Page 52 of Omega's Forbidden Heat
“Hi, Jack.” He jolts and turns his head to the left, peering through the darkness.
Amy.
“Hi,” he says, joining her to sit on the concrete steps. She’s leaning back on her hands, her bare legs stretched out in front of her, star gazing too. Beside her, a pair of heels are strewn on the paving slab. “What you doing out here?”
She sighs and smiles at him. “Escaping Tod Baker.”
“Tod Baker?”
“He’s in the year above me. On the debating team — the one who wears square glasses.”
He thinks for a moment and his shoulders tighten. “Oh yeah, I know who you mean. Why are you escaping from him?”
“I’ve heard on the grapevine, he’s planning to ask me out. He keeps asking me to dance and I’m running out of excuses to refuse him.”
He shakes his head with indulgence. “Just tell him no, Amy. You’re way too nice to people.”
She’s dressed in a tight miniskirt and a little top. The outfit looks too old for her, like she’s playing at being grown up. But she’s kept her face plain at least, a little bit of darkness on her lashes and wetness on her lips. Nothing more.
She rolls her shoulders and screws up her nose. Tonight, she wears her fair hair pinned up in a way he’s never seen before, and the motion draws his eyes to the nape of her neck. She repeats the action, then scratches at it with her fingernails.
He stares at her, and the fleeting thought that dances through his mind is gone before he’s had a chance to register it, interrupted by her next words.
“How about you?”
He sweeps back the messy locks that have flopped into his face and grins at her, stretching out his own long legs. “Escaping too. It stinks in there.”
She laughs. “Oh my god, it really does.”
He wants to add that the girls are annoying him too, but he suspects it would come across as bragging. Instead, he stares back up at the sky. In the distance the silver disc of the moon moves between the full trees of the Down and a light breeze frisks the grass on the school field, bringing that same summer fragrance with it, cooling his hot skin. He closes his eyes. “It smells much better out here.”
“It does,” she sighs and his eyes dart to hers, catching her examining him, and even in the darkness he sees a flush creep across her cheeks. He watches it spread.
Then he gazes back at the sky.
“Do you want me to talk to Tod?”
“No, you’re right. I need to do it.”
He thinks. “Don’t you have a boyfriend, anyway?”
“No,” she says simply.
“Oh,” he says and a feeling of satisfaction swims through his belly.
He breathes in and out slowly, wallowing in the aromas and the stillness. In the peace.
They don’t speak again, just sit together in silence under the stars.
Chapter Nineteen
It seems like both a fleeting moment and a lifetime until the ambulance, its lights flashing, its siren squealing, swerves into the carpark. Two female Betas jump out with their equipment and knock on the car window. He opens the door and climbs out into the now dry night, tugging back on his shirt and jumper while they climb into the car and examine the Omega. They wrap her in foil sheets and replace his makeshift splint with something more robust. She’s more responsive and awake now, answering their questions and wincing against the pain. Her eyes flick around the car.
“Where’s Jack?” she asks.
“Right here, Omega,” he calls out and the two Betas pass a look between each other. He doesn’t care, they can think what they want.
Finn’s car skids into the carpark as the two paramedics help her out of the car.
