Chapter 33
June
Knotted.
I told Callum not to knot me, then I begged and begged for it until he gave me his knot, and I don’t even have the excuse of being in heat to blame for it.
And it had felt good. Like an orgasm that goes on and on, the muscle at the base of his cock was squeezing out more pleasure until I was near drunk on it. So damn good that I don’t know how I won’t want it again.
As I get up, I wrap a sheet around myself and try not to notice the man quietly snoring on my bed. When my gaze drifts over tanned pecs and washboard abs, I yank it back to his face before I can discover just how much my sheet covers. Or how much it doesn’t cover.
He told me that he would leave right after I’d taken what I needed from him. That might have been possible if I hadn’t immediately crawled on top of him, tucked my face against his neck and fallen asleep.
Again, I didn’t have being in heat as an excuse for my behavior.
Maybe it’s biology fighting to keep my mate close.
Maybe I’d liked how warm he was to snuggle up to.
Or maybe, and this is probably most likely, I’m a sucker for punishment to even think of snuggling up with a guy who treated me the way Callum did.
I could just be an idiot.
Padding into the living room part of my studio apartment, I curl up on the couch with the sheet tucked around myself and close my eyes.
I’m not sure what wakes me. Some small sound, maybe. I open my eyes to Callum dressed and reaching for the door. I could pretend to be asleep, but I don’t want to.
“You’re leaving.”
My voice stops him in his tracks.
He peers over his shoulder, his gaze probing. Only when his expression relaxes do I realize how rested I feel. Over the last few days, I’ve been sluggish and tired.
Sex with my scent match has chased away the bond sickness. It won’t last. My heat is still coming, and I need to make a decision about what to do before it hits.
“Sorry I didn’t leave before,” he says.
“You’re to blame for a lot of things.” I sit up and carefully tuck the sheet around me. “But you’re not to blame for making a promised task impossible. I shouldn’t have crawled on top of you.”
Even now, I’m not sorry I did. It felt as natural as breathing.
One corner of his mouth lifts in a half-smile. “You were like a sleepy kitten. I meant to move you when…” He clears his throat as heat fills his gaze. “When I wasn’t locked inside you. I fell asleep. You felt too good, Juniper.”
Sunlight is streaming through my windows on a brand-new day, yet here I am, fighting with myself not to ask him to stay.
Idiocy. That’s what this is. It can’t be anything else.
With my head lowered, I study him from under my lashes. “That first night, when I was in your car on the way to your house, if you’d told me about your families, none of this would have happened.”
We might have fought about other things. We also might have been happy. A large part of me thinks we would have been so happy, and that’s why their betrayal hurt so much.
That first morning, waiting for them to come down for the cake I baked for our first breakfast together felt like the start of my happily ever after, and it turned into a nightmare I could never wake up from.
His smile is as sad as it is bitter. “It’s a decision I’ve regretted ever since I found your nest.”
My body jerks in response to his soft admission. I haven’t thought about my old nest for a while, and I thought I never would.
He walks over to me, his steps light, and sits on the coffee table in front of me, legs spread wide.
He dips his head a bit, just enough to meet my gaze.
With his hands resting on the tops of his thighs, his voice is quiet and serious when he asks me, “Why did you do it? Why did you destroy your nest like that?”
“The first time was after I saw you with Lottie.” I lift my eyes from his black t-shirt to his face. “I couldn’t rip out my heart like I wanted to, so I did the next best thing instead.”
His face contorts in anguish. Eyes wide, he looks away, blinking rapidly. I’ve never seen an alpha cry, and I think this one wants to. It makes my own eyes burn, and I don’t know why.
“Does she know I’m your scent match?” I ask.
Lottie. Charlotte Meeks. Like my destroyed nest, she’s another fragment from a painful past I try never to think about. The nest represented something I wanted to kill. Charlotte—Lottie—their childhood friend, represents something even more painful.
Fear. They told me she means nothing to them. That she’s deathly sick and is like a sister to them, but a part of me is terrified to believe it because a betrayal like that goes beyond anything I could forgive. Even if it meant I died from bond sickness.
He nods. “It’s why she refused to run or try to escape. She thought you’d be the one who paid the price.”
When I think of how long she’s been trapped a hostage, for years, my heart hurts for her. “I wish I could help her.”
He reaches out to take my right hand, which I have resting on my knee, lifts it, and brushes a soft kiss across my knuckles.
“Every time you open your mouth, you remind me of how unworthy I am of your love and forgiveness. We’ll figure out a way to get her out without risking you.
But thanks for wanting to help, Juniper. Lottie would appreciate it as well.”
When a cool draught drifts from my poorly insulated windows, I pull my hand from his loose grasp and wrap my sheet tighter around myself, hiding my shiver.
A tiny frown forms between his brows. “You’d be more comfortable in bed than on the couch,” he says, his eyes flicking to it.
The one look reminds me of last night. Every touch and caress was exactly what I needed, and that scares me. I haven’t forgiven him, and I’m terrified biology will make me want him so badly that I’ll stop caring and keep falling into bed with him.
Alphas and omegas have a natural pull toward each other. But mates? Even when I hate them, a part of me still wants them. I’m scared that want will make me forget my anger.
I scoff. “So you can have more sex?”
“No.” He tucks a strand of blonde hair behind my ear, and I will never know why I don’t stop him.
“I won’t lie to you. Last night was one of the best nights of my life, and of course I want to repeat it, but this couch is old and worn,” he says, proving he was responsible for the new furniture that everyone in this apartment building is having delivered soon.
He presses a gentle kiss on my forehead.
“You’ll be more comfortable in bed with a comforter than a thin sheet. ”
Suddenly, I want to cry. “I hate it when you’re nice to me.”
“Because you don’t believe I mean it?”
“Because I do believe it.” I swallow more tears. “I believe it so much, and I keep thinking that you could have been like this with me all this time, and you weren’t. And that hurts.”
The same stricken look passes across his face. “Do you want me to stop?”
There’s a slight wildness in my abrupt laugh. “Stop being nice to me?” I drag the back of my hand over my wet eyes and shake my head.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks, even quieter.
“Not yet.”
“Okay,” he says, and he gets up, confusing me until he walks over to my bed, picks up the comforter and returns to tuck it around me. He checks to make sure I’m fully wrapped and nods. “Better.”
As he sits back on the edge of the coffee table closest to me, I study him. Not covertly under my lashes the way I did before. Openly.
My gaze lingers on dirty-blond hair, tousled from when I ran my fingers through it. Pretty gray-blue eyes, like a summer storm. His strong, hard body. Even if he hadn’t been my scent match, he’d have caught my eye. With how he made me feel in bed, he’d have kept my attention.
“What is it?” he asks with a slight smile that says he knows what I’m thinking, and would like nothing more than for me to keep thinking it.
On the outside, he’s the handsome I like. Inside, he’s the sweet and gentle I love. But I’m taking a chance that this version of Callum is the real deal, not a pretense created to win me back. “I don’t know if I can forgive when every time I look at you, I remember all the ways you hurt me.”
Baring my soul—my wounds—hurts. But I’m tired and sick of those hurts just being my hurts. My wounds. My festering scabs that I endlessly pick open so they can never heal.
His smile fades. “Can we try making new memories with you, Juniper?” he says with the gentle honesty I’m slowly getting used to. “They won’t replace the bad ones, but I can give you more than pain. We all can.”
I tilt my head, curious. “Like what?”
He shrugs. “Whatever you want to do. Something new.”
With my arms wrapped around my raised knees, I ask, “Why did you fix my apartment last?”
“I needed you to know that I wasn’t just changing because of you. I needed to change for me too.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gets up and wanders over to the window, peering out with his hands in his pockets.
He was standing the same way after he took me to the hospital.
With rows of parked cars on the street outside my apartment building, it’s not much of a view, yet he peers down as if those quiet streets hold the answers to the meaning of life.
“For years, I told myself I was nothing like my dad. I thought I was better than him, and maybe, in some ways, I am. But the second, the very second I thought you might be the enemy, I turned into him.” He turns from my window and looks at me, gray-blue eyes haunted and sad.
But surprisingly determined. “I never want to be anything like him. He destroyed my mother, nearly destroyed me, and I did the same thing to you. Even if you can’t forgive me, the work on this building continues.
Torin, Archer, and I are trying to do the right thing instead of turning into the parents we hate. ”
I chew my lip as he waits for my response.