Page 12 of Rocked By the Alpha
West drops his hands back to his lap. “I’m gonna walk around the block. Clear my head. I promise I will give Hunter the concentration he desires when I get back. Honestly, he’s more needy than an Omega in heat half the time.”
Ash laughs.
He walks a block down the road. The studio sits on a quiet street and very little traffic passes him on the road, one or two cars and a motorbike. Above him, the sun is so bright it’s almost white and the shadows on the ground are short and stunted. He keeps walking until he finds a shaded alleyway, and resting against a fire escape ladder, tugs his phone from his pocket.
One message. From her.
Are you serious?! You do know we’re not dating, right? We’re not a thing.
He hasn’t seen her for a month, not since the festival back in the UK. They haven’t talked either, although he’s sent her the occasional message and she has replied to one or two. He wanted to send her more, but there’s only so many times he’s prepared to have his pride wounded by her lack of response.
Something is up with her. How long has this boyfriend been on the scene?
Like he said in his message, she could’ve told him.
He feels irritated by her response, his skin all of a sudden itchy and uncomfortable in the heat. He shifts his weight onto his other foot and types out a response, something pissed off and bitter that he knows he has no right to write. He deletes it and tries something more sincere, something that expresses his disappointment. He deletes that too.
She can probably see the tiny blue discs spinning, knowing he’s typing.
He flicks out of his messages and back to social media, to the photo of her and the man outside some shop in LA, hand in hand. They both have shades on and her platinum hair is pulled back behind her ears.
He tries to read the expressions on their faces. Are they happy? It’s hard to tell. The photo is grainy, disintegrating into tiny dots like an impressionist painting. He examines their hands instead, the way their fingers curl around one another’s hands.
He’s never held her hand. Not outside sex, anyway. He’d like to take her shopping, buy her nice things, hold her hand as they stroll down the street.
Fuck, what is wrong with him? He’s never had this happen before. Never stalked a woman online, checking her profile every few days to see what she’s up to. Does that make him a creep?
He reaches into the pocket of his jeans, searching for his cigarettes, then remembers he doesn’t smoke anymore. He swears, and kicks at a piece of rotting newspaper on the ground.
Chasing this woman has been entertaining. But it had never occurred to him that some other man might snatch her from his grasp. And that pisses him off. She’s his to catch.
A car backfires further down the street, the blast dragging him from his thoughts. He strides back down the street, taking a big inhale as he ducks back inside the studio. The air is cool and lifts the moisture from his neck. Standing for a few seconds, he lets the breeze wash over him and then he returns to the technician’s room to listen to the track.
* * *
Kim calls him in the late afternoon, when he’s just got out of the shower. He spent the last hour running and lifting weights in his home gym, watching an oldStonesconcert while he worked out, hoping to distract his mind.
“Ash says you’re in a bad mood,” Kim says
“Ash is a fucking gossip. What’s he expecting you to do about it?”
“You know me, your fairy godmother, here to solve all your problems.”
“Are you a good fairy or a bad fairy?”
“There’s no such thing as a bad fairy.”
“Believe me, there is.”
“I’m not interested in your perverted porn collection, West.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. I don’t need to know about that shit.” He can hear her wet her lips on the other end of the phone and the sound of a television tuned down low. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing,” he says.
“You want to go for a beer?”
