Page 65 of Legally Mated
We walked back up to the meeting room as if we hadn’t just banged each other’s brains out, making polite conversation, mostly about the Education trust and me telling Laine about Cale’s sudden interest in medical school. There was still a scatter of paper on the desk, but instead of cleaning it up, I took the opportunity offered by Laine's digging into the bag he'd brought with him to run around the end of the table and rescue thebakerybox.
Taking in the carnage inside the box, I mourned the demise of something chocolaty that had, at one point, been filled with custard and whipped cream, before I'd tossed it across the room to its death. I dragged a finger through the mess and stuck it in my mouth, then looked up, startled, as Laine laid three sheets of paper out on the table in front of me, one at a time. It felt like a ceremony, or like the way he displayed evidence in court, making a show of it. “What’s this?” Iasked.
“Read them,” he said with asatisfiedgrin.
It took me a few moments for the meaning of the stark, black text on the pages to make sense to me. They were letters of recommendation, the three I needed to send in with… “Laine, what are youdoing?”
“There’s a sitting for the Bar exam in March.” His fingers brushed along the surface of the table beside the last one. The one he’d signed. “I think you should send in yourapplication.”
“I don’t know how you did this, but do you really think they’ll accept me?” So close, so tempting… I didn’t think I could stand the rejectionagain.
“If they don’t, there’s another one in August. And you can be damn sure they’ll accept you for that one.” His voice was fierce and my gaze snapped up tomeethis.
“What haveyoudone?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to give you something. Something better than pastries.” His hand cupped my jaw, freezing me in place, locking anything I might have said behind the love I read in his eyes. “Other things too. Jack would be happy to have you as a partner in the firm. And he’s got an uncle who’s got office space that would suit.” He moved closer, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine, the intensity growing between us. “There’s room on the letterhead for another name.” He kissed me then and whispered against my lips, “Montague, Burgess and Mercy Hills. Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? I can see the logoalready.”
“Laine,” I protested, but he put his hand over mymouth.
“You don’t have to decide now. This move of mine, it’s inevitable. The choices have already been made, the firm is already arranging their pieces. I want you to comewithme.”
My own practice. Partner in a law firm. With Laine. It was like he’d reached inside me to my deepest, barely acknowledged desires and offered them to me,barone.
And then he offered me thatonetwo.
“I was thinking, maybe we should make this thing of ours official. Not sure how it works here—do I talk to Quin? Do we just make the decisionourselves?”
I shook my head. My brain felt like it was full of fog, loaded with dandelion fluff. “What are you talkingabout?”
“Make an honest man of me. Or make me a packmember, however you say it.” The lines on his face grew more pronounced, like my incomprehension was aging him before my eyes. “Dammit, Garrick, I’m asking you to marry me. You love me,don’tyou?”
Oh shit, oh shit. I could already see the explosion that would occur if I said yes. “I do, you know that, but it’s too soon.” I couldn’t imagine what the pack would think. “Don’t say anything about this to anyone else, okay?” I’d hurt him, I could see it in the sudden tightening of his jaw and the way he flinched back from me. “No, don’t be like that,” I begged. “I just can’t. Wait, give me time to talk to Holland. I don’t think this has everbeendone.”
“No, that’s fine. I know it’s not like where I live,” he said, his voice gone chilly. “It was foolish of me. I forget that there’s more to you than just what I see when we’re together.” He stroked the backs of his fingers down my cheek and summoned up a smile for me. “So, what else do you have for me to look at today?” He let go of me and stepped away to pull his chair out from the table again. “Do you want some help looking for cases for the SegregationLawscase?”
He was still Laine, still the human I loved, no matter how illogical that was, but it felt like I’d opened a gulf between us. Impulsively, I leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I wish this was all simpler,” I whisperedtohim.
His expression passed through pain, to frustration, to somber acknowledgment before he put his arm around me and hugged me close. “Me too,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’m an adult, and so are you. We’ll figure it out.” He pulled out the chair next to him. “Come on, let’s start simplifying theworld.”
I sat down and smiled gratefully at him, took his hand and squeezed it hard. “Goodplan.
Chapter53
The first week of November,I found myself in my bathroom, staring down at the last of my pills, the ones that suppressed my heat. I grimaced, then cut it in half, taking one part, and setting the other side away for tomorrow.Two more days of safety.I had to get into the city and try to track down my… dealer. Or a replacement, since he hadn’t been answering my calls for the past two weeks. I pushed the worry away. Hopefully he’d just changed his number and I’d find him in the hole-in-the-wall diner that he usually hung out in. I’d get his new number and pick up another six months supply of pills, and everything wouldbefine.
What a shitty time to run out, though, with everyone’s seasons running rampant around me.Damn, I need those pills.I picked up my phone to call Duke and see if I could bunk on the couch there for a few days, but froze with the contacts screen open to his name. It had been years, more than a decade, since I’d had a heat. My first November after I’d graduated law school, I’d gotten some dodgy pills and they’d worked, but only partly. I’d spent a lot of time holed up in my office pretending I was behind on whatever I could come up with. My only saving grace had been that the other pills, the ones that changed my scent, had worked properly. I shuddered to think what would have happened if they hadn’t—there would have been no way tohideit.
But I was almost out of them too. And what if I couldn’t find a supply of suppressants before I ran out? I’d be in the pack house with two alphas and a beta, and only one of them already mated. Which I gathered didn’t always matter anyway, when it came to an omegainheat.
The travel permit wasn’t an issue—I had an open-ended one for work, so I didn’t need to even see Quin—but yeah, a place to stay was going to be an problem. Unless I made it a day trip. No, I needed to plan to be there longer, just in case. This sudden silence on my dealer’s part wasn’tencouraging.
But…
Laine was going out of town tomorrow, dealing with the aftermath of one of his older cases and, I thought, putting out feelers to see how much support he’d have when he and Jack Burgess struck out on their own. I could stay at his place. How to… no, wait. I scrolled down the list until I got to Holland’s name and hit the little phone icon. Holland and Quin had respected my request to keep my omega status a secret. Holland would understand why I needed the pills. I just hoped he wasn’t still in bed, since he tended to keep late hours when he was in New York working for his fashion designerfriend.
The phone only had time to ring once. “Is something wrong?” were his first wordstome.
My first instinct was to say no and the words were almost out of my mouth before I snatched them back. “Yes,” I said instead. “You abletotalk?”
