Page 140 of Knot That Serious

“Yeah. In the same neighborhood. Jack tells me they were attached at the hip when they were little.”

“That’s a long time to be friends with someone,” Raj said.

Beckett sighed. “I know.”

“Does Jack… only want to be friends?” Raj asked, staring down at his beer.

Beckett cocked his head to the side. “No. But Jack’s afraid that Eli won’t reciprocate.”

Raj sent him a look, and Beckett nodded. “I know! That’s the face I made, too! He’s an idiot.”

“Eli heard him say he ‘didn’t want things to change’,” Raj informed him, lifting his fingers for quotation marks. “So…”

Beckett’s eyes widened, trying to remember the conversation she could’ve overheard. When had he and Jack been discussing their relationship where she could’ve—?

“Oh, no,” Beckett whispered. “It was right after the heat. I was trying to talk Jack into confessing to her, but he was so convinced she wouldn’t reciprocate… fuck. So much makes sense suddenly.”

No wonder she’d ditched him the next morning. She’d wanted to return to the bakery as quickly as possible, overlooking her own instinctual needs to try to find some normalcy in the face of a huge emotional shift.

But with her hormones out of whack from the heat and distancing herself from her alphas, she’d gone off on Jack and met…

Beckett snapped into the moment, his gaze resting on Raj.

“This is all so very complicated,” Beckett groaned. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“I feel like if we can all escape a high-pressure locked room together, we can do anything. This weekend?”

With a chuckle, Beckett nodded, holding out his beer bottle.

“To meddling. May we get these idiots to fall in love.”

“To meddling,” Raj agreed.

They sealed their fate with a clink.

28. Alone Together

Eli

“What’s Raj doing tonight?” Jack asked.

Eli inhaled, shrugged, and passed Jack the joint. After her exhale she told him what Raj had said.

“Prior commitments,” he laughed, and shook his head. “Beckett sent me a text that said something similar.”

“I accidentally almost let the L word slip,” Eli admitted, covering her face.

“Oh, is that what you were moaning about?” Jack asked, passing her the joint and avoiding her gaze.

“Yes!” Eli cried. “He called me to tell me we couldn’t hang out, and when we were saying bye—I was still waking up—I don’t know. Ugh,” she groaned, and drew the smoke into her lungs.

“What did he say?” Jack asked, eyes wide as he covered half his face with his hand. Was he smiling?

Eli narrowed her gaze at him and blew her smoke out the window without looking away. “I didn’t give him the chance to. I corrected it, and then hung up on him.”

Jack’s eyes fluttered closed. “Oh, Eli. What did you correct it to?”

Eli let her head bang back against the window frame. “Loser,” she said, holding the joint out to him. “I said ‘bye, loser,’ instead of ‘bye, love you.’”

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