Marry the Failing Alpha

Chloe's POV

The bus dropped me at the terminal just before five. The whole street smelled like wet iron. Rain had quit an hour earlier, the gutters were still full, and steam was coming off the asphalt.

One night on a folding cot had left my shoulders hard, and my hair smelled like the inside of a rented van. My mood was good anyway.

The client had moved their opening up two weeks with no explanation, so I'd spent four days rebuilding a display wall from the studs out. I told the site lead I was leaving him the finish work, told him to call me if the glass came in wrong, and took the early bus instead of the evening one.

I didn't text anyone. The whole point was the face.

Tyler forgot things ten minutes after he said them. A shirt, a band, a bottle opener. Last month he stood in my kitchen complaining that his was ugly, and I found a brass one in a hardware store off the highway that was older than either of us and heavier than that much metal had any right to be. It was in the side pocket of my bag.

His key hung on the same ring as my car key. He gave it to me in the spring, and by now I used it like my own door, so when the lock turned I was already thinking about where the light switch was and whether I had time to change.

Then I heard laughing. Two people.

I stopped in the entry with my hand still on the door. The laugh came again. A woman's.

I'm not going to pretend I charged in. I stood there two full seconds and made sure.

Then I walked forward until the tile met the rug. A cream coat was folded over the arm of the sofa.

Tyler was sitting there with a woman under his arm, his hand resting easy on her shoulder. All three of us stopped at the same time.

"You said you were working late tonight."

Not who is she. Not what the hell are you doing. A fact waiting to be checked.

His face went from open to shut in a blink. He stood up.

"Why are you back?"

I didn't answer him.

The woman looked at me, then at him. "You said you two were already done."

"Don't." That was to her. Then he turned, hand out, reaching for me. "Let's go in the study."

"Talk here."

He started with the drinking. A client thing, a friend of a friend, too much, it got away from him.

Then it was a misunderstanding. Then he finally got to the real one.

"You're never here," he said. "How many nights a month do you actually sleep in this city? I'm supposed to just sit around?"

Something in my chest shut. Not grief. That cold clean click of finally understanding something you'd been paying for and never receiving.

I took out my phone.

He flinched before I even raised it, thinking I was going to make a call, cause a scene. I opened the camera.

Four frames. The two of them standing close, her hand still on his sleeve. The lipstick at his collar. Not one of them anything anybody could call indecent. Just enough that there'd be no version of tonight where it hadn't happened.

"Delete that." His voice changed.

"Come on. Delete it and we'll sit down."

He said it twice. The third time he came at me, hand going for my pocket. "Don't make a scene in my own house."

I looked down at my hand. The key was in it.

I put it on the entry table, where he dropped his mail. "Yesterday you told me to come over when I finished," I said. "Tonight it's your house. Fine. We're done."

He didn't believe me. That was how he was. What landed wasn't the loss. It was four pictures in my pocket.

He grabbed my wrist and pulled it back toward him. "Let go." He didn't.

I pulled once, hard, and got nowhere. The pain went up my arm sharp enough that I had to swallow, and then I raised my other hand and hit him across the face.

It was loud. My palm was numb to the wrist. We both froze, and in that one second his grip opened, and I pulled free and backed up until my shoulders hit the wall by the door. Not standing my ground. Getting somewhere with a way out.

His face went through shock and came out mean. He took a step.

I held up the phone with the screen lit. "Touch me again."

"If that goes anywhere, you'll never work in this city again. I know everyone. You think anybody hires somebody who does this?"

I listened to the whole sentence. There wasn't one word in it about what he'd done to me. All of it was about his name.

I opened the emergency dial and put my thumb on the button where he could see it. "One more step and I press it."

He stopped. He stood there breathing through his nose, doing the arithmetic, and it came out on my side — he had a lot more riding on a police report than I did.

While he was still doing it, I opened the group. Not the work chat. The other one, thirty-odd people from school and bars, two of his friends in it. I typed one line. My thumb hovered over send for three seconds.

Tomorrow there'd be questions. Somebody would say he was going through a rough time. Somebody would say I could have handled it quietly.

I pressed it. Tyler and I are done. Reason attached.

I picked up my bag. Behind me they started arguing, both at once, her voice going up and his going low. I didn't turn around.

In the elevator I pressed the button and watched the doors close on the lit hallway, and only then did I see I'd hit six instead of the lobby. My hand was shaking. Not much. Enough that it took a second look to notice.

I pressed the lobby.

On my way out my phone went off. The group had blown up.

I didn't answer.

My apartment was cold and smelled like nothing, which was the best thing about it. I put the bag down, threw the opener in the trash, and sat on the arm of the couch before I noticed I still had my coat on.

The phone kept lighting up the room. I didn't pick up. Of the messages, I read two.

I was drunk, I'm sorry.

Then, eleven minutes later: Delete it and we'll talk like adults.

I turned the phone face down. Picked it up again inside a minute.

What I regretted wasn't sending it. It was the wording. Reason attached was two words too many. I didn't want to become a story that came with a synopsis, and I'd just handed thirty people a reason to ask.

In the bathroom I looked at my wrist under the light. A ring of red.

Then I answered one work message and sat back down in the dark. Rain had started again. It came at the window and I didn't move.

When I finally got up to shut the phone off, the screen lit with a name.

Martin. Not Dad. Martin, the way he'd been in my phone since I was nineteen.

I let it ring four times before I picked up. He asked if I was back in town, asked how work was going, warm as hell, like we'd talked last week instead of last winter.

"Just say it," I said.

The company was going under. Two final payments stuck, wages and materials due the same week, and the supplier had stopped shipping.

I listened and rubbed my sore wrist.

"I don't have that kind of money. Not close."

"I'm not asking you for money." He said it fast. "There's somebody willing to help. I've already spoken to them."

"Then what do you want with me?"

Paper moved on the other end of the line.

"They have a son. About your age, good situation. His mother's position is that if the two families were joined—"

"You put me on the table?"

"How is that fair? I'm thinking about you too."

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen. It was him, all right.

A year of nothing, and the first call came with my marriage already thought through.

"Find another way."

"Don't hang up."

My finger was already on the red button.

"That table your mother used to sit at is still in the warehouse."

I didn't press it.

"When I was going through the cabinets I found the customer list in her handwriting."

"Don't talk about her."

"I know you don't want to hear from me. But she put real work into that place. When things got busy and everybody else went home, she stayed and redid the quotes. First thing the next morning she was on the phone chasing materials. You remember all that, don't you?"

I did remember.

The table was wedged between the cabinet and the wall with a folded piece of cardboard under one leg. I did my homework there when I was small, and if I knocked it with my knee the water glass rocked. Later my mother decided the light was too dim and bought a desk lamp herself, and on the nights she worked late, that one small square was the only lit window.

"The rent's due at the end of the month. If it runs over, the landlord clears the place out. And I can't hold the old crew much longer. I can't keep asking them to wait."

"That's yours to deal with."

"It is. It's mine." He answered too fast. "You don't want anything to do with me, I understand that. But the things your mother left behind will just scatter. I've run out of ways, that's why I'm asking you."

I took my hand off the hang-up button and held onto the hem of my coat.

He waited.

"Just go and meet them. Hear what they have to say. Nobody's asking you to agree to anything today."

"What did you tell them about me?"

"Your age, your work, the family situation. They were satisfied."

I closed my eyes.

"Send me the details," I said. "Who are they?"

"The Vances." Then, in that tone he uses when he thinks he's being helpful: "They're a werewolf family."