Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Tatum
Once I’m clocked in the next day, I wave hello to a few of my favorite coworkers, before making my way up the stairs to VIP. One of my coworkers called in sick, so I’m covering her shift up here tonight. Serving customers and dancing or whatever else someone wants to pay me for.
I got the opportunity to take an extra shift, so I jumped on it. I can’t say no to any extra money right now.
Of course, Hayden is there. The ever present pain in my fucking ass. Dodging him has become nearly impossible, even when I’ve attempted to switch my shifts with other Muses so I could work when he wasn’t here.
But here he is. Working security in VIP. I wasn’t scheduled to work up here, so maybe it was just bad luck.
“Tatum.”
I have to hold in a snarl at his cheerful ass greeting and devilish smirk. That wouldn’t be very demure of me, snarling at the hardworking Alpha in front of customers. Instead, I ignore him, and attempt to move past him. I have to get around him to get into my section, which means the Alpha fuck needs to let me by.
“Hayden.”
I refuse to look up at his stupid handsome face. Every time I look into those dazzling blue eyes of his, all I can see is the way he looked at me when he locked us together on his knot three years ago.
“Come on, Tatum, you have to give me a chance at some point.”
I scoff. “I would have. Three fucking years ago, Hayden.” I can’t stop the snarking tone, anymore than I can stop the way my chest aches from the sound of his voice.
Familiar feelings of abandonment, and heartbreak threaten to creep in, but I lock my heart down. I will never shed another tear for this Alpha. At least, not while he’s looking at me. I can be a bit of a cry baby.
Fuck, his sea salt and lavender scent washes over me, and he must see the effect it has, because he takes a step closer. I don’t flinch away like I should when he lifts my chin with a gentle touch until I’m looking up at the stupid-tall, delicious smelling Alpha. Why doesn’t he wear a scent suppressor like Declan and the rest of security?
“I know, Tatum. Just give me one chance.”
The bastard knows how damn bad my Omega instincts want me to give in. His lips pull me in like they're magnetized, but I shake my head, trying to regain control of my rapid heart rate.
“Please just let me go, Hayden,” I beg as my shoulders tense, because if he keeps this up, I might just cave, and I don’t know if my heart can take another blow. I’m clearly already fucked up enough.
Breaking the connection as I take a step back, he sighs. Maybe he’s finally admitting defeat. Maybe he’ll give up and back off like I’ve been asking for two weeks.
His scent clings to the air around me. He was hot three years ago, but between then and now, he’s bulked up. He’s broader, with these sexy ass arms that he’s always showing off in cut off shirts. His hair is the most perfect sun kissed blond, and his tan skin is a shade a pale woman like me would have to pay to obtain.
Criminally attractive. Lock this man up and throw away the key. Please!
“That wasn’t a no, Baby.”
He flashes me those damn dimples as he steps back to let me pass. If I had known Hayden was going to be working here, I would have picked a different floor name. Hearing him call me Baby, in that husky low tone, is almost more than I can take.
“You are insufferable.”
I flip my blonde hair over my shoulder as I move past him, hoping he gets a face full of my scent. Bastard. I sway my hips, knowing damn well his eyes are glued to my body as I go.
I spend several hours working VIP, pretending I can’t feel his eyes on me. Pretending I can’t remember the way his hands felt on my body.
When it’s time for my break, I rush to the locker room to freshen up my makeup and hide from his scent. He was wearing a hoodie for half the night, but at some point, he took it off and put it behind the bar.
The bartender hadn’t commented when I grabbed it and ran down here. No one needs to know. Hayden, least of all.
It’s not until I return to finish the rest of my shift, that I realize I might have been a little too obvious. Hayden is smirking at me as I walk up the steps.
“Shut up,” I snap, not wanting to hear a single word from him. I just want to serve drinks and go home. I need a fucking nap. Curled up in his sweater, my newest treasure for my hoard.
Gah! Being an Omega is so fucking annoying.
“Jesus!” I yelp, when strong, warm hands wrap around my waist and lift me. I’m tossed over a shoulder and staring at the ground in seconds. “Hayden!” I snarl, but he doesn’t so much as grunt as he grabs my bike in his free hand and heads toward the parking lot. “What the fuck is happening right now?!”
“Tatum?” one of the bouncers, Jax, asks, and I lift my head as best I can until I can see the Beta. He’s kind, friendly, and never once tried to hit on me. I don’t think female Omegas are his type, though. “Oh, Hayden.” And just like that, the Beta is abandoning his Omega protection duties and disappearing back inside the building.
“If I had asked, you would have said no. So I’m not asking,” Hayden growls, sounding tense, and angry? What the fuck is his problem? Oh, god… He’s scenting me. Not even twenty minutes before the end of my shift, I got hired for a dance. He was just some random Alpha, but I am covered in his scent now, even with my clean clothes on top of my uniform.
“Put me down, you barbarian,” I hiss, pounding my fists ineffectively against his muscular back.
“You’re not going home smelling like slick, advertising your wet Omega pussy to every Alpha that passes. It’s dangerous. You want to be kidnapped?” he snarls, angrier than I’ve ever heard him. I snap my jaw shut, because he thinks… I’ll let him think what he wants.
I’ll take the truth to my grave. That truth being that Hayden had broken up a fight between two Alphas just before closing. He ended up with no injuries, but the t-shirt he’d been wearing had gotten ripped off of him. Beneath his shirt is a sculpted body, and at his hip, a tattoo I’d never seen before. I was too far away to get a good look, but I’d seen it.
My body reacted, and I’d had to drag my eyes away from his body and escape the scene to the lockers to avoid him noticing my reaction.
Clearly, he caught my scent anyway, but he thinks it’s because of that last lap dance. Good. Fucker.
“This isn’t kidnapping?!” I demand, wishing he wasn’t a fucking giant so I could poke his asshole. I bet a finger in the ass would get him to release me. Then again, maybe not. Memories of the three days I spent lost to my heat, knotted by Hayden, fill my mind and I have to stifle a whimper. Unfortunately, I can’t stifle my scent. Or his. Or the way his pheromones react to mine. Mixing to an intoxicating combination, filling the air around us…
“Jesus, Tatum, are you close to your heat? You smell like god-damn blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream. You can smother me in your cream if you want. I’ll accept your punishments…” Hayden groans, sounding like he’s struggling. His hand that’s gripping my thigh slowly travels upward.
For a brief second, I consider giving in, because it feels so fucking good to have his skin against mine… Then, I’m reminded of how comforting his touch used to be as I think of all the times I cried in his arms, and he used those same hands to soothe me. The days and nights he was there for me. The weeks he spent wiping my tears. The times he beat the shit out of other Alphas in school that threatened me.
Every moment of heartbreak and pain, Hayden was right there…until he wasn’t. Until he was the cause of my pain.
This time, the whimper escapes, but it’s one born from the deepest ache in my soul. His hand immediately stops its torturous upward path. I close my eyes as he lowers me off his shoulders and onto my feet, placing my bike in the back of a pickup with one hand like the hulk.
“Fuck, Starlight…” Hayden grunts, and I flinch, his words hitting me like a punch to my chest. Fuck, why’s he got to call me that? Doesn’t he know how it hurts me? I refuse to look at him. He’s not having that, though, as he tilts my chin up. “Starlight…” he whispers, and tears that I can’t hold in any longer spill free. He gave me that nickname so long ago, and hearing him say it now, after everything he put me through… It’s more than my poor Omega heart can take.
“Please stop, Hayden. You’re only hurting me more.” I choke on the lump in my throat as my emotions rise like a tidal wave of misery inside me. “You walked away so easily, once. Can’t you just do it again?” I beg, because I don’t know if I’m strong enough to keep fighting him off. I can’t give in, though. Everyone I love leaves me. He’s the one that proved that. I can’t fucking breathe…not with him so close, stealing my every thought. Destroying my carefully built walls.
He left me.
“I won’t let you down again, Tatum. I’m not leaving you. You can hate me, curse me out. You can fuck other Alphas…” he growls, the last sentence not entirely convincing. “But I’ll still be here. I’ll still love you, just like I always have and always will.”
Fuck! Why’s he saying all this now?! Words I would have fallen to my knees to hear when I was eighteen. The lump in my throat only grows as I struggle to hold back the sobs that want to be released.
He’ll still love me? You don’t leave someone you love. You don’t break someone you love!
“You don’t even know me anymore, Hayden.” I shake my head as his blue eyes hold mine hostage. “I don’t know you anymore either. How can you love someone you don’t know?”
“I do know you.”
“How could you! You left me three years ago! Gah!” His insistence pisses me off. How fucking sure he is… “I haven’t fucked any Alphas, recently…” I add, not wanting him to know he’s the only one. “But I would have… I want to,” I growl, crossing my arms over my chest, unsure if I’m trying to hurt him or just push him away. He nods, accepting that. Which is just so fucking infuriating. If he confessed the same? He’d already be a lump of Alpha gasping for air on the ground.
“It’s okay, Tatum. Lots of Omegas have more than one bond. Packs form and take in a single Omega all the time. I’d share you with another Alpha, so long as they deserve you. Treat you well.”
“I didn’t say bond, I said fuck,” I snap, wanting him to lose control, to feel a little of the pain I’m feeling. What's that saying? When they go low, I go to hell? That’s me.
“Okay, that's okay.” The way he says those words, shaking his head, I’m not sure if they’re meant for me, or if he’s trying to convince himself that he’s okay with me fucking any random Alpha. The audacity of this fuck.
“How is that okay? If you so much as smell like another Omega walked too close to you, I’d not only never speak to you again, but there's a good chance I’d fucking murder you both!” I shout, my fists clench as the thought makes me see red and Hayden smirks that stupid sexy smirk of his, flashing the dimples that have gotten him out of trouble more often than they should have. I could choke him right now.
“So you do care.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me, and I nearly detonate from the violence that's rattling my rib cage.
“Fuck off,” I growl, spinning away from him. Fuck the bike, I’ll walk home.
“Tatum, wait. I’m sorry.” I don’t stop, but that doesn’t matter to the two hundred and fifty pound Alpha. He just scoops my five-foot four, one hundred and thirty pound ass off my feet and stomps his husky butt back to his truck.
“This is just not fair! You can’t just pick me up when I decide I’m done speaking to you!” I complain, but he just chuckles. How long is a murder sentence? Surely it can’t be as bad as suffering through his fucking smirk!
“I disagree. I think this is very effective.” He carts me over to the passenger side, and basically tosses me into the car. I wait until he’s on his side, then open the door to hop out. He’s faster though, and jumps into the driver's side, and grabs me by the arm, tugging me back into the seat.
“Hayden!”
“Tatum.”
“Ugh!” I stop fighting, dropping back against the seat, and accept that he’s just as determined to keep me in this car as I am to escape it. He’s bigger, stronger, and I’m fucking tired. My heart, my mind. I’m just…so fucking tired.
“I haven’t been with anyone else. You already knew you weren’t my first, but… You’ll be my last,” he says it softly, as he starts pulling out of the parking lot. I’m shocked, and a little skeptical.
“No one at all, or you just haven’t knotted anyone else? And why are you even telling me?” I cross my arms over my chest, after buckling up.
“It’s getting chilly,” he says, rather than answering me, as he reaches into his back seat. He hands me a massive black hoodie that smells just like him. It matches the one I have stuffed in my bag. Two hoodies for my hoard?
I hesitate, but my instincts don’t give a shit what he did, they’re just glad he’s back. I tug it on, ignoring the way my instincts settle. Yeah, alright, fuck it. Stupid Omega heart.
Fucking Alpha pain in my ass.
“I’ve been with others. Knots…all of it. Three years is a long time.” I try to sound casual. Convincing. I chance a peek at Hayden, but he doesn’t even react. Is he… Is the fucker smirking!? He doesn’t believe me! “For my second heat, I went to one of those clinics, and let three Alphas fuck me at once. Got knots in my ass and pussy at the same time while the third came down my throat.” I jerk forward as he slams his breaks, but his hand is there across my chest to keep me from hurting myself.
“We both know you’re lying. You cross your fucking fingers when you lie, Tatum!” Hayden lifts my left hand, revealing my little traitor fingers, and I uncross them. “But even if you weren’t, I wouldn’t care. You could have taken five hundred knots, and it would change nothing. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I fucked up. I really fucked up, but I’m not walking away again.”
“You can’t say that. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, because three years ago you said you’d be mine forever, and then you ghosted me. I had to find out from your fucking girlfriend that you were ‘No longer friends with such a fucking loser!’” I finger quote his then girlfriend's words. “And she bragged about your piercing, and the size of your weak ass knot for weeks! So don’t tell me you haven’t been with anyone since me! You never intended to see me again! The only reason you’re back now is that you got a job at the same club!” Hot, angry tears spill down my cheeks, and I consider how much strength would be required to murder him with my bare hands.
“Who?” he throws his hands up, “I didn’t date anyone!” He’s turned his body fully into me and is looking at me like I’m insane. I scoff.
“Matilda! You had your noodle arm wrapped around her neck that first day back!” I snap, swiping at the tears, no longer bothering to hold them in. I’m too pissed.
“What! She… I didn’t… She asked for a picture with the fucking quarterback for the yearbook! I wasn’t… I never dated her. I never even fucking kissed her! Compared to you, she smelled like boiled hot dogs. No other Omega’s scent even compares to yours. You think I’d be able to suffer through that? No.” Now he scoffs like I’m the crazy one!
“This is stupid! And pointless. I don’t care what you did, or who you did any of it with. Just take me home,” I grumble, over this entire conversation. There’s a part of me that wants to believe him. But another part of me, buried deeper, it’s claws digging into my soul, whispers that every word is a lie, just so he can hurt me all over again.
“No. Not until you believe me.”
“Fine, I believe you. Now, take. Me. Home. And stop talking. Your voice is agitating.” Another lie, but I make sure my fingers aren’t crossed this time. The truth is that every word he says is dragging me closer and closer to the edge of falling for him again, and that's not something I can do. Not ever again.
“I’m keeping the bike. I know your schedule. I’ll give you a ride from now on. If you don’t like it, then I’ll toss you over my shoulder and fucking carry you into work every day.”
“Asshole,” I snarl, snapping my head in his direction, finally looking at him.
“Yep. Your asshole, Starlight. Always have been, always will be.”
I’m panting now. Two parts of my soul at war as I look into those blue eyes. Always have been, always will be…
I want him so badly that it’s taking over every other thought. The ones that tell me he’s no good for me.
Could just one kiss really be so bad?
Yes! Gah, what the fuck! I shake my head and turn to face the window. He’s not going to drag me back into his orbit so damn easily.
No matter how badly my heart wishes that I would just give in.
Now I just need to convince him to stop fucking trying.