Page 139 of The Beta's Blind Date

But my girl is right. Whether it’s today or months from now, or even years from now, there will come a time when I have to face him. I might as well rip the Band-Aid off.

“I’m ready,” I say.

I give Taryn a kiss, then step around her and lead us to the door, her presence at my back keeping me on my path. I have to do this. For myself, and for my family.

I push the door open, peeking around the edge, and as soon as my head enters the room, I’m greeted by my dad, his raspy, emotion-filled voice an almost perfect echo of mine.

“Hey there, Buddy.”

Chapter 48

REID

“Heythere,Buddy.”

The words echo in my brain, setting off a chain reaction of memories, each one with those words as the central focus.

“Hey there, Buddy.”

He winks at me as I stand in line with the other six-year-old pups on our first day of training. Wesley is on my left, his chest puffed out and his head held high. My smile grows as I beam at my dad, ready to make him proud and show the other pups what I’ve already learned with him during our roughhousing at home.

From the corner of my eye, I glimpse my mom as she runs by. She waves at me and blows a kiss to my dad before continuing on her way with the group of warriors she’s headed out to patrol with, a smile on her face as always.

“Hey there, Buddy.”

The wind ruffles my hair, and the sun blinds my eyes as he exits the water, surfboard in hand. He sets it upright in the sand, then checks the wrist strap on my board, making sure there is no fraying or tearing before he follows me out into the surf, ready to spend hour after hour watching me fall off my surfboard before the moment I catch my first wave on my own. His cheers of encouragement as I stand and ride it are echoed by my mom as she sits on a towel on the beach, her long blonde hair whipping in the wind.

“Hey there, Buddy.”

He kneels next to me in the dirt, digging a hole near mine and depositing a bulb inside, patting the soil after he covers it up. His lips twitch, and he thumbs dirt over my left cheek, laughing as I try to shove him away.

“You were uneven!” he says as I jump on him, tackling him and reaching to wipe dirt across his cheek, my mom’s laughter ringing through the garden as she watches us.

“Hey there, Buddy.”

His eyes are puffy and red, and his voice is almost gone as he squats in front of me in the hospital hallway. He tries to smile at me, but it’s unnatural and forced—nothing like the laughing male in all my memories. The male with the bright blue eyes and the wide grin that never seems to disappear. My nine-year-old body trembles, but I stand tall as his chin drops to his chest, and a sob bursts through his lips, his hands covering his face.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

He shakes his head and drops to his knees, his fingers grappling against the linoleum floor of the hospital, his entire body shaking from the force of his tears and the pain of the severed mate bond. Behind him, the door of the hospital room opens. Through it, I see my mom in the bed, her body covered with a sheet, her face paler than the whitest flowers in her garden, her eyes vacant as they stare up at the ceiling. Her chest doesn’t move, and she doesn’t blink.

I’m frozen in place as the hospital bustles around me, and my dad loses himself to his misery in front of me, unwilling to believe that any of it is real. Hoping that if I wish for it hard enough, she’ll open her eyes and join us in the hallway, promising us each an extra cookie after dinner tonight for making us think she’d leave us.

My eyes close and when they open again, I’m back in the hospital room, my dad staring at me with that same forced smile he gave me all those years ago. The day the world chewed me up, swallowed me whole, and spit me back out again with no ground to stand on and no mother to guide me.

My knees buckle and I can’t breathe. My hands clutch at the edge of the door, and my forehead presses into it, my arms trembling as they work to hold me up, to keep me from collapsing onto the floor. It’s all an eery, distorted echo of the day my mom died, and it’s taking everything in me to keep my stomach from purging itself and to keep my body upright, to keep my feet in the room and moving forward instead of turning around and racing out of the hospital like I did when I was nine.

But this time, I’m not alone. This time, my girl is with me, giving me extra strength, pushing her love into and through me. Her hands on my back anchor me and give me the courage I need to step all the way into the room and close the door behind us. My hand slips into hers and we move to the side of the bed, leaving a foot of space between our bodies and the edge of the mattress.

I lick my lips and inhale through my nose, my eyes closing once more. “Hey, Dad,” I whisper, Taryn squeezing my hand as she hears the tightness in my voice.

His lip quivers and he purses his mouth, shifting his gaze from me to Taryn, blinking and swallowing before he speaks again. “And you must be Taryn?”

She nods. “I am.”

His eyes flick to our joined hands, then our marked necks, and a smirk plays on his lips, a glimmer of mischief in his eyes as he looks at her face again. “And I’m guessing you’re not just a ‘one-time thing’ like my son claimed you were a few weeks ago?”

“Dad!” Taryn cocks her head at me, her brow lifting as she holds in a laugh, and I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Ignore him. He’s lying. I never said that…” I trail off at the look of disbelief Taryn gives me and sigh, shooting my dad a glare. “Well, Ididsay that, but that was when… you know…” I hedge around the truth, grimacing as she keeps giving me that same “I do not buy any of your shit” look she has already perfected. A look I’m sure I will see at least once a day for the rest of my life.

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