Page 29 of Omega's Forbidden Heat
“You know what my aunt found buried in the bottom of her wardrobe?”
“No.”
“This bag full of baby clothes. I guess they were my baby clothes. They smell vaguely like me. I mean, what am I meant to do with those?”
Amy’s hand finds her chest. “Oh Jack, that is so sweet, you have to keep them.”
His head snaps towards her in surprise. “What am I gonna do with a bag of baby clothes?”
“Keep them for when you have a baby.” Heat creeps into her cheeks.
He snorts. And she returns her hand to the steering wheel, keeping her eyes fixed on the road, although she can feel his wandering over her face.
“My aunt says you and my mum were friends.”
“We were.”
“How?”
She sighs, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. “When it first became general knowledge that I’d presented as an Omega, the reaction in the village wasn’t exactly… accepting.”
“What do you mean?” The strain in his voice has her eyes leaving the road to find his.
“People aren’t exactly nice to Omegas, are they? They think we’re slags, no better than prostitutes. They think what happens to us in a heat is degrading and disgusting. You should have heard the stuff they said to me, the way they looked at me. I mean, shit, you saw the note, and there was stuff written on my social media.”
He drags his hand down his face and there’s steel in his eyes. “Those people are idiots. Omegas are special, precious.”
Now it’s her turn to snort. “That’s not what most people think, Jack.”
“That’s what Alphas think.” He says it firmly.
“No, not all of them.” She holds his gaze and thunder passes over his face. “Anyway,” she pushes those thoughts away from her mind, dragging her eyes away from him back to the road. “Your mum heard about what was going on and she came to talk to me, to offer me advice. She explained a lot of stuff to me that my parents couldn’t. Stuff about heats, how to get through them, how I could use suppressants to space them out, and blockers to prevent unwanted attention from Alphas.” His mum had been like a lifeline in a turbulent ocean, one in which she thought she was going to drown. But his mum had plucked her out and set her on her way. She was like a second mother. She misses her too.
“I’m not surprised. My mum was like that, always helping people.”
“Yeah and then I got the job in the pub and she was there with her book club on a Tuesday night and sometimes afterwards she’d hang about and talk to me at the bar, see how I was doing and offer me advice.” She inhales. “And then she got sick.” He stiffens, his fingers digging into his thighs. “And I’d go in and check on her, get her shopping, cook for her when she was too sick from the chemo.”
“You must think I am an arsehole.” There is the slightest of quivers to his voice and her hand flies to his forearm, squeezing it.
“No, Jack. No, I don’t think that at all. Your mum was so proud of you. She would talk about how well you were getting on with your studying and your exams all the time. I know she wasn’t completely honest with you when you got out, that she didn’t tell you how bad it was. She wanted you to get your life back on track and she didn’t want you to disrupt all that for her.”
There is a moment of silence when he speaks again his voice is very quiet. “But I knew, I had my suspicions of how bad it was, I was too scared to come back and see it for myself.”
Her hand brushes down his arm, finding his fingers and squeezing them, running the pad of her thumb along the knuckles of his fingers. “You were there at the end, that’s what counts.”
She hears him swallow quickly beside her. “Maybe.”
She expects him to withdraw his hand, but instead he turns hers over and threads his fingers through hers until their hands are clasped together. The heat from his grasp spirals up her arm into her chest and they sit like this as she drives them along the dark lanes.
At the crossroad of the village, she stops. Straight on, out the other side of the village and down the lane, is his house. To the right, her own.
He coughs, clearing his throat. “Thanks for the lift. I can walk from here.” He releases her hand slowly, giving her fingers one last squeeze, and his scent is so thick in the car now, permeating through her very skin, plundering through her bloodstream, invading her nervous system.
“I can drive you the last bit,” she offers, but his hand is already on the doorhandle.
“No, I need some fresh air,” he says quietly, rising out of the seat and running his hands through his hair. Once outside, he dips inside, meeting her eye briefly, clasping the top of the door frame. “I’ll see you around, Amy.” And then he slams the door and she jolts at the obtrusive noise. He strides off down the lane, a white phantom caught by the beams of her headlights, a pale monster disappearing into the darkness. She watches him go, unable to move. Her heart pounding in her chest, her hand burnt with the branding of his touch. She lifts her arm and inhales his scent, still vivid on her skin. Her heart flutters in her chest and she doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to break the spell of his touch and his scent. When she can see him no more, she restarts the engine and pulls the car into the lane toward home, knowing she is in danger of falling harder than she ever has for Jack Johnson.
Chapter Eleven
