Page 43 of Jake and Conner
"I will," I said, taking a step toward Conner to give him a kiss. "So how about I help you shower before you leave?"
"I don't think I need any help," Conner grinned. "But I wouldn't mind it."
17
Conner
When I finally made it into work that morning, I was told that Mark had been there looking for me and I'd just missed him. Again. I cursed myself. Quietly and under my breath, but still.
No matter what Jake said, I could curse even after coffee.
And there I was, thinking of Jake again when I should be focusing on work. There was a kid who needed my help.
Briskly, I walked into my office and picked up the phone. I tried the number that Mark had called me from on my cell phone. He didn't pick up.
I tried not to worry about it too much, even when he didn't pick up on my second try either. He was probably busy with something or other. I would try again later.
Needing to distract myself from both Mark and Jake, I turned to my computer and started it up. Time to check my emails. After all, Mark wasn't the only omega in Oceanport who needed my attention.
When I opened my email account, though, the message that first caught my attention wasn't a work-related one. It was a newsletter from an omega's rights organization I'd been signed up to for quite some time, although I hadn't been reading it lately. Too busy.
All things considered, I was too busy now too, but I clicked to open the email anyway. My eyes quickly scanned the few lines of content advertising various protests and demos planned in my vicinity for the upcoming weeks. Most of them concerned equal pay for omegas and equal educational opportunities. One or two demos demanded some much-needed changes to the laws regarding custody of children born to an alpha/omega pairing. Too many of them still favored the alpha.
They were all worthwhile causes, but the demo that most drew my attention was one entitled 'Turning Up the Heat on Heat Issues.' In the organizers' statement, they asked for wider distribution and availability of heat suppressors. Currently they were only freely dispensed to omegas who hadn't yet come of age. Beyond that, we were supposed to be able to make good decisions without chemical help.
It was an idiotic law, really. An eighteen-year-old couldn't control their heat any more than a sixteen-year-old could. At the time the law had been written, though, it had been a step in the right direction. Before that, heat suppressants had been heavily restricted for everyone.
Even now the only reason I always had a full stock was because a friend from college had put me in touch with a doctor who didn't mind bending the rules a little.
So yes, the wider distribution of heat suppressors was a topic close to my heart.
But I couldn't say if it wasthisthat made me want to go or the fact that Jake and I were trying to be a couple again. I'd always been fairly self-aware--at least to a degree--so when that need totestJake somehow welled up in me, I recognized it for what it was.
As self-aware as I was, though, I wasn't necessarilywise, because I didn't discard the idea the moment I had it.
I should be able to go to demos if I wanted to, shouldn't I? Whether I was with Jake or not?
It was myright, I thought.
I closed the email before I could do something rash like make plans on the spur of a moment.
But I didn't delete it, and I didn’t unsubscribe from the newsletter either.
18
Conner
One Week Later
I settleddown for my lunch break at work, opened the newspaper, and felt every speck of color drain from my face.Concerned mother looking for her pregnant omega son,it said right there on the page in front of me. I knew without even reading the article that it had to be about Mark.
So I wasn't the only one who'd lost contact with him.
My eyes flew over the lines in the newspaper, frantically scanning for information that would help me make sense of the situation. From the article, I pieced together that Mark's mother hadn't seen him since November 11, which was exactly the same day that the kid had come to my office looking for me and I hadn't been there because I'd been too busy steaming up the bathroom with my boyfriend.
This was on me. At least in part.
If I'd been here, doing my job, Mark might have told me what he was planning, where he was going. I might have been able to talk him out of doing anything drastic.
