Page 39 of Knot the Plan
“Finn.”
“Josie.”
“You're watering me like a houseplant.”
“You talk for forty-five minutes and forget to drink anything.” He says it flat, still not looking up. “Somebody's got to. You'd dry out, and the preschool would lose its best one, and then where would this town be.”
He says it like a complaint. Like I'm a maintenance issue he's resigned to. And there's nothing in his tone, and somehow that's worse than if he'd said something sweet, because Finn doesn't do sweet. Finn doesdone,quietly, before you noticed it needed doing.
I watch him the rest of the meal, the way you watch a card trick once you know there's a trick. And I catch it, the next time. His hand going to the pitcher Dottie left on the table, eyes never leaving mine, topping me off mid-sentence so smooth I'd never have seen it if I weren't hunting for it.
A man taking care of a thing before I even know it needs taking care of. Gruff about it. Deniable about it. Doing it anyway.
The worst part is he's right. I do forget to drink anything. I've spent twenty-eight years forgetting to drink anything, and not one person ever sat across from me long enough to notice. And now there's a firefighter who'd rather lose a tooth than admit he's keeping my glass full, doing it like it's the most boring obligation in the world.
I don't know what to do with being noticed like that.
I've spent my whole life being the one who notices. The easy one. The one who keeps everybody else's glass full. Nobody ever filled mine. I assumed that was just the deal.
He keeps a hand on the back of my neck on the way out. For the town, obviously. The town is watching. The town is always watching. The hand is warm and broad and it covers the whole back of my neck like he could tip my head back with two fingers if he wanted, and I think about him wanting to, and have to remind myself how walking works.
His thumb moves once, just under my ear, where the town can't possibly see, slow, deliberate, and the simmer under my skin flares into something molten and immediate, heat dropping straight through me to pool low and insistent, and I have to stop on the sidewalk and pretend I've got something in my shoe before my knees editorialize.
“You good?” he says.
“Shoe thing,” I say. “Rock. Famous rock. Very aggressive.”
He waits while I deal with my imaginary rock, hands in his pockets. He doesn't smile. But something at the corner of his mouth is having a real hard time, and woodsmoke and clove hangs in the warm evening air between us, and I am in so much trouble.
That nightI take a third suppressant and lie in the dark waiting for it to work, listening to my own pulse not settle, my skin tootight, the sheets too much against me. I think about Logan's forearms and Finn's hand on my neck and Hudson's mouth at the overlook and I am slick and restless and furious about all of it, my body running a fever the little white pill is supposed to break and isn't.
Here's what six years on one little pill does. You stop thinking of yourself as an omega with a body that has plans. You become a person who handled it. Who took the thing off the table. Who doesn't ache three days a season for a pack she was never going to have anyway.
The suppressant isn't medicine to me. It's a door I closed. It's the reason I can stand next to alphas all day and run a whole fake-pack operation and never once worry my own biology is going to embarrass me in front of the entire town.
The door is rattling.
Eventually the simmer eases, finally, enough to sleep. And I lie there telling myself it worked. It's working. It always works. One or two has always been plenty, and three is just because it's June and I'm tired and I've spent a week getting touched by three alphas my body has decided to take a personal interest in.
It's fine. The pill worked. I'm just topping up.
I'm a woman who closed a door six years ago and has started, this week, leaving my hand on the knob.
I don't look too hard at that either. Refusing to look at things is practically my whole personality.
Two weeks. Olives and water and a thumb under my ear. Three alphas doing small quiet things to me that I never asked for and can't give back and am going to have to. And a body that has stopped, completely, listening to a single word I say.
I close my eyes and I refuse, expertly, to look at any of it, until the refusing finally tips over into sleep.
Chapter 13
Hudson
The problem with being the fun one is that everybody assumes you're not paying attention.
I lean into it, usually. It's a good cover. You crack the joke, you grin, you keep the whole room loose, and nobody clocks that the guy running his mouth is also the guy who noticed you went quiet four minutes ago and has been steering the conversation away from whatever did it ever since.
I've made a whole life out of being underestimated by people having a nice time.
