Tried to forget her. Failed.
And now here she was again.
Tara hadn’t broached the topic yet, carefully skirting around anything that wasn’t the idle chat of two people meeting for the first time, even though the recognition in her gaze was obvious. Maybe she thought I forgot, but that cherry limeade scent of hers lived rent free in my mind—in a luxury penthouse with a nice view and stunning marble countertops.
“Earth to Charlie?” Jesse said, a hand clapping down on my shoulder.
I blinked, looking down at the beta, his subtle lemony scent reaching my nose. It wasn’t strong like a cleaner—more like a light meringue. Sweet. Lovely. Betas didn’t have as strong of a nose as alphas and omegas, but it was really their softer, mutedscents that set them apart from the rest. Even with its subtlety, I’d always been able to pick out Jesse’s scent, a favorite of mine no matter how many others I came into contact with over the years.
And paired with Tara’s? It made my head spin.
“Hm?”
“Ready to play?” they asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, uh, yeah! I’m good… C’mon sharpshooter, let's see how you stack up irl. Put the headset on.”
Tara laughed, getting the door for us all to head inside the room. We left our drinks on a little table beside the door and I stopped off at the station with the headsets and as I handed hers off, our hands brushed. Really more of an accidental graze of skin against skin than a legitimate touch. But that single moment of contact had goosebumps exploding over my skin, heat snaking up the back of my neck.
“I win a few ranked matches and all of a sudden I’m a pro player, huh?” Tara quipped with a roll of her dark eyes.
“It’s a slippery slope,” I returned gravely, unable to keep the crooked grin off my face.
"You’re right,” she laughed, pulling her headset on. “Next I'll be at Thundercon for the OVWatch finals.”
I did the same, the screen blinking to life in front of my eyes.
“Damn right you will be,” Jesse said with a grin, pulling on his own headset.
“Are we playing or standing around?” I said, bumping Jesse’s head with my knuckles.
“Just waiting on you, slowpoke!” Tara called, grabbing Jesse’s hand and pulling him away from me.
Was that intentional possessiveness? I knew omegas sometimes liked to mark their territory and it wouldn’t surprise me if she was feeling a little protective.
A strange alpha who ghosted her, suddenly revealed to be the faceless best friend of her boyfriend?
I think I’d be a little protective too.
We moved forward to pick up our rifles before stepping up onto the lit, slightly raised dais. I clicked the little safety chain shut behind us so no one would fall off the platform in the heat of the moment. Admittedly it took a few tries, the headset video feed was a little awkward in comparison to my own eyes.
When I finally got it and looked up, Tara and Jesse were pressed together, kissing intensely with their headsets pushed up on their foreheads. Their hand wrapped around her waist, pulling her in closer.
I pushed my headset onto my forehead, half to make sure what I was seeing was actually real.
Tara scent blocking bodywash and shampoo didn’t stand a chance against my nose, a whisper of that lush cherry and lime perfume of hers ghosting in my nose. Between the reminder of what had made her so intoxicating in the first place and watching the two of them—Jesse’s hand moving to playfully grab her ass as he whispered into her ear—I turned back to the wall to adjust myself, trying to make it seem like I was still fiddling with the gate.
When I turned back they were no longer making out, Tara on one side, Jesse on the other, leaving me the space in the middle. I took it up, ready to get going.
“See you in there?” Tara asked, a hand on her headset ready to pull it down as she pressed a large red lit button on the wall to start the game.
“You know it, sharpshooter.”
I tugged my helmet on, blinking in the odd sensation of being able to see Jesse with his own headset through the lenses… but in a completely different setting than the darkened room we’d stood in just seconds before.
Sunlight spilled from high above in streaks of gold that made me tilt my head backwards to chase with my eyes, catching a glimpse of the artificially blue sky. Fluffy white clouds floated by on a breeze I couldn't feel against my skin, but could see as it rippled the long grass. The sensation was strange, a bit like when you had a cold and couldn’t taste anything. An expectation of feeling that didn’t exist.
“It's so beautiful,” Tara whispered in awe.
