Page 52 of The Gift
“I’ll grab some garbage bags and boxes. We can pull this down before we call the police in. I want her place called in and fingerprinted. I suspect we won’t find a thing.”
Koda disappears before he finishes talking, and while he starts searching, I start pulling everything out of her little space. There is nothing worth saving, everything is tainted.
Together we work quickly and efficiently, and in under an hour, her nest is dismantled and the space holds the same sterile feel as the rest of her home. While Koda calls the police to ring it in, I put everything in the back of my car and call through to Ash.
“All okay?”
“Yeah, she’s had a bit too much to drink, but Reno’s got her helping him make his lasagne from scratch, and some overly complicated sour dessert. What about there?”
“She won’t be happy, Ashton.”
He sighs defeatedly through the phone, and I can only imagine the look on his face. “Good news is that she’s agreed to stay here.”
“Yeah, it would have been good for her to agree to that for other reasons, but I like knowing she’s there.”
“I hear you. How long will you be?”
“Koda is talking to the detectives from earlier and the police and I’ve got some trash to get rid of, so both of us will be home within a couple of hours.”
“That’s good timing. She’s strangely at peace, Henley. I didn’t expect to see light in her eyes. Maybe it’s the cocktails Reno made for her, but she’s looking a thousand bucks compared to earlier today. When we got back, she spoke with Lennon for a while, so her agent is now aware and that helped. Then she asked to speak with the detective that has a copy of the letter and photos. The more she knows the better she is.”
“Let her know we’re coming back soon. And you should mention what we’re both doing. I don’t want to blindside her again today. When we’re back, we can run down what was done because her mind is probably worse than what it was, but at the same time, it was pretty fucked what we found. She definitely got outed. Almost like they knew what to look for, or they were the world’s luckiest assholes.”
“They’ll be the world’s unluckiest assholes if I ever find out who is responsible.”
“You and me both will be showing them how unlucky they are.”
“I’ll give her a rundown, but Henley, don’t go easy with her. You told us straight up she was a survivor, and we’ve all seen how true that is. She needs the no nonsense approach, and she needs to see the real you, warts, and all.”
“Jesus, you’re selling me like a real catch.”
“No, no, no, it’s not that. She fits with us in every sense of the word. And after seeing her walking around here, I want to say a part of her knows how well she fits here too. Now we have to give her all the reasons in the world to get her to believe that she can have it all.”
“What does that mean?”
“Henley, you know what it means. She was always meant to be ours. We’ve talked about it a few times, you told her earlier today, but everything needs to be on the table for all of us. Bailey isn’t weak—she’s done this alone for long enough and knows how to deal. You need to put it all on the line, explain that we were assigned, had paid in cash to pick her up.”
The silence stretches between us as my old friend guilt joins the conversation, settling down next to me again.
“We want it to be her, Ashton. We all want it to be Bailey. But, she might not have been the one.”
“I don’t believe for a second that we were meant to get any other omega other than her, neither do the others. It doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s with us.”
“For how long though? How is she going to be when you look her in the eye and tell her emphatically that we were on our way to get her. That we’re guilty of buying an omega.”
Ash sighs hard, taking a series of small breaths—probably more for my sake than his.
“She knows already that we were buyers. Henley, we all made the decision to be a part of the Gift. It was our money, four equal shares, no one bore more than the other. Bailey was our gift. We lost her for a little while, but we won’t again. Even if we have to lock her in our house.” Ashton laughs. “Maybe don’t tell her that part just yet.”
Everything Ashton said is true, except at the end. For a second, I forget he’s on the line, until he eloquently puts me in my place.
“Your reluctance at letting this shit go, Hen, is as off putting as your continual idealisation that you are solely responsible. The four of us all walked into our pack, each needing something and finding more than we could have ever imagined. The four of us then agreed to buy an omega. We didn’t fuck it up, we’re not responsible for that, we’re trying to right all the wrongs, and Bailey is ours, always has been. Get your shit together, Henley, or you’re sleeping in the doghouse tonight.”
Since the day we met, he has had my head spinning. And lucky for me, a day hasn’t passed where I haven’t acknowledged the fact. Some days, I fight against the reality, but that’s more to do with my nature than him, or the rest of my pack.
“No, Ashton, no doghouse. You will be sleeping in my bed, with or without our guest there.”
Hanging up on him, I climb in my car instead of the stairs back up to Bailey’s. Koda is busy with the officers from the patrol car that arrived, he doesn’t need me to oversee. Still, I flick him a text with an abridged version of my discussion with Ashton before I get rid of Bailey’s nameless belongings in a dozen dumpsters scattered from one end of the city to the other.
