Page 35 of Knot All is Forgiven

But I am not a patient man. At this point, I have to wonder if she's purposefully hiding from us. It's been over two months since Rafe scented her, and we're no closer to finding her today than we were then.

"You need to be patient and start working on your mea culpa, dude," Rafe tells me for the thousandth time. He's interrupting my quiet time. Every evening, I sit out on the back porch of the little home we've been living in with a glass of whiskey and my spiraling thoughts.

"I'm done being patient, Rafe. I want my girl."

"You haven't wanted her for the past thirteen years," he snarks. As if he knows anything about me anymore. "I seem to remember you being pretty clear about not wanting her around." He sits down next to me at the small entertaining table. Sometimes, it feels like this entire house was designed to host dinner and garden parties. The backyard is overgrown, but you can still see the beautiful landscaping design underneath.

"Don't tell me what I did and didn't want," I snap. "I cared for her just as much as you two did."

And I did.

Didn't I?

Truthfully, when I came up with the idea, it was a little selfish. I couldn't handle listening to her cry and beg for us to believe her. Every tear corroded my self-control. I watched her spiral mentally, and it seemed like she slowly lost her grip on reality.I honestly thought cutting her loose was best for everyone. It would allow us to find our scent match and help her heal and move on.

How was I supposed to know she was right? That she'd present as an Omega later on?

"We had no way of knowing she'd present, Rafe. There were no signs."

"No signs? Hmm. I don't know. Let's think about it." He holds up his hand and begins ticking off on his fingers, sarcasm dripping down every word. "She was coordinated and a natural dancer, she was sensitive physically and emotionally, she always gravitated towards softer materials, she craved touch, she had a fucking nest in her bedroom, and oh yeah," he pins me with a seething glare, "she told us repeatedly that she was one."

He hauls himself to his feet and turns his back on me. Pausing with his hand on the doorknob, he looks over his shoulder. "We told her we knew her body better than she did, C. You think our scents will erase everything that happened, but I know you're smarter than that. We missed out on thirteen years together because we didn't believe her. Our relationship with her as our Omega doesn't start when we scent match her. It started when we were nineteen years old and threw her away."

Is that it? Did we throw her away?

He doesn't leave time for follow-up questions. He just walks back inside. I stew a bit longer while I drain my glass before stomping back into the house. Simon is on the couch in the living room, legs slung over the back, resting on the wall, and his head upside down off the edge of the seat.

"Why don't you just sit like a normal person?" I grumble, crashing down on the couch next to him.

"Who is to say what's normal anyways, Cyrus?"

Simon is always saying weird shit. Always has. It's even stranger now that he's got bright green hair and a group of people calling him Slime.

He's dressed down today. There is no leather jacket in sight, just a black muscle tank that shows off his thousands of dollars in ink and a pair of black linen pants. No matter how much he washes up, he always smells vaguely of grease from his job as a mechanic.

"How did you end up with the club, Simon?"

"It's so weird to be called that after all this time," he groans. "No one but Momma Fran calls me that anymore."

I haven't thought about Momma Fran in ages. Simon has two moms, Betas, who adopted him when he was two. Momma Lucy passed away when we were twenty-one. It's been since the funeral that I've seen Momma Fran. She was like a second mom to all of us over the years.

"How is she?"

"Oh, just as meddling as ever. The club is obsessed with her, of course. You should see her on a bike, holy shit, it's so funny." His face lights up when he talks about her, but try as I might, I cannot picture that straight-laced lady with the short grey hair on the back of a motorcycle.

"I joined the club shortly before we parted ways. I showed up at the shop looking to get a used bike and eventually ended up talking to Nitro about, well, about everything. I love my moms, but it was the first time I had some fatherly attention, and it felt good. I didn't realize how much I needed someone to look at everything from ten thousand feet." He sits up now, his face red from the blood flow, and crosses his legs on the couch cushion.

"So yeah, he convinced me to buy this rust bucket of a bike, and then I was there every day working on it with him. Before it was done, he made me family."

He looks proud of himself, and I get it. Those years after we cut Jordan loose weren't easy for any of us, but especially for him. He's always been the most sensitive of us. After he left, Rafe retreated farther into himself, and somewhere along the way, I became a bitter mess.

But something about Simon's story is still bugging me.

"Why do they call you Slime, though?"

He groans, scrubbing his face. "You know in that eighties movie, with the gross green ghost made of slime who ate all the time?"

"Yeah, of course."

---