Page 48 of Omega’s Forward

I send an email to my hotel checking that they still have my suite reserved for when I can finally leave Callahan’s house, then add that I won’t need it longer than two weeks.

Soon I’ll be back in my own home and all of this is behind me.

As soon as the flight confirmation comes through, I check it, making sure everything is in order, then I get my suitcase out of the closet.

15. Brody

The Bureau app chimes while I’m mid-set on the bench press. I nearly drop the bar on myself. I’d like to pretend that it’s because I’m so focused on the workout, but I’m not. It’s Everett who is on my mind. I can’t put him out of it, no matter how hard I try. It doesn’t help that he’s still in the house and I have effectively banished myself to the basement like a cave troll.

I rack it and dig the phone out of my bag.

Compliance period complete. All check-in requirements now met. The Bureau thanks you for your compliance.

I sit up and read it again. We’re done. There’s no breach and no story in the papers. Aside from JP, not one soul has found out about it.

We’ve pulled it off perfectly.

Five minutes later, I hear the guest room door open and the sweet scent of orange fills the air.

He’s not wasting any time. Something about that makes my stomach twist. This is for the best. I know it is. He is not the person I should be spending the rest of my life with.

Still, it’s a scent match. Even I can’t deny it and knowing he is leaving makes something in my chest tighten more than I want to admit.

His footsteps cross the hall, then the garage door rumbles up under the far end of the house.

I hear his rental car start. I sit in my own basement and listen to him drive out of my life. I cross the room, stand on my tiptoes to see out of the high window and watch the car move down the drive. The gate swings shut behind him.

He’s gone.

There was a second, while his footsteps were still crossing the hall, when I almost went up. My legs straightened halfway off the bench before I caught myself and stayed where I was.

And what was I going to say to him? There’s no version of a goodbye that isn’t either begging or a fight. Or worse, just a cold goodbye. We shake hands and send each other on our way. I don’t have the stomach for any kind of goodbye.

He must have been packed since last night, bag standing by the door, waiting for the Bureau to give him the all clear.

Good riddance.

I do two more sets I hadn’t planned on. The second one is ugly, my arms shaking by the end.

I strip and shower in the bathroom off the gym, because the upstairs is going to smell like oranges.

The basement isn’t much better. His heat was only a few days and the ghost of him is everywhere, soaking orange peel and dark honey into the very foundations of my house.

It takes me about an hour to finally put on my big boy pants and go upstairs, letting myself bathe in his scent.

I’m not going to have this again. The next time I see him will be at practice or in the locker room. Maybe his office. And I can guarantee I’ll be surrounded by a horde of sweaty alphas in hockey gear and neither of us are going to look each other in the face.

His scent here is going to fade.

I walk along the hallway toward the guest room. The door at the end of the hall is standing open for the first time in two weeks.

I take a deep breath, breathing him in.

The bed is stripped and the window is open. Before I think, I cross the room and open the closet door. Everything is empty. There’s nothing in the bathroom.

I stand there and stare at the tub. I washed his hair in it with him lying all soft and relaxed against my arm.

I reassess how long it took him to leave. Not only the suitcase, but the bed too. I imagine him sitting here on the corner of the stripped bed, waiting for the Bureau to let him loose so he could run away from me the first chance he got.