"What did their old omega look like," Anna says. "Describe her."
"Anna," I plead, because that's the last thing I really want to do right now.
"I'm just curious. Who needs TV when I think your life can't have any more drama in it, and it does."
I pull my knees up to the side, it makes me feel more comfortable. I still feel warm, so I take the blankets off me. "Petite. Blonde. Blue eyes. Tulip scent, but she makes the alphas look like mice when she walks into a room. I wish I had that level of confidence. It's weird, isn't it? Us plus-size omegas feel as if we're not good enough, but the petite ones seem to make them weak at the knees." I pause. "She announced herself like shewas filing a claim. Like she had a certificate. Their omega. Those exact words. To my face. While I'm feeling and looking like a tired potato."
"Don't describe yourself like a potato or her as what they want. If that was the case, what happened in Vegas wouldn't have happened."
"Which part? Taking me up to their suite, or leaving me five thousand dollars?" I question, because quite a few things happened in Vegas, some parts I'm proud of, and the other, well, let's just say I'm trying to forget it.
My omega keeps telling me to drop the subject, but it's hard.
"Jennifer, stop it. Think about the positives only."
I am.
I'm so uncomfortable no matter what I do, so I get off the bed and head to the window. For a second I wonder what they are doing on the other side of the wall, in their own rooms, and whether any of them are sleeping any better than I am. Probably not. The guest room they moved me to sits between Santos's and Tomas's, and I am aware of that in the specific way of someone trying not to be aware of it.
"I told her she could have them," I say flatly.
"You what."
"One second she said their omega and the next second I said you can have them and then it was just out there in the hallway existing."
"Did you mean it?" Anna says.
I look at my hand on my stomach. She shifts, small and unhurried, the way she does when I'm paying attention.
"No," I say. "When they apologized before the pre-heat started, I realized they'd regretted their actions. It was weird, they seemed so confident, but then during that moment I saw another side to them."
"Every time one of them says the bastard who knocked you up, I'm sitting here thinking: You ARE the bastards. And I don't know which one of you it is either!"
Anna and I start laughing. We can't help ourselves.
I shake my head as I reflect back to when they kept saying it. "It is funny now I think about it."
Anna cackles down the phone. "Fingers hilarious. Right," she says. "So, Jennifer. Tell them."
"Right, yes, brilliant idea. I'll just open my mouth and say the words." I cross to the dresser and grab a grape because I haven't eaten since this afternoon and she's been on at me about it for an hour. "Every time I rehearse it in my head, it goes great. Everyone's calm, nobody cries, Matteo doesn't do the jaw thing. In real life, I open my mouth and nothing comes out and I just stand there like a very pregnant garden ornament."
"Because," Anna says.
"The last time I handed them something real, I woke up alone with cash on the nightstand," I say. "I've had fourteen weeks to sit with that and it still lands the same way every time."
"Okay," Anna says, and I hear her shift forward, which means she's about to use the serious voice. "I hear you. What they did was terrible and I wouldn't trust them either. But Jennifer, that baby doesn't care about your feelings about the nightstand. She has a date and she is keeping it. And when she gets here you are going to need more than a three-month contract and a herb garden."
"Tomas hired a PI and they want to find Ricardo, get the truck back."
She loses it. The real laugh, not the polite one. The one that comes from the chest and takes everything with it and cannot be stopped once it starts. I have heard this laugh my entire life and I know exactly how it runs.
"They are hunting themselves," she manages. "Jen. They hired a PI to hunt themselves. I bet it wasn't just the truck he's trying to find. Anyway, they canceled a business deal. And they wanted to take care of you. If you don't get the hint that they're sorry, I don't think you ever will."
"I know."
"It doesn't mean that what they did wasn't wrong. Don't think I'm excusing it, Jennifer."
"I know."