Page 20 of Believe it or Knot

My chest swells and I get a little dizzy at her words. “Missed you too.” The words come out growled, but I couldn’t mean them more.

“Sorry to break up the reunion,” one of the alphas I found her with says. “But who are you?”

Sorrel laughs, a bright happy sound and slides her fingers up to lace with mine, pulling away from me, but leaving our hands linked as she turns to face them. “This is Gage.” She beams up at me and I’m helpless to do anything but grin back. “He’s my best friend.”

My smile dims as my stomach swoops. Friend. Right. Because I’ve never told her how I actually feel about her. About how I love her, want her, need her. My entire time overseas, I lived for her, for her letters and the rare video chat, the care packages she sent every month without fail. She’s it. All I’ll ever need.

“Friend?” Liam Cordova says, like he knows it’s bullshit.

Sorrel cheeks go a little pink and her hand tightens on mine. “Yep. We’ve known each other since elementary school. We were inseparable until-” she frowns as she cuts off. Sorrel doesn’t like to think about my time in the military, even though that’s been our reality for the last seven years.

“You know about the Stillwell pack?” Grayson Cordova asks, seemingly out of nowhere, while Rafe folds his arms over his chest in a menacing fashion. But I don’t give a fuck, because at the mention of that fucking pack, my alpha lifts its head and roars.

I turn to Sorrel. “What about them?”

“Stopped in to meet the beta that my omega will not quit talking about and found Stephen Stillwell harassing her. She’s been resistant to telling us why he felt the need to do that.”

Sorrel’s looking at the toes of her worn converse, obviously avoiding my gaze. “You told me you had it handled, biscuit. You told me not to worry about it, that you’d paid them back.”

She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and scuffs her shoe on the worn wood of the dock. Actually, now that I look around, everything looks a little worn: the paint on the building, the sign proclaiming it the Snack Shack, the tables and chairs lining the dock, Sorrel herself. Which is unacceptable.

“I do have it handled,” she mutters.

“Sorrel.” By which I mean don’t bullshit me.

“Gage.” I’m not.

“Sorrel.” Tell me the fucking truth.

“Gage.” Jesus, you overbearing prick, I am telling you the truth.

“Fuck, you guys are cute.” Liam chuckles. “You just had an entire conversation only using your names, didn’t you? Adorable.”

Sorrel looks up at him, and then at me with a sigh. “I didn’t want you to worry—I don’t want you to worry. Because I’m handling it, paying off a little at a time, whatever I can. I’m making a little extra on the side that goes to them.”

“Why do you owe them?” Rafe asks, shifting on his feet restlessly, like he’s holding himself back from going after the assholes right now.

Sorrel shakes her head. “Not me. My parents. They borrowed money from them a while back-”

“During the pandemic,” I cut in.

“Just enough to keep the restaurant afloat. They thought when the world opened back up that they would make it all back. We’ve always been popular. We’re the only restaurant actually on the lake. Everything else is in town, and in theory, it should have been easy. But the terms-”

“Were shit,” I cut in. “The Stillwell pack took advantage of their desperation and has been capitalizing on it ever since.”

Sorrel cuts a look at me. “The interest was too high. I’ve been paying it for years, but I’ve hardly made a dent.”

“Why aren’t your parents helping to pay it off?” My brows raise at the hard edge in Liam’s voice. I wouldn’t have expected that from America’s sweetheart omega.

Sorrel’s frown deepens, and I wrap my arm around her to pull her into my body, offering her support. But she doesn’t answer, so I do it for her. “They passed away about five years ago.” Right in the middle of her sophomore year at university. Right in the middle of my first deployment. I couldn’t get to her for months and I’ll never forgive myself for that. That she had to handle her grief and everything else that came from their loss alone.

But never again.

“Car accident,” Sorrel adds, quietly. “I inherited the restaurant and the debt.”

Grayson furrows his brow. “From what I overheard this is more than them just pressuring you to pay up.”

My head whips toward my girl. “What?”

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