. Actually happy to hear from me. And after the day I’d had…
Could be nice, having a drink with someone who didn’t look at me like I’d let them down.
“Alright,” I agreed. “Maybe one or two.”
“Good.” Hank beamed, going around to the passenger side of my truck. “Because you’re driving.”
The bar was called Backdoor. From the looks of it, it’d been a speakeasy once upon a time. Now that prohibition was long over, it mostly served as a jazz bar and a place to order cocktails on the cheap.
“Whiskey or beer?” Hank tapped his card on the counter to signal the bartender before glancing over his shoulder at me.
“It’ll have to be whiskey. Two beers, and I’ll be sleeping on your shoulder like a baby while you drive me home.”
Having procured two Old Fashioneds, Hank and I settled into a booth in the corner, far away from the slow, focused movements at the pool table and two separate couples at the bar who seemed to be playing out different versions of the same fight.
“How is the baby, speaking of?” Hank asked as he slid into his seat.
I sputtered halfway through a sip of my drink. “Didn’t realize you knew about that?”
“Ah, Sarge. You know how things are here in Fort Greene. Gossip spreads faster than butter on a hotcake—given that it’s sufficiently juicy.”
“Like Sergeant O’Rourke knocking up an omega more than half his age, I suppose.”
Hank grinned, clinking his glass against mine. “Sounds that way. Your omega handling it okay?”
A low sound of annoyance rumbled through my chest. I wasn’t e
xactly eager to talk out my omega problems with anyone—even a trusted friend like Hank. But since he’d asked…
“Back when I was a kid, it was enough for an alpha to just have a good job. Get the bills paid, make enough money to put food on the table,” I grumbled. “My father got by on that easy enough.”
“As did mine, sure.” We drank simultaneously. If Hank’s father was anything like mine was, the drink was well-earned.
“But then I got married, and wouldn’t you know it—none of the things my father did were ever close to enough anymore.”
“Well, to be fair…” Hank started to say, then seemed to think better of it.
“I get that, yeah. Would’ve been sweet, cute, whatever, having one of those fifties sitcom family lives. But in practice…” I shook my head. “When the options are playing catch with your kid or having the money to eat, you choose to put in the hours at work, don’t you? No other way to go about it.”
“That’s the daily grind for you, sure. Not nice, but it makes sense.”
“But when I made that decision…” I was suddenly all too aware of how easy it would be to just start ranting. “Well, you know the story, Hank. My first omega said I needed to stop choosing work over him. And I couldn’t, so he left me. Now…” I sighed. “I’m just not sure I know any other way to be.”
“That’s a rough deal, Sarge.” Hank cocked his head to one side. “But with a new kid on the way it’s gotta be at least a little bit exciting, isn’t it? You’ve got a good enough gig with the military now, so it’s never going to be play-catch-or-starve kind of choices.”
“I suppose. It’s just…hard to remember that sometimes.”
“Yeah, you’ve got me there.” Hank placed his drink back down on his coaster, rubbing his fingers across a tan line at the base of one knuckle; shaped like a wedding ring, and exactly the place where a wedding ring would normally be.
“You, ah… You married, Hank?” After all the years he’d been serving me drinks, it was incredible that I hadn’t noticed it before. Either the lights at Simmer were even lower than I thought, or Hank and I were the most stereotypical sort of alpha friends possible. Complete ride-or-die friendship, but we didn’t actually know a single damn thing about each other.”
Hank glanced down at his ring finger and grimaced. “Used to be, anyway. Recently single again, though. Carl and I had a good five years together, but like you said, the military life isn’t exactly for the weak-hearted when it comes to holding down relationships and maintaining a good family life.”
“I’ll drink to that.” We clinked our glasses together again. It seemed that Hank’s woes weren’t all too dissimilar to mine after all.
“Yeah—I was enlisted for three of those five years, you know. Knee replacement took me out of it. They were three pretty good years, for as often as we were apart during them. But after the surgery…” Hank chuckled, a tinge of sadness in his laugh. “Hell. That marriage was like seeing what you thought was a good-lookin’ omega all the way from across a smoky bar. Great from a distance, but the closer you get…”
“You’ve been spending too much time in bars,” I said.
“Perks of being a bar tender, I s’pose.” Hank smiled wistfully. “We’ve got a daughter together, you know. Mary-Lynn. Never know what you’re going to get out of a marriage, but thanks to that little girl, it wasn’t a complete waste. She made everything worth it.”
“Felt the same way about Jason and Teddy.”
“Fatherhood,” Hank said with chuckle. “It’s the damnedest thing, isn’t it? Sometimes makes you wonder why anyone even bothers doing anything else.”
I hesitated at that, taking it in. Hank was right. My boys had made what was a pretty rough marriage even on its best days into something that had felt worthwhile. Important. Even when the chips were down. Even when I couldn’t spend as much time with them as I knew I should have. Couldn’t go to their ball games and attend their PTA meetings. Couldn’t watch them grow up. And after Jason’s death…
“Hank… Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, Sarge. Shoot.”
I swirled what was left of my drink around in my glass. “You think people ever change? Or, even, can they change?”
Hank stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Depends on the people, I guess.”
“Right—but say it’s the right kind of person. Is it possible?”
Hank gave me a look of gruff helplessness. The question obviously had him in over his head just as much as I was. “Honestly… I don’t know. Some habits are hard to break.”
“The beauty of habits, I guess,” I said, thinking of the comfort of my own morning routine.
“Older they are, the harder it is to do,” Hank added. “Old ways of thinking—they stick around in your head like old gum stuck to the bottom of the bar. Only way to get it off is to get on your back with a scraper and put some muscle into it.”
“Makes sense. Change takes work.” Hank and I were soldiers, after all. Didn’t shy away from a little hard work if it meant taking a win at the end of the day. “That’s a positive way to look at it, I think.”
“Saying that…” Hank’s cheeks puffed out with a sigh. “I tried like hell to change for my omega before the divorce. Eating salads, drinking kombucha—even tried Pilates with him a time or two.”
I snorted, having a hard time imagining Hank’s big, burly, bearded frame bopping around a Pilates classroom with a bunch of omegas and women in pastels and tight pants.
“So, maybe people can change. Maybe they can’t. Maybe it’s just a matter of…dunno. Motivation, maybe?”
“Could be,” I said softly, mulling that over in my mind as I finished my drink and rose to grab the next round. “I think you’re onto something there, Hank. Could be.”
Hank and I shared another pair of Old Fashioneds before we called it quits for the night. As a policy, I never had more than two. After a long chat over a glass of water about the state of my latest recruits—abysmal but improving now I was back at work full time—we headed out so I could drop Hank back off at his vehicle outside Simmer.
“Ah. Love the rain.” Hank hopped down out of my passenger seat and held his hand out, collecting a few stray raindrops in his palm while he gawked up at the sky, open-mouthed. “Been too long since we’ve had a good storm around here, don’t you think?”
I chuckled, waving him goodbye before he closed the door behind him. “Drive home safe, Hank. If this storm is as big as it ought to be, you don’t want to be caught out in it when it finally reaches full force.”
“No one ever does.” Hank gave me a wink before heading for his own truck. I left him there in the parking lot, illuminated by the red of my tail lights.
As I drove home, the rain picked up to a low, rhythmic pitter-patter that increased slowly until suddenly, something broke in the sky. After that, it dumped down so hard I could barely see the road ahead of me despite the fact that my windshield wipers were swinging themselves silly on full speed.
I wouldn’t have minded feeling something like that for myself—that slow, steady progression, only to make a breakthrough that changed it all. If I was even capable of changing. Right now my efforts were only producing the meteorology equivalent of angels spitting, when what I really needed was some sort of biblical-level flood to wash away all my old behaviors and replace them with fresh new ones.
If I could change, I needed something big. Bombastic. Something that would prove to Bennet I wasn’t the same man who’d missed those appointments, left him feeling so alone. Broken his heart. But as things were, I didn’t even know if it was possible.
Motivation. That’s what Hank called it. Those motivated to change were more likely to succeed.
But if motivation hadn’t saved Hank’s own marriage, could it really help me change my stripes? There was only one way to tell for sure. I’d have to try it for myself.
As lightning struck the sky, sending electric fingers crawling across the night, a grim reali
zation hit me at the same time.
The only way to change was to try to change.
But for all my complaining…
Had I ever even really tried?
24
Bennet
I stared at the roster for the day in disbelief, certain if I stared long enough I would see it set right. At first I thought maybe it was exhaustion—a night spent crying while hugging a pillow would do that to a guy—or maybe it was a trick of the light. But eventually I had to take a step back and face the brutal truth.
I was a single, lone omega with a high-risk pregnancy, an apartment I could barely afford, and now it appeared I was no longer being scheduled to work.
I’d been taking less shifts since I got pregnant on Dr. Lemon’s orders, which had been fine when the plan was for me to move in with Logan. But now that the plan had changed, my comfort about picking up fewer hours had lessened, too. I knew I’d been scheduled to work for the day. So what gave? Had they hired someone else and replaced me without telling me?
I didn’t have answers. All I knew was that this was the last thing I needed right now. If I didn’t pick this shift up, I’d barely be able to make next month’s rent, let alone buy baby clothes and diapers and all the other things a newborn would need. And if they’d fired me outright…
I wouldn’t have health insurance, for one. Wouldn’t be able to afford anything, for another. This baby was coming, whether I could afford it or not. Judging by the roster for that day… Not was looking increasingly more likely by the fucking second.
This can’t be happening. I repeated it in my head like a mantra, even though it didn’t seem to do any good. Only made my pulse race that much harder as I felt panic set in. Alone, broke, unemployed and carrying a child in a damaged womb. This can’t be happening. Not today. Not now.
I scanned the nurse’s station, fearing the worst and running my options through my head one by one.
