Page 56 of Omega's Forbidden Heat
Words are tossed across the space; a mixture of jibes and insults and one man gobs onto the ground, a fat frothing slobber next to the puddle of beer.
It’s all bravado, but it’s winding up. He can smell the testosterone and the alcohol rising, can feel his Alpha instincts trigger. The space between their group and the others vanishes. They’re right before him now. Sweaty faces.
Someone pushes someone else, a half-hearted shove that spreads through the group and the jostling becomes harder, more violent. One man stumbles to the floor, George groans as a shoulder pummels into his gut, and Jack draws back his arm, clenches his fist and swings.
He doesn’t know where he’s aiming, somewhere into the mass of fighting, tangled bodies.
And then his knuckles connect with the skull. Something cracks. His knuckles? Bone? Pain races down his hand and his arm and into his chest. The skull is hard and solid, and his hand bounces away from the impact. For a second, time stretches, a second he’ll relive over and over again, stretches so thin it splinters and shatters. The side of a man’s head, his ear, the skin pale, bristles of short shaved hair. Imprinting in his memory.
Then the head wobbles and for a moment he thinks it is his own vision, but it isn’t, and the man crumples to the floor.
Chapter Twenty- One
The nurse’s plimsolls squeak on the lino floor as he follows her down the corridor, past curtained cubicles to a row of small rooms. She stops outside one and opens the door for him.
“Remember, she’s still pretty out of it.”
The curtains are drawn, and the room sits in dimness, Amy’s scent overwhelming in the small space. She’s propped up against some pillows in the hospital bed, the crocheted blanket pulled up to her armpits, her left foot encased in a supportive boot and raised. The colour has returned to her face and her eyes flick up eagerly when he enters the room.
“Hi,” she says, smiling at him. The sight of her is so bright, it’s blinding, and he blinks against the intensity of it, of the emotions spinning in his chest.
“Hi.” He hovers by the doorway, suddenly unsure he should enter. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” She reaches her hand towards him and it’s as if a magnet tugs him across the room and he’s hardly aware of his legs working and his feet padding on the ground. He scrapes the chair closer to her bed and sits down, and she takes his hand in hers.
Her gaze swims across his face and she swallows. “Thank you, JJ.”
He closes his eyes, his heart aching in his chest, and she draws him towards her until his face is buried in her lap, her fingers tangled in his hair.
It’s the name everyone used to call him when he was little until he morphed into this adult Alpha and it was replaced with Jack. His mum had given him that nickname and she alone had been the one to keep it, right through until the end.
His eyes remain screwed tight and he grips his arms around Amy, holding her with all his might. The grief hits him so hard he knows he is shaking, and he can feel wetness on his face. It’s so intense, so dark, so lonely he wants to vomit it away, to tear and scrape at his flesh, to make his body hurt to distract himself from this.
“JJ,” his mum had said, in another hospital bed just like this, her eyes dull and her lips dry and cracked, “you were the best thing that ever happened to me. The best thing.” And he’d gripped her hand and watched the life drain away from her, her breath rattling in her feeble chest.
How could she think that when he’d let her down? When he’d put her through all that trouble, had hurt her so badly? How could she still love him after all that?
Yet, he knows she did. He knows it without a doubt.
He clings to the Omega. Her scent rings with concern and sympathy, and her touch is so soft and so tender, everything he needs and everything he wants. She has always given him everything, offered herself up unafraid and unabashed, and he has been a fool. Not appreciating the truth of the gift in front of him.
He won’t let the only other person who’s ever loved him down. He won’t hurt her the way he hurt his mother. He squeezes his eyes shut, and makes that silent promise. He’s going to fix everything.
“I’ve always loved your hair,” she murmurs, and he can hear the painkillers in the slight slur of her voice.
He lifts his head and a hand to the ruffled mess of curls on his crown. “It needs a cut.”
“I like it longer, like how you wore it when we were younger.” She twist a curl around her forefinger and smiles. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
He takes her hand and kisses her palm.
“I used to draw doodles of you in my schoolbooks with your scruffy hair.” He grins at her. “And your dimples.” She pokes at one with her finger. “You’re so ridiculously handsome.”
“Says the girl who looks like some sleeping princess in this bed.”
She pulls a face.
“I took Maddock home for you.” He laces his fingers through hers.
