Page 197 of All Packed Up

“We’ll figure this out,” Griffith promised, and Nic sucked in a breath before letting it out in a silent puff of air.

“Yeah, I know. You didn’t have to come,” he said again. Grif parted his lips before Nic finished. “But thanks anyway.”

The alpha closed his lips and smiled at him in the rearview before focusing on the road. “Can I ask you something?”

Nic’s heart beat against his chest. “Yeah.”

“I’m still… surprised that you were in the scene for so long after… what happened.”

It wasn’t a question, but Nic knew what the alpha was asking regardless. Why had he stayed in the underground scene so long?

Heat filled his cheeks and he gazed out the front windshield. “I meant to slip out, I did.” Yet each week would end, and Nic couldn’t stand to sit in his house alone, in the quiet. “But it was kind of all I had left of you,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. “I stayed because I kept giving myself excuses of why I couldn’t leave, and then once I ran into Stellan and we hit it off, he came into the gym, and we started training. Then I really couldn’t leave because I was actually having fun with boxing again instead of going to the matches and expecting you to walk out on stage—”

“Oh, so you’ve had a thing for omegas since I’ve been gone, is what you’re saying,” Griffith drawled.

Nic floundered, mouth parting and closing as he tried to muster up a response under the alpha’s arched brow.

But Griffith laughed and shook his head. “I’m just kidding. I’m sorry that what happened made you fall out of love with the sport.”

“It didn’t make me fall out of love with the sport. Just made it seem less special without you there.”

They let the silence lie, but there was an underlying tension, something left unsaid that Nic could feel in the air like an electric current.

“You weren’t there when I got out,” Griffith finally said.

Nic paled in response to his words, glanced down at Wendy. She was sound asleep, none the wiser of the conversation happening right above her head. How was she sleeping through the sound of his pounding heart?

He couldn’t tell Griffith that he was wrong. Nic was there. He’d sat across the street, had stared and wavered back and forth. Time had passed as he watched Griffith sit outside. Watched the bus come and go, only for the alpha to remain on the iron bench. For the whole three hours that Griffith waited for him to show. “So I figured that meant you were done.”

Nic had been done—done fucking up Griffith’s life. He’d sent the alpha to prison, for god’s sake.

His eyes drifted closed. Nic loved Griffith so much. Seeing him with handcuffs on, in the back of a police car, was hard. Seeing him in the jumpsuit, hearing his damning sentence. Knowing each day Griffith spent in that cell was because of him… was hell.

But it was nothing compared to what Griffith had to go through.

Nic didn’t deserve Griffith.

“I waited for you, and you didn’t show,” Griffith repeated.

The alpha needed a chance to get his life right without Nic fucking it up for him. It was a new start. A damaged, but clean slate for him. That was what he deserved.

Not the baggage of his past.

So Nic hadn’t exited his car. Hadn’t moved.

The milkshake he’d gotten Griffith went warm and mushy. The burger grew cold, and the fries went stale.

“I know,” Nic whispered.

“I intended to hunt you down,” Griffith admitted, a soft laugh bitten out into the quiet of the late night. “I wanted to find you and see how you were and casually run into you. I had this big plan. Put it all together when I realized about ten minutes into my freedom that you weren’t showing.”

When Nic swallowed, it did nothing to ease the burn in his throat, the pressure behind his eyes.

“But thanks to my uncle, I had somewhere to go. It was a wreck, so I had my work cut out for me. Kept me distracted long enough, most days. Plus Daisy was around.”

“And the chickens,” Nic added, proud of his voice for not cracking.

Griffith’s chuckle was warm despite the topic, despite the hurt they were unearthing. “Can’t forget the chickens.” He huffed out a sigh. “All of that to say, I want you to stop feeling guilty. Torturing yourself won’t undo it. And hey,” he said, a little bite to the word that demanded Nic’s attention.