Page 12 of My Begrudging Scent Matches

“You’ve always been so independent, and I love that about you, it’s a great thing,” Olivia says. “But I’m afraid you’ll regret not letting anyone in. Alone is no way to live.”

The truth hits its mark and Alice, once again, has to breathe deep through her nose, or else the tears will start back up.

“Alice?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” her sister says. Alice wipes away one rogue tear and nods, though Olivia can’t see her.

“I love you too. Thanks for talking.”

Alice hangs up first and shuts her phone off before she can see if any more messages came through on her Slack. It isn’t even four yet, but she decides she’s done for the day. She’ll sleep for as many hours as she can and think about it again in the morning.

This is a problem for tomorrow.

five

As much as she wants to stay home the next day, unfortunately, Alice can not avoid going in.

The department has a huge meeting to solidify plans for the first quarter and, as usual, she’s put in charge. Despite having literal engineers and IT professionals one floor away, Logan acts like she is their only saving grace for setting up the technology.

Like, yes sure, she’ll plan the meeting, keep everyone following the agenda, and set up the TV’s in the boardroom again. It’s not like there aren’t interns and department assistants running around getting paid to figure that out.

Sure, sure.

When she gets in, she walks straight to her desk, not sparing a glance to where she knows both Caleb and Grant are already set up at their new cubicles. Now that she’s scented Caleb, Alice can’t get away from his scent lingering in every corner of this place. It makes her crave gingerbread and cinnamon rolls, and she keeps daydreaming about curling up in front of a fireplace on Christmas afternoon.

It’s hard to believe that the rest of her coworkers can’t smell him when it’s a heady cologne that infects the air and makes her equal parts dizzy and comforted. The latter feeling is what concerns her.

As soon as she’s sat with her laptop open, she receives two new messages in quick succession.

Caleb Everett

Good morning.

Can we talk?

Alice doesn’t respond at first, taking her time to get out her planner, write down tasks on her list, and mark off a few from the day before. But she can’t help but feel as though someone is watching her. When she looks across the office, sure enough, Caleb is standing, leaning against Grant’s desk staring right at her. Grant is watching her, too, but he looks a lot less intense about it.

It’s indecent, really. People in the office love to gossip, and anyone seeing Caleb look at her like she’s his next meal is sure to make the rumor mill light the fuck up.

She watches him type something into his phone before her chat refreshes with another message.

Caleb Everett

please

Alice sighs and hovers her hands over the keyboard. No punctuation or capitalization? He’s obviously in a bad way about this.

Caleb knows what she is—and what she is to him—and wants to talk about it. He probably wants to start bossing her around and introducing her to his family. Or maybe he wants to tell her that he’s already happy in his current relationship and is definitely not looking to add an Omega into the mix.

Alice didn’t dare tell anyone other than Olivia what had happened yesterday. Her mom would have flipped out and shown up with her three dads at her door with congratulatory balloons just waiting to meet their future son-in-law.

Alice Walton

About what?

Caleb Everett

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