Page 46 of Knot what I want for Christmas
He gives me a look. “I always fuck things up, especially when it comes to women.”
“That’s because they weren’t the right kind of women,” I tell him. “Hollie Bright, gee, she seems like the right kind of woman to me.”
“You like her too?” he asks.
“You know I do, Clay. I really like her. And Nash does too.”
He takes the spare beer from my hand, presses it to his lips, and knocks back at least half of it in one long gulp.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says when he tips his head back and wipes his hand across his mouth.
“What would you like to do?” I ask, feeling a lot like Clay Jackson’s therapist right now.
“I’d like to kiss her again,” he says.
I chuckle. “I’d like to do a whole lot more than just kissing with that girl.”
“She said,” he looks at the floor and then back up at me, “that she’s changing her mind about packs. That she never thought she wanted one, but now…”
“She said that?” I say, almost jumping up from my seat. “She wants a pack? Do you think she meant our pack?”
“I doubt it,” he mutters.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “She’s had a rethink about the situation since she’s known us. That’s got to be down to our influence. This could be our chance, Clay.”
“It could also land us in a whole heap of trouble.”
I can tell my friend is not going to be easily convinced by this. To be honest, he’s rarely convinced by anything. He’s the negative to my positive, the pessimism to my optimism. It wasn’t always that way. My best friend used to have a much sunnier outlook on life. But it’s one of the reasons our friendship works as well as it does, why it’s lasted all this time. We need each other to balance each other out.
“I’d be happy to find myself in a whole heap of trouble with Hollie Bright,” I say with a grin, imagining what that would look like. “Does she taste like she smells, Clay?”
“Better,” he says. “She tastes a whole lot better.”
I whistle. “I can only imagine what she tastes like between her legs, Clay. Imagine that.”
“That’s all I’ve been imagining,” he says. “Damn.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I tell him. “We’re Alphas. We’re programmed for this. Of course, throwing an Omega into our midst was gonna drive us kind of crazy. Especially an Omega like her.”
“I just…” He looks down into his beer bottle and swirls the liquid around. “I don’t want to hurt her, Tucker. The girl’s been through a lot. I can see it, can’t you, in her eyes?”
I nod. “It’s hard to lose anyone, Clay. Especially a mom. Especially when it was just the two of them.” He’s silent. I don’t have to tell him how well I understand Hollie’s situation. We’d already been the best of friends for well over a decade when I lost my mom, when I lost my dad for all shapes and purposes too, and ended up practically living at Big Sky Ranch. “We won’t hurt her, Clay. We’re not those kinds of men. We’re not like that.”
“I know. But sometimes these things happen without you meaning them to. And I don’t want to be that guy.”
“You know what I say? I think we should stop imagining what the Omega does and doesn’t want. I think we should stop making that decision for her, and I think we should ask her. I feel this could be it for us, Clay.”
My best friend lifts his gaze to mine. “I don’t know,” he says. “Life doesn’t seem to work out the way you want it to.”
I cock my head to one side. Is he talking about the accident? He never talks about the accident. He hasn’t talked about it for as long as I can remember.
“No it doesn’t,” I say softly. “But that doesn’t mean every other thing in your life isn’t going to go the way you want it to either. And things haven’t worked out so bad, have they?”
“No … it’s just sometimes I feel like I was robbed of my future, my chance, or something.”
“Clay,” I say, “I’ve never said this to you before, because you’re my best friend, man, and I love you to bits. But I don’t think you’d have lasted on the rodeo circuit. I think you’d’ve been home within six months.”
“What?” he gasps, gaze flying to meet mine. “How could you say that, Tucker?”
