Page 49 of Why Cruise

“A baby.”

“Hardly. The worst part was, I couldn’t face Justice. He would have hated it. Hated me and all the shit I was forced into.”

I wouldn’t have. I would never have hated you. I loved you. I would have done something. Anything. Everything. Changed it. Fixed it. Burned the world down for you.

“And then they encountered a problem that my newly found skills with a billy club couldn’t fix.”

“What?” Theo spoke. The two omegas were engrossed in the story. Their auras oozing with compassion and filling space around us. I licked my lips like I could taste them.

“A computer.” Ren hadn’t looked at me once this whole time. “There was information they needed out of a computer. I don’t even know what it was now. They knew Justice liked computers and wanted me to get him to help. And that could never happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because Justice is a boy scout. The second he knew I was in trouble, he would do anything to fix it. And with the Delanos, it would have cost him his future and he would have been as dirty as I was.”

I swallowed my wine and put the glass back on the table before I was tempted to hurl it across the room.

“And then I did the dumbest and worst thing in my life. I couldn’t protect him. And I couldn’t outright break up with Justice. I didn’t have enough courage for that. And I’m not sure he would have let me. So, with a prefrontal cortex not fully developed and raging with a sparkly new alpha aura, I hatched a brilliant plan to make Justice hate me. I had to go back to school for a couple of months to graduate. I got a small group of newly minted douchy alphas to bully Justice mercilessly. And it worked. Justice hates me and you two get to enjoy our angry flirting.”

Months and months of torture summed up like a punch line. A foot touched mine under the table. Coconut and orange filled my senses, extinguishing the bitter taste of whatever the fuck that info dump was.

“Happy ending though. Well, happy-ish,” Ren said with a shrug, “The Delanos got blown up in their own restaurant afew years later. Leaving me with only their name, but effectively ending my kneecap breaking career.”

Ren finally looked at me and winked. The mother fucker winked. I sat back in my chair again, trying to get control of my breathing.You calculating asshole. You manipulated all of this. The public setting. The divine omegas between us. All so you could make your confession without me losing my shit all over the place.

“Well, good story,” I let my voice show all my annoyance, as I stretched across the table for the wine bottle. “You were always good at happy endings.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Shouldn’t you have graduated from stealing cars to something more lucrative by now?”

“Yes, handbags, but you’ve left me with quite the stick shift fetish.”

Mackenzie leaned over the table to Theo in their now familiar whisper gag. “I don’t know anything about cars. I don’t get the stick shift joke.”

Theo tilted his head with an incredulous look. He made a hand gesture somewhere between shifting gears and jerking someone off.

“Oh.” Mackenzie sat up straighter. And then it connected. “OH! Ren, that’s not angry flirting. That’s just dirty.”

“Sugar, you wouldn’t know dirty if you were dipped in it.” Ren growled at her.

“I know dirty. Theo, tell him.”

Ren gasped, clutching his non-existent pearls. I looked between the two omegas.

I practically clutched my pearls. “Are you two…”

“…Fucking?” Ren finished my sentence.

“Omegas have needs.” Theo put a defensive hand out to explain.

“You think it’s easy having normal dinner conversation when you two,” she waved her hands to indicate the entire table, “are smelling like this? That is the real criminal activity here. Breaking news: Alphas, scents and ruined panties. News at 11.”

“Maybe we need to start a committee to make it an actual crime.”

“I’m going to have to buy panties at this point because I cannot keep up with the laundry.”

“You think they have them at the gift shop?”

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