Page 82 of Knottingley Ever After
“Okay. Inventory check.” I squeeze her fingers. “Ice cream is on the next block. Shopping is done. You said you needed blockers, Pinky?”
She pauses.
Actually pauses, mid-stride, which causes the four-person diamond formation to fold in around her in a small unscripted collision while she frowns up at me, thinking. “Honestly, I am not sure if I am supposed to buy those out here, or whether I have to go to the campus clinic for them. I have already put my name on the waitlist.”
“Waitlist for what,” Rémi asks.
“The Heat Clinic.”
Three of us stop. Properly stop. I have not, in the course of this morning, witnessed Jude Kavanagh and Rémi Bellerose come to a coordinated halt on a public sidewalk at the same time, and now I have, and the effect on the foot-traffic behind us is roughly that of two cars stalling on a freeway.
Iris blinks up at all three of us.
“… What.”
“There is a waitlist,” I repeat, very carefully, “for a clinic. That helps you. With heats.”
“Apparently?” She shrugs, the new phone clutched against her sternum like a lifeline. “I do not know exactly how it works. I assume there is some standing pool of Alphas who are, ah, on-call when an Omega goes in. Mrs. Henderson at the housing desk said to put my name on the list before it filled further. I have not had a Heat in a long time because of the blockers anyway, so it is not, like, an urgent thing for me. But she said to do it. So I did it.”
“Iris.” Jude. Quiet. Dangerous.
“Why do you sound angry.”
“Why do you sound,” he counters, “like this does not bother you in the slightest.”
She thinks about it. Tips her head. “… Because it does not. I do not have a choice in the matter. Why would I be angry about a thing I have no control over.”
Oh, Pinky.
“You do have control.” I bring our joined hands up, deliberately, so she has to look at them. “You do not have to sign up for that. There is no part of the league regulation or the school code that compels you to be on that list. Henderson handed you a worksheet and you assumed it was law.”
“Yes,” she says, slowly, “I do have to sign up. How else am I supposed to remain on the team if my heats are all overthe place? Before, you know, your friendly half of the program continues to use it as an argument that I am a hindrance.”
Rémi steps closer. He does not crowd her. He simply puts himself, again, in the position he has been putting himself in since the moment she walked into our farmhouse, which is on her open side and well within scenting distance. His pine-and-snow lays itself over our small huddle like a hush.
“Iris.”
She looks up at him.
“We can help you with your heat.” Rémi’s voice does not climb. He simply makes the sentence the room. “If you do not want to deal with that situation with strangers who are treating it as a paid shift, you have other options. Three of them, in fact. Standing right here.”
She breathes in. She breathes out. Her eyes flicker over Rémi’s face, then to Jude’s, and then — because she is Iris O’Shea, and because I have, in the last few days, become the person she finds the floor with when the room tilts — they slide to me.
Asking. With absolutely no idea she is asking.
“If you are looking for my opinion, Pinky,” I tell her, quiet, “you already know mine. And the boys know perfectly well I am too stubborn to be talked out of getting my way once I want it. So whether they agree or not is, frankly, between them and their consciences.”
Jude pinches the bridge of his nose. Rémi, on her other side, lets the corner of his mouth do the unmistakable thing.
“… Okay.” Iris’s voice is small. Not afraid. Thinking. “Can I think about it.”
“Yes,” Rémi says, immediately.
“Take your time, sweetheart,” I add. “Just know it is on the menu. That is the entire point of the menu. It is not a binding order.”
She nods. Once, twice, the small considering nod of a woman whose mental spreadsheet has just gained a column she had not budgeted for.
“One more question,” Jude says.
