Page 35 of His Reward
When we reached the lobby waiting area at the end of the hall, Mrs. Monteverdi was there but Marco was nowhere in sight.
“Are you ready to go home, sweetie?” Mrs. Monteverdi asked with motherly expectation in her eyes.
“Yeah, Mom,” Lucien said, exhaustion weighing down on him.
“I’ll just pull the car around and?—”
“Would you mind if I just had Boston take me?” Lucien interrupted her.
Mrs. Monteverdi blinked, her excitement fading a little. “Oh.” She glanced between me and Lucien. “Um, well, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything,” Lucien rushed to console her. “It’s just that I might get all emotional, and I’m not sure I want my mom to see that.”
I couldn’t tell if Lucien meant that or if it was just an excuse. Mrs. Monteverdi glanced at me with a calculating look, then her smile returned. “I guess I can’t blame my baby boy for being all grown up, can I, Bos?” Her smile returned full force.
It was my turn to blush. “It’s nothing like that, really, Mrs. Monteverdi,” I said. She had, of course, been there for a lot of her husband’s plotting and planning where me and Lucien were concerned. I had a feeling her thoughts on the subject were close to my own, that she wanted the two of us to get together and was annoyed that her husband was trying to play puppet master.
“I thought I told you to call me Bea,” she said, stepping closer to pat my cheek. “Take care of my boy,” she added with a wink, then stepped back. “If you need anything at all, give me a call,” she told Lucien. “I’ll do some cooking and bring containers over to your place later so all you have to do is heat them up, okay?”
“Mom, I can take care of myself,” Lucien said, rolling his eyes. I could tell he loved the attention his mom was giving him, though.
There was a bit of a delay filling out the paperwork for Lucien’s discharge. I didn’t mind. I waited until it was done, then walked beside Lucien as an orderly wheeled him to the elevator, then down to the exit level and to the doorway. I jogged around to get my SUV, then drove it to the front door and helped Lucien climb way up into the passenger seat.
I could have sworn I saw a few people taking pictures with their phones nearby, and as much as the alpha in me wanted to go after them to ask who they were and why they were taking my omega’s picture, I let it go.
“It feels weird not being in a clinical setting after all this time,” Lucien said with a sigh, sinking back into the leather of his seat and closing his eyes.
I pulled out of the hospital’s entryway and onto the city streets. “At least you’re out in time to see all the Christmas decorations.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lucien said, opening his eyes and looking around as we drove toward the beach part of town, where Lucien’s condo was. I’d never been there, but I had the address and typed it into my GPS. “I’d totally forgotten Christmas is only a few days away. Time sort of blurs together in rehab.” He grinned at his joke, then went on with, “Don’t you have family to spend the holidays with?”
“Papa lives in Norwalk,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll go out there sometime next week. He knows how busy I’ve been.”
“And your dad?”
“Haven’t heard from him in eight years,” I said tightly. “Even then, I heard one too many excuses about why he left Papa for a younger omega to have even a shred of respect left for him.”
Lucien just nodded. He knew I was an only child, so he didn’t ask any more questions about family. “What about the guys at the firehouse?” he asked instead.
I smiled. I loved my papa dearly, but Roscoe, Ernie, and the guys were my real family. “They’re fine,” I said. “They keep asking about you.”
“Me?” Lucien asked, surprised.
“Yeah. They were there for the fire, too.”
Although if I was honest, part of the reason they kept asking about Lucien was because the amount of time I spent with my omega who wasn’t really my omega had started to eat into the time and attention I was supposed to be putting into the firehouse. I’d accidentally missed more than one training session in the last month because I’d been at the rehab hospital.All of the plans we’d started to come up with for ways to raise money had been pushed to the side because I didn’t have time for them. I’d missed a few administrative deadlines to apply for things the company really needed on top of that. Ernie had given me a talking to, and there’d even been an email from the area commander that I didn’t want to think about. But Lucien was more important than all of that.
“What?” Lucien asked, making me realize I’d been silent for too long.
“What do you mean, what?” I asked back, playing dumb.
“Something’s bothering you that you’re not telling me about,” Lucien said, his gaze far too penetrating.
“I’m not?—”
“Spill it,” Lucien cut me off.
For some reason, that made me grin. “Hey. Which one of us is the Dom here?”
