Page 53 of Begrudgingly Yours
The other two goalies and I normally stay late a couple times a month so we can work with Coach Zane and his assistant coach. We challenge each other, work on our box control and other techniques, and occasionally try to psych the other out in the process. It’s definitely helped us, so I’m not complaining too much. I just hate getting out after dark when the rest of the guys are likely already home and comfortable.
I step out of the arena, the only illumination coming from the campus streetlights. My shoulder rolls on its own, trying to stretch out the muscles from the grueling and prolonged practice it just endured.
I’m thinking about the ice-bath with my name on it as I walk across campus. I’m cursing myself for parking so far away when a door slams open nearby. The loud sound causes me toswing my head just in time to see a flash of dark hair—hair tinted with my favorite shade of blue.
Rory’s bag is barely on her shoulder as she tries to trudge up the hill to the parking lot. I prepare my sore body to jog to her, but then another body comes out of the same building before the doors have even closed. At first, there’s panic that someone might be trailing her but then I see the familiar brown hair and worn-down leather jacket. My eyes widen as Jett runs to catch up with Rory’s disappearing frame.
What the hell?I look at the building and see that it’s the drama building. Shit, I completely forgot they were in the same major. Why did Dax and I never mention that? They alreadyknoweach other.
I’ve never felt more dumb than I do right now.
I turn attention back to them and take a few steps in their direction before stopping. They’re talking fast to each other, almost like they’re arguing. My hunches immediately go up. Jett’s arms keep flailing forward before falling back to his sides, almost like he’s trying not to touch her.
I feel like I’m hallucinating. Maybe I didn’t drink enough water during practice. Maybe I’m extremely dehydrated and this is a delusion created by my brain.
I can’t look away. I’m captivated. They stay there, the blazing intensity turning into something much more subdued. Rory’s gaze falls to Jett’s chest before they dart back to his face, her pupils wide and almost fearful. Jett’s hand comes up to rub his chest. I can’t hear what’s going on, but my alpha perks his ears up and metaphorically nudges me.
Is he… purring for her?
My suspicion is confirmed when she finally lets him wrap his arms around her and presses her face into his chest. I watch as her eyes flutter shut, a serene look I haven’t seensince that night in Dax’s and my bedroom. She sighs, and seems to clutch onto him tighter. My heart squeezes at the image of them finding solace in each other. He rubs her hair, comforting her. The tiniest amount of alpha pheromones catch in the wind, and I instinctively know he’s also trying to soothe her with his leather scent.
My brain instantly puts everything together: Stacia telling us Rory got the lead in her Shakespeare class, Jett telling me he’s acting alongside his scent match, how I thought I got the smallest whiff of Rory’s cranberry scent on Jett after our game a few weekends ago.
Rory is Jett’s scent match.
I think I’m supposed to feel anxiety over this realization, but there’s only peace. There’s only my alpha and I watching as our pack mate soothes our omega, giving her what she needs when we can’t. Before I can stop it, my chest erupts in its own purr, but thankfully I’m too far away for either of them to notice.
A few moments later, their classmates start to pile out of the drama building. It causes them to pull apart slowly, like they don’t want this moment in their little bubble to end. She gives him a look I can’t completely decipher. There’s fear, but also longing. She mutters something that looks a lot likethank you. I can’t see his lips to read his response but he walks away a second later.
I stand there and observe the girl of my dreams, the girl I thought Ilost, watch my pack mate with dejection as he departs.
And it fuels a fire in me.
Jett disappears into the darkness just as I reach Rory. She’s still frozen in her spot, and her scent is slightly soured from whatever happened in rehearsal. When she sees me, her eyes expand in surprise.
“Hey,” I start, and I can see her thinking, calculating.
“Hi,” she says back, her expression still confused and shocked. “What are you doing here so late?”
I stick my thumb out over my shoulder in a vague direction. “I had goalie training.” I look over her features, her glossy eyes, her hair that’s usually up in a bun is down—wild and ruly. I fiddle my fingers by my side, fighting the instinct to run them through her indigo locks. “So… you know Jett.”
She instantly looks nervous, something that my alpha becomes hyperaware of. “We’re, uh, in a play together. In our Shakespeare class,” she says as casually as she can. Then she adds, “We’ve been rehearsing together a lot, reading lines.”
“Cool.” I can’t stop the teasing smirk from appearing even as I quirk my brow at her. She’s acting strange, avoiding my eyes as she looks anywhere but at me.
“You know, don’t you?” I ask, and her already fickle casualty falls away as her eyes widen even more.
Her scent sparks with fear as she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It all suddenly makes sense to me. Her fear of commitment, of letting us pursue her… it’s heightened by the fact that we’re now connected to her scent match, to someone who ismeantfor her.
It’s kismet. I can see it now. Our obsession with her isn’t written in delusion or our imagination. It wasinstincts, we just didn’t know it.
And her asking both of us to take her home all those months ago, those were her instincts, too. Now she’s ignoring them, and it’s tearing her apart.
“Yes, you do,” I say gently. “You know that we’re a pack. Jett was the last piece; now he, Dax, and I are pack. And…” I hesitate, cautious to voice it. If I do, she will no longer be able to run from it, and I’m not sure if I should force that upon her.
“And what?” she asks with more apparent panic.
