Page 54 of The Omega's Secret Baby
“I’ll call you tonight.”
“Looking forward to it.” For a second there I’d been so relieved to hear he was going that I’d forgotten all about how much I was going to miss him while he was gone. But then he pulled me in for another kiss. A deep, long kiss that made me regret that we had to part.
Until my brother told us to get a room.
I’d kind of forgotten that he was still there, and I broke from Matt with a blush on my face. “Shut up, you,” I told Griff.
He poked his tongue out at me, but stayed silent until Matt and I had said our goodbyes to each other. Then he wandered up to me and inspected my neck with raised eyebrows. “Looks like you had a good time last night.”
“What? No!” I covered my neck with my hand, then broke down. “Okay, yeah, I had a good time.”
Griff laughed, and I had to join in. It felt good to release some tension after everything that had just happened.
“Thank you for taking care of Jake last night,” I said.
“It’s no big deal.” Griff quieted down. “Do you really think you can fix all this?”
I sighed. “I’ll have to try, won’t I?”
23
Elias
Ididn’t tryto talk to Jake immediately after Matt was gone. In fact, I left him in peace until the evening, when I prepared his favorite food to try and tempt him out of his room. Chili dogs. He’d never been able to resist those, and he was going to be hungry too. My stubborn little alpha had spent four hours in his room.
Fiona gave me a hopeful look too, and I slipped her half a sausage before taking a plate of dinner upstairs.
“Leave me alone,” Jake said when I knocked on his door.
“I have chili dogs.”
Apparently that was the code word to get this door opened, because as soon as I’d spoken, I heard the shuffling of feet as Jake came closer to me. “I’m not allowed to eat in my room.”
“Today’s special.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
Did he have to argue with me over everything? “Do you want chili dogs, or not?”
He took a moment to think, and then the door opened just a tiny slit. Jake poked his nose through and sniffed. “You really made chili dogs!” He opened the door farther and snatched the plate from me in the blink of an eye.
If only everything could be solved with chili dogs.
Jake retreated inside his room again, but he didn’t close the door behind him, so I followed. For a minute or two, I simply leaned on his desk and watched him wolf down his dinner. He sat on his bed to do so, and I found myself hoping he wouldn’t give me a reason to change the sheets today.
You have bigger things than housekeeping to worry about right now.
“I’m still mad at you,” Jake said, as if to provide confirmation to the voice in my head.
“I know, sweetie.” But at least he was talking to me now. That was a step in the right direction. “Do you want to tell me why you’re mad?” I knew of course, but I thought it might help him to put his feelings into words.
“I’m mad because you lied to me!” he told me while munching angrily on a piece of sausage. “And now everyone at school thinks I’m stupid because I didn’t know!”
Sometimes I hated those kids my son went to school with. Them and their gossipy parents. “Nobody knew. Nobody but me and Matt. The kids at your school didn’t know, they only guessed.” I sighed. “They were lucky to be right, that’s all.”
Jake put his plate aside. “But why didn’t I know?” he demanded.
“We were going to tell you.” I sat on the bed with Jake, keeping a few inches of space between us, because I knew my kid, and I knew that if he wanted a hug, he was going to be the one to initiate it. Didn’t matter how muchIwanted to hug him. “I was just… worried how you were going to take it. I told you so many things that weren’t true.”
