Page 48 of Executives' Omega
“How ya feeling?”
I smiled. “Good. Alonzo’s mama has been stuffing me with all my new favorite foods.”
He laughed. “Good to hear.” Then he hugged me again, tight. “I’m proud of you, Bug.”
“Thank you.”
He reached down and rested a hand on my belly. “And how’s Mini-Bug doing in there?”
“Asleep,” I laughed. “Don’t wake him or your mama will be all over me.”
He laughed. “Understood. Don’t wake Mini-Bug.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Brendan said as he handed me a plate of food. “Why do you call Ryan ‘Bug’?”
Owen blinked. “He hasn’t told you?”
I tried to put a hand over Owen’s mouth, but with the plate in my hands, I couldn’t get there before he saw the attempt and moved aside with a laugh.
“So I’m only about six months older than Ryan, but with age cutoffs, I was a full year ahead of him in school,” Owen started. “Combined with the fact that I was always a bit big for my age, and Ryan small for his, it made for a weird dynamic when his family moved back here when we were in elementary school.”
“Owen…” I whined.
“Oh no,” he teased. “This is my version of baby pics in photo albums. I’m telling your mates.”
Linden, Zane, and Alonzo crowded around to hear as well.
“Ryan didn’t know anybody at school except me when they moved back,” Owen continued. “So he kept trying to hang around me, but I was trying to be cool, cause kids are dumb. What cool kid wants to always be around the smallest kid in a lower grade? So one day I told him he was a pest, like a bug. Whenever he’d start bothering me I’d tell him to go away and call him a bug.”
He paused and licked his lips. “Some of the other kids started using it though, and combined with Ryan’s general clumsiness…” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “They started bullying him. At… at first I thought it was payback for him always latching onto me. Then…”
He took a sip of a soda somebody handed him. “I found him in the school hall one day, slumped against the cinderblock wall and crying. His bullies had messed with him while a substitute was out of the classroom and pinned the blame on him when the teacher returned. He’d been sent to the hall to quote-unquote think about what he’d done.”
Owen blew out a long breath and squeezed my knee. “Something broke in me. I realized he probably would have been bullied anyway, but I hadn’t helped. I was the one person he’d reached out to… and I’d been almost as bad as his other tormentors. I sat down right next to him and pulled him into my lap so he could cry, even though I’d been on an errand for my own class. I told him it was ok, and that I didn’t care if he bugged me, that he was my bug. The nickname stuck.”
I sniffled, remembering how many times he’d been my protector, and my pillow to cry on.
“After that, I didn’t care about being cool anymore. Since nobody else stood up for Ryan, I made it my job to do so. I kept the bullies off him as much as I could and comforted him when he needed it. Eventually, it just became our thing. Even after we graduated, I went to work, and he went to the community college to get an associate’s degree, I still saw him almost every day. We understood each other, and over time I think I just became his safe space.”
Of course, he didn’t mention all the times he’d gotten in trouble for protecting me—the weeks in detention for fights when somebody tried bullying me, the teachers who’d discounted his ability because of his reputation. And if he didn’t want to say anything, I’d respect his decision and stay silent as well.
“Don’t any of you call me Bug,” I stated, looking between my mates. “Only Owen is allowed to call me that.”
Linden chuckled. “You’re safe, we have other names we can call you: Sexy, Gorgeous… Omega.”
I shivered at the tone of his voice.
Owen squeezed my knee again. “I’m glad you found other men who will fight for you as hard as you deserve.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“Who’s ready to guess the baby food flavor?” Aunt Sharon called from the other end of the room.
I groaned and shoved a bite of carne adovada in my mouth to keep from making my true opinion known.
My mates exchanged a glance, then chuckled.
They couldn’t say I hadn’t warned them that she’d try to monopolize the party as soon as she arrived.
