Page 72 of Alpha-Ex Wedding Ruse
I searched my memory, trying to recall the night she meant. Luca had always waved politely at her when he’d drop me off after our dates, but I hadn’t known he’d actually gone inside, let alone helped with renovations.
My thoughts floated to what happened at the park the other day. The way Luca’s arm had wrapped around me, grounding and electrifying all at once. How close we’d been. Too close. Close enough for everything I’d buried to surface all at once—memories, feelings, the ache I’d spent years silencing. I hadn’t been able to shake it. Even now.
Mrs. Bloom reached for me, pulling me out of my thoughts as she touched a strand of my hair. “You finally grew it out. I always said you’d look prettier with your blonde hair falling down your shoulders.”
I chuckled. “You always had the best beauty tips for me.”
We shared a soft laugh, but her smile faded slightly. “I’m sorry about your father, Leila. He was a good man.”
I forced a small smile. “Thank you.”
“So, are you moving back in?”
“Oh, no,” I replied quickly. “I’m just here to pack up what’s left. Rent’s due and…I’m not renewing.”
I didn’t want to burden her with the details. No need to trade warmth for pity.
“Ah, shame,” she murmured. “I missed seeing you around.”
“I missed seeing you, too, Mrs. Bloom,” I said, and meant it.
A soft warmth settled in my chest after seeing Mrs. Bloom. But itvanished the second I stepped through the front door. The air inside the house was stale, still, quiet.
I remembered the last conversation I had with my father face-to-face. It had ended in a fight. He’d stood right here in this living room, scolding me for what he called “fumbling the Alpha’s son”. He didn’t care that I was hurting. He didn’t care that I’d been humiliated, dragged through the mud by gossip blogs and bitter headlines. All he cared about was that I’d let a rich man go. An Alpha. A man who could’ve changed our lives.
I hadn’t told him I was pregnant. I didn’t trust him not to blab. Or worse, try to use it to drag Luca back into our lives. When I told him I was leaving the pack and the city, he didn’t even ask where until days later.
After that, we barely spoke. He’d call when he needed money. I’d send what I could. He’d complain it wasn’t enough.
He knew about Ollie, and he’d met him a couple of times, but he never knew who his father was. He didn’t even care to ask. He just kept reminding me how reckless it was to have a child when I could barely take care of myself, much less him.
That was the tone of every single call. Until twelve months ago. A strange number rang my phone, and the voice told me they’d found my father dead, slumped on the sofa, pills and wine scattered at his feet. There was a letter, they said. But I never bothered to read it.
I planned the funeral from the Bronx. Paid for everything. But I didn’t go. A few weeks later, a mountain of bills showed up at my doorstep. And Blaze, too, with a threat of what could happen if I didn’t pay my father’s debts.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes sweeping across the dusty, empty living room. There was a lot to pack. I decided I’d take only what I needed and sell the rest.
Tying my hair up with a band, I slipped on a pair of gloves and got to work. I started with the easy spaces like the living room and the kitchen, before making my way to my old bedroom.
I tried not to get too wrapped up in the memories as I packed everything into boxes, but the more I saw—old notebooks, hairpins,photos, the faint marks on the wall where I used to stick up sketches—the harder it was to let go.
At one point, I paused to calculate what it would take to keep the house—rent here, rent in the Bronx, Ollie’s school fees, groceries, Blaze’s constant demands, the thousand little bills that never stopped stacking up. Even without this place in the mix, I was barely staying afloat. Adding a second rent would drown me. I couldn’t afford to think about what I wanted. I had to focus on what was possible.
A cloud of dust floated into the air as I pulled out a box from the wardrobe, the one I’d labeled “special”. Special, because I couldn’t bear to leave these things lying around. Special, because they carried weight. Memory. Meaning.
I undid the knot on the blue box, wrapped like a present, just the way I always kept it. I used to open it on days when I felt low. Somehow, it always lifted my mood.
Inside were mostly polaroids—photos from my eighth, eleventh, and thirteenth birthdays. The only birthdays I’d ever celebrated. It had always been a small crowd of my dad, my two school friends, Mrs. Bloom, and a girl who used to live down the road. But there was joy in those moments. Real joy.
I smiled at the picture of my eight-year-old self. I was missing a front tooth, thanks to a clumsy sidewalk trip that left me face-first in the gravel. I kept flipping through the pile of photos until I stumbled on one I had forgotten about.
It was a picture of Luca and me.
We’d spent the night on the rooftop of an old observatory. Yeah, it was a little crazy. But I’d been rambling about how I wanted to do something adventurous, and Luca—being Luca—just said, “Fuck it, let’s do it.”
We’d grabbed blankets, food—I even brought my old Polaroid camera—and climbed up to that abandoned observatory where we watched the stars and soaked in the lights of the city below.
It was there, on that rooftop, that we first talked about a future. A family. And for a moment, in the chill night air wrapped in his arms, Icouldn’t imagine loving anyone the way I loved Luca—Mate bond or not.
