Chapter 11 Kit
KIT
Three days after I walked out of Easton's room in inside-out clothes I'm sitting in my Romantic Literature lecture staring at a PowerPoint slide about Wuthering Heights and thinking about the way his thumb felt stroking across my cheekbone.
Professor Ellis is saying something about Heathcliff and obsession and the destructive nature of wanting someone who mirrors your worst impulses and I would find the irony funny if I had the capacity to find anything funny right now, which I don't, because I haven't slept properly since Tuesday and everything tastes like cardboard and my brain has developed a charming new habit of replaying the words "good boy" on a loop every time I close my eyes.
I am fine. I am handling this with maturity and grace and the emotional resilience of a well-adjusted adult.
My notes for the lecture so far consist of the date, the word "Heathcliff," and a drawing of a coffee cup that I started absentmindedly and then scribbled out because it reminded me of the student commons and the student commons reminded me of his knee against mine and his knee reminded me of the wall and the wall reminded me of the bed and the bed reminded me of things I am not going to think about in a lecture hall surrounded by forty other students who don't need to smell my scent go sweet because I can't control my own biology.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I almost ignore it because Professor Ellis has a policy about phones that involves public humiliation and I've already been publicly humiliated enough this week. But my hand moves on its own, tilting the screen just enough to read under the desk.
It’s from a number I don't have saved but recognize from the student directory I stress-stalked three months ago.
I meant every word.
My heart slams into my throat so hard I choke on my own breath and Milo glances over, his brow furrowing. I shove the phone back into my pocket and stare at the PowerPoint slide so hard the words blur, four words burning a hole through my jeans and into my thigh.
I check the message twice more before the lecture ends, each time telling myself it's the last time, each time reading the four words and feeling them land in the same cracked-open place in my chest that Easton put there on Tuesday night.
Milo has been watching me not take notes for the last twenty minutes and I can feel his gaze on the side of my face.
He hasn't said anything because Milo knows how to pick his moments, a skill he developed hanging with his Alpha while being taught by his brother that sometimes silence is a good thing.
The fact that he's waiting means he's building up to something I'm not going to like.
The lecture ends and I shove my empty notebook into my bag, Milo falling into step beside me as we push through the doors.
"So," he says.
"No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said 'so' and your face is doing the thing it does when you're about to ask me something I don't want to answer. Whatever it is, the answer is no, I'm fine, nothing happened, and I don't want to talk about it."
"You haven't eaten a real lunch in three days."
"I'm on a diet."
"You called diets a scam invented by people who hate joy. Direct quote, last Tuesday, while eating mozzarella sticks."
"People evolve, Milo."
He grabs my arm gently enough that I could shake him off but firmly enough that stopping feels easier than fighting. Students stream past us on both sides, Milo's face dropping the neutrality and replacing it with something that looks annoyingly close to worry.
"Kit. Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"You're wearing the same hoodie you wore yesterday and the day before.
Your scent has been off all week. You flinched when someone dropped a book in the hall this morning, and you've checked your phone eleven times during a fifty-minute lecture.
I counted." He pauses, letting each observation land.
Fuck, I thought I only checked it two or three times.
"Something happened on auction night and you're not okay and I need you to stop pretending you are because you're scaring me. "
Milo and Avery are the only people on this campus who has never looked at me and seen a project or a problem or an Omega who needs managing.
Milo’s just way more vocal about it. He just sees me, the messy loud defensive version that most people get tired of after a week, and he's still here after two years.
"I slept with someone," I say, quieter than expected. "At the auction. After."
Milo's eyebrows climb. "Okay. That's not necessarily a crisis. Was it bad?"
"It was the opposite of bad and that's the problem."
Something clicks in his expression. "It was Easton."
I don't answer, which is an answer, and Milo's expression cycles through surprise and concern and something that might be a very suppressed I-told-you-so before settling on careful. "Okay," he draws out the ending of the word. "And how are you feeling about that?"
"How am I feeling about sleeping with the Alpha who has spent six months making my life a living hell?
I feel great, Milo. I feel fantastic. I feel like a rational person who makes excellent decisions and definitely doesn't have any complicated emotions about the fact that he called me a good boy while he was inside me and I asked him to say it again. "
The words are out before I can stop them and the horror of having said them out loud, in a corridor, where anyone could hear, floods through me so fast my face goes hot. Milo's mouth opens, closes, and opens again.
"Kit.”
"Don't. I can't do the gentle thing right now or I'm going to cry in this hallway and I refuse to cry in a hallway on a Thursday."
"You like him."
"I do not like him. I have a biological response to his pheromones that is exacerbated by proximity and I made a mistake that I'm not going to repeat."
"That’s a lot of big words but you like him and he did something that got past your walls and now you're terrified because you don't know what to do with a feeling you can't fight."
"I hate you," I tell him, my voice wobbling on the second word.
"I hate that you know me well enough to say that and I hate that you're right and I hate that I can't stop thinking about him.
It's been three days and I can still smell him on my skin even after three showers and I keep waking up reaching for a pillow that isn't there because it smelled like bourbon and I stole it and then threw it away because keeping it felt pathetic and throwing it away felt worse. "
Milo pulls me into a hug right there in the corridor, his arms wrapping around my shoulders and I let him because I'm too tired to fight the people who are actually kind to me while I'm busy missing the one who wasn't.
Avery finds us in the dining hall an hour later, sliding into the seat across from me with a plate of food he pushes in my direction without comment. Declan's scent lingers on his jacket, the easy domesticity of Avery smelling like his Alpha making my chest ache.
"Eat," Avery says.
"I'm not hungry."
"You're not hungry or you can't eat because your body is doing the Omega thing where emotional distress kills your appetite?
" He raises an eyebrow when I stare at him.
"I spent nearly a week not eating after Declan and I had a fight last month.
Your body is punishing you for denying it what it wants. Eat the sandwich, Kit."
I do, even though it tastes like nothing.
"It sucks," Avery says, leaning back in his chair. He pulls his Alpha’s coat tighter around him.
"Wanting someone you're not supposed to want.
I know how that feels and I know nothing I say is going to make it suck less.
But starving yourself and wearing the same hoodie for three days isn't the answer. "
"What is the answer?"
"Figuring out if what you felt was real. And if it was, deciding if he's worth the risk." He pauses. "And if he's not, letting Milo and me take you out this weekend to do something stupid enough to take your mind off it."
I almost smile. The muscles in my face remember the motion even if my chest doesn't have the energy to complete it.
I'm walking back to my dorm alone an hour later when I see Easton coming from the opposite direction.
The corridor is narrow enough that avoiding him would require a dramatic detour and I'm too exhausted for dramatic.
I keep walking, every one of my muscles bracing for whatever version of him I'm about to get.
He just looks at me as we approach each other, his eyes carrying the same thing those four words in his text carried, and as we pass his hand brushes mine, his fingers trailing across my knuckles for half a second, the touch so light it could be accidental if I didn't know him well enough to know that Easton Cole doesn't do anything accidentally.
The touch pulls us both to a stop, just one word coming from him.
“Kit.”
My body makes the decision before my brain can intervene, turning on my heel and closing the distance in two steps, my hand fisting in the front of his jacket as I drag him down and press my mouth against his.
The kiss is brief and hard, more collision than tenderness, Easton's hand coming up to cup the back of my head, his fingers sliding into my hair for just a second before I shove him away.
"This doesn't mean anything," I say, breathing hard. "I'm losing my mind. My Omega is broken and you broke it and I hate you."
His hand drops to his side as I turn and hurry down the hall, rushing toward my dorm without stopping. I slip inside and slam the door behind me, sliding down it until I'm sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up and my forehead pressed against them. I pull out my phone and read his text again.
I meant every word.
My thumbs hover over the keyboard for a long time. I type and delete four different responses, each one meaner than the last, none of them honest. How can I want Easton? How could I possibly want that man? Swallowing the anxiety running through me, I type back two words.
Which words?
My phone buzzes eleven seconds later.
All of them. The good ones especially.