The Alpha’s Pen Pal (Crescent Lake Book 1)

HAVEN

I stood in front of the mirror in the costume shop, staring at my reflection. Bolt after bolt after bolt of colored fabrics and rack after rack of costumes surrounded me, but I fixated my eyes on the costume on my body.

The bodice of the purple costume had a sweetheart neckline, with off-the-shoulder flutter sleeves adorned with flower petals. The petals also decorated the bodice, with rhinestones and flowers that started at the top of the neckline and met in the middle, all the way down to the skirt.

The skirt itself was a brilliant design—the fabric made to look like individual petals of a flower, starting in a deep purple near the top and fading out to white at the edge, with more rhinestones scattered throughout.

And glitter. There was glitter everywhere.

“Ouch!” I cried out, breaking my concentration on myself.

“You were doing it again,” Maya scolded.

“Doing what again?”

“Your port de bras. I told you to hold still; otherwise, you’ll get jabbed.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, clasping my hands in front of my stomach so I wouldn’t be tempted to move them anymore.

She put the last pin in place and then stood up from the floor. “So? What do you think?” she asked.

This was the first time I’d gotten to see the actual costume. My last fitting had been with the mockup, and the tutu design had changed since then. This design was much more intricate, and I couldn’t even fathom how many hours it had taken to piece it together.

“It’s beautiful,” I told her. “But it’s so glittery. This will take at least a week to disappear from my skin, and by then, the ballet will be live, and then I’ll just be glittery for life.”

Maya laughed. “Peter insisted.”

“Why?”

“He said… um…”

“What? What did he say?” I giggled.

Peter always made the strangest comments. It was a running joke in the company.

“He said fairies like glitter.”

I laughed, and Maya giggled a bit with me.

“Come on, let’s get you out of this, then we can head home,” Maya said, shaking her head. “I am so ready to clock out of here.”

I was right there with her. It was getting close to dinnertime, and I was famished. The image of Maya’s homemade ravioli flickered through my mind, and my stomach rumbled, making Maya laugh harder. “Me too, Havie. Me. Too.”

I changed as quickly as I could, taking care to not poke myself with the pins Maya had placed or cause them to pop out of the costume. Then I waited for her at the door to the shop, playing with the end of my long French braid as she hung the tutu up with care.

“Bye, Vivienne!” she called out, and the costume mistress waved at us as we left through the side door.

Maya looped her arm through mine as we walked home. I was glad I was wearing street clothes. Not that it embarrassed me to be a ballet dancer, but sometimes walking home in my leotard, tights, and skirt made me self-conscious. Like everyone was staring at me, watching me, looking at me in my dance attire. But when I wore street clothes, it felt as though no one paid me any mind.

When we reached our building, I immediately noticed a tall man with tousled sandy brown hair and a scruffy beard leaning against an old red pickup truck. I recognized him right away. Even if I hadn’t seen him at the lake, I would have recognized his smirk from the pictures I had seen of him when we were kids.

“Sebastian,” I said coolly, and Maya winced a little beside me. “Did Wesley send you? Is he not man enough to beg forgiveness on his own?”

I wasn’t sure why I said that. I had been thinking a lot since talking with Maya and I was having doubts about everything that had transpired all those years ago, and was already contemplating what to say to Wesley. But seeing Sebastian there instead of Wesley irritated the shit out of me.

“No. He doesn’t even know I’m here,” he said.

“Oh.”

That was almost worse. I deflated a bit and turned to go into the building. As irritating as it was to think he’d sent his brother in his stead, it was more disappointing to know he didn’t even care that much.

“Wait!” Sebastian called. “I wanted to tell you something. Something I know my brother won’t tell you.”

“So, you’re going behind his back?” I asked with a raised brow.

“No,” Sebastian said. “I know he’ll tell you, eventually. But he won’t do it now. Not when…” He struggled with his words for a moment, then started again from the beginning. “I’m confident he’d tell you in his own time, but I feel you need to know now so you understand what type of person my brother actually is.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “So…?”

I glanced at Maya, and she shrugged, too, then nodded. “All right, you can come in.”

“Um, actually,” he began, looking sheepish. “I need to take you somewhere.”

I paled and took a step back. I hardly knew him, and he wanted me to get in the car with him? I mean, we sort of, kind of knew each other when we were kids, but not really.

“Maya can come too!” he said when he saw my face and my hesitance. “But I promise you can trust me,” he added.

“Fine,” I said before I could change my mind.

I stomped around to the passenger side, and Maya followed, sliding into the back seat.

“I can sit there. My legs are shorter,” I offered.

“It’s fine,” she said with a small smile.

We all got buckled in, and then Sebastian pulled away from the curb, taking us towards the suburbs.

“So. Haven Kenway,” Sebastian said after a brief silence.

“Wainwright,” I corrected, even though I hated that name.

Maya coughed from the backseat, and I glared at her.

“Sparkles, you could change your last name to ‘Skywalker,’ and you’d still be Haven Kenway to us.”

“Sparkles?” I asked.

“Well, you’re covered in glitter, so…”

I glanced down at my arms, and sure enough, the fucking purple glitter from my costume was everywhere, dancing in the sunlight from the window.

“See! I told you!” I yelled, turning to Maya.

“But it will look so good on stage!” she whined. “Tell her, Sebastian!”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Sebastian said with a laugh.

I turned forward with a huff and crossed my arms, the tail of my braid wrapping around my neck from the force of my movement.

“What is it you’re trying to show me, Sebby?” I asked, changing the subject. Maya inhaled from the backseat, and Sebastian gave me a look. “What?” I asked.

“Usually, I hate when people call me that, but…”

He kept giving me that weird look. “If you get to give me a nickname, it’s only right that I get to give you one,” I said with a shrug.

He just continued to stare at me for a moment, then turned his eyes back to the road.

“That’s fair,” he grunted.

“So, where are we going? What is it your brother won’t tell me about yet?”

Sebastian shifted in his seat. “Well, when we didn’t hear from you for a while, Wes sort of… panicked.”

I nodded. “I saw the letters he wrote that I never got,” I told him in a quiet voice.

He glanced at me and nodded, then continued. “Our parents, and Nolan’s parents, worked together to try to adopt you.”

My arms loosened in front of me. “What?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he said. “Felix and Fiona—Nolan’s mom and dad—they were never able to have another… kid… so when they heard social services had removed you from your home, they were more than willing to step up and take you in. They started thinking of you as their daughter before they’d even finished filing the paperwork.”

I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat and turned away from him to look out the window so he wouldn’t see my eyes getting glassy.

All that time… all that time, I thought everyone had abandoned me, but there had been people fighting for me all along. And one of them was the person I’d just pushed away from me.

“Obviously, that didn’t work out,” I mumbled.

“No,” Sebastian sighed. “It didn’t. And Wes… well, he went ballistic.”

Maya gasped from the backseat, and I peeked at her to find her staring at the back of Sebastian’s head with wide eyes.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He was so upset. He yelled at everyone, and… and then he ran off into the forest for a few hours,” he said. “After that, we tried to find you. We hired people to search for you. But legally, there was only so much we could do outside of waiting to hear from you. And that never happened.”

I whipped my head around to him as he parked the car. “I swear, I—“

“I’m not saying you didn’t,” he stated, lifting his hands to appease me. “I’m just saying we never received a letter from you.”

I blew out a breath, calming myself before I spoke to him again. “I asked my mom about it,” I admitted. “She said she sent them, but—“

I stopped myself. Sebastian was someone I barely knew. I didn’t want to confess to him how I didn’t trust my mom fully.

He didn’t push me to say more. He just opened his door and hopped out, coming around to open mine for me.

“Where are we?” I asked him as I stepped onto the sidewalk, glancing around at the small, single-story cookie-cutter homes on the street.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” he told me.

“A street of typical American houses?” I teased.

“No, Sparkles,” he joked back. “I wanted to show you what’s inside this house,“ he finished, pointing at the little blue house in front of us.

I looked at it, but I saw nothing particularly special about it. It was just a house. A house similar to all the others on the street. A small house with a tiny porch, wood siding, and white faux shutters on the exterior.

Sebastian had already started making his way down the front walk, so I fell into step behind him, Maya walking behind me.

The front door opened before Sebastian reached the steps, and someone said, “Sebastian! This is a pleasant surprise! We weren’t expecting to see you today.”

I froze. It was impossible. Eleven years had gone by since I heard that voice. It couldn’t be her. She couldn’t be in California.

“I know, I would have called, but I wanted to surprise you!” Sebastian said as he bounced up the stairs. “And I brought someone with me,” he told her as he turned and nodded at me.

Our gazes collided, and her hands flew up to her lips to cover them as she gasped. Sebastian looked back and forth between us, beaming, proud as a peacock. Maya came up next to me, reaching out to me to make sure I was all right, but I was already gone.

There was no mistaking who was standing in that open doorway. No mistaking those soft blue eyes, that kind smile. They were exactly the same as they’d been almost twelve years before. She was exactly the same. Maybe a few more wrinkles, a few more gray hairs streaked among her brown strands, but otherwise, the same.

I ran the rest of the way to her and found myself in her tight embrace, and the memory of every hug she’d ever given me flashed through my mind like my own personal movie.

She pulled back to look at me, but I kept my arms wrapped around her, clinging to her like she was a lifeline. Her hands came to my face, cupping my cheeks as her eyes scanned my face.

“You’re so beautiful,” she choked out in a hoarse voice. “My beautiful girl, all grown up,” she whispered, pulling me back into her chest.

“Shirley? Who is at the door? Was that Sebastian I heard?”

My heart stopped. I couldn’t believe it. But I’d heard it. Heard the voice I thought I would never hear again.

I looked up at Shirley, and she smiled, then stepped aside so I could walk into their house.

It didn’t take long to find him. The living room was just off the entryway, and he sat on the couch, a cane within his reach. Again, he looked almost exactly like my memories of him, although his salt and pepper hair was now fully gray, and the right side of his face didn’t match the left side as well as it used to.

His crooked smile wavered when he saw me.

“Haven?” he murmured, and I nodded, unable to form any words at the sight of him.

I took slow steps forward until I was right in front of him, and his eyes tracked my every movement. I sat on the edge of the couch next to him, and a tear fell from his eye. He lifted a trembling hand to brush it away, then leaned forward and pulled me into a hug.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered as I clasped him in my arms.

“We live here,” Jack chuckled.

I leaned back. “No, I mean, how are you here?”

“Wesley—well, his parents, really, although it was his idea—they helped us. We moved here so I could get better treatment and physical therapy.”

I swallowed and nodded, blinking and pushing down the words that threatened to spill out. I didn’t want to upset them, and I didn’t want to get upset in front of them. They didn’t need to see me crying and angry. This was a joyful moment for us, for them. And it was all thanks to Wesley Stone.

“What about Scott? Tiffany?” I asked.

“They live close enough to drive and visit,” Jack told me with a smile.

I looked back over to where Shirley stood, Seb and Maya behind her, and I smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“I’m not the one you need to thank,” he replied with a shrug. “We’ll let the three of you catch up,” he said, then grabbed Maya’s hand and pulled her towards what I could only guess was the kitchen.

Shirley moved to sit on my other side and took one of my hands in hers.

“This is so crazy,” I said breathlessly. “I mean… I move here to join a ballet company, and—“

“I told you she’d go far!” Jack shouted in triumph, and Shirley shushed him.

I smiled and continued, looking between the two of them. “I just can’t believe it. First, seeing Wesley, and then the two of you. I…” I shook my head.

There was so much running through my head as we sat and talked and caught up with each other. It was beyond wild that they were in California. In the same town as the ballet company I joined. In the same area that Wesley and his family lived in. It was almost too much to be a coincidence. If I’d believed in a higher power, I would have thought someone had orchestrated the entire situation.

But it wasn’t divine intervention, and it wasn’t coincidence. It was just Wesley, just because he couldn’t help me, so he did the next best thing and helped Jack and Shirley.

My parents.

We had been talking for a long while when a knock sounded on the door, and it swung open immediately after. As if summoned by my thoughts, Wesley stood in the frame, his eyes widening as he saw me sitting on the couch with Jack and Shirley.

He closed the door behind him, his eyes locked on me, watching me for my reaction.

“I’m sorry, I-I didn’t know you’d be here, I swear. I come here every Wednesday at this time and—“

His eyes moved to my right, and I looked over to where Sebastian stood, grinning like the cat who got the cream. Wesley glared at him and then looked at me again.

“I swear I didn’t put him up to this Haven,” he explained, his voice desperate, begging me to believe him.

I wanted to still be mad at him. I wanted him to be the villain of my heartbreaking story. It would be easier that way.

But I knew he was telling the truth. I didn’t think twice about what I did next.

I jumped up from my spot between Jack and Shirley and strode to him with one singular goal. His face looked worried when I reached him, but I didn’t pause. I just threw my arms around him, holding on to him as tight as I could.

He hesitated for just a moment, then his arms wrapped around me, holding me close and with care. His muscular arms felt too good as they tightened around my body, and his large hands rubbed my back as we hugged. The gentle caresses were unexpected from such a strong, intimidating-looking man. I closed my eyes for a second as I took in a deep, calming breath.

I pulled back before I could let myself get drunk on the feel of his hands on my body, not wanting anyone, least of all him, to know how his touch affected me. Then I looked at him and muttered, “Did you still want to get coffee?”