Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
I am so pissed at Derrick. How could I not be, after a decade of lies? I don’t think anyone would blame me for that.
But that doesn’t mean I liked seeing him walk out that door.
I can’t even articulate why I thought Ivan was the better choice to stay. I didn’t want either of them to leave. But for some reason, I felt safer letting Derrick go.
Maybe it’s because I don’t know Ivan that well, and I want the opportunity to.
Or maybe it’s that, deep, deep, deep down, I love Derrick and know that this won’t change things between us.
Guilt is weighing me down, making it nearly impossible to leave the bed. I know I need to shower and to eat, but the idea of walking out into the living room and not seeing Derrick makes me feel ill.
This is my fourth day in the house, and yet it feels like a month has passed. We’re over halfway done and will only be split up for a few days.
Why does it feel like forever?
“Baby?” Grant’s voice is slightly muffled on the other side of the door. “Are you hungry? Ivan is making lunch.”
I don’t answer him. I don’t know what sound will come out when I open my mouth.
Will I sob? Scream? Whine?
Better not risk it.
The door opens slowly, even though I didn’t call him in. My Beta’s face is drawn into a frown as he sticks his head through the crack. His hair lacks its usual luster, and he’s not wearing the black eyeliner I was growing accustomed to seeing smudged around his eyes.
I forgot that, with Derrick leaving, Grant lost his Alpha. It’s only for a few days, but when we’re cut off from the outside world, it isn’t easy to keep it all in perspective. It feels like so much more than that.
I pull back the covers and pat the bed next to me without saying a word. I don’t know what makes me do it, only that I’ve felt better every time I’ve been around Grant.
I can tell myself it’s because he’s a Beta and that means he’s safe all I want, but it’s more than that.
He’s mine. He was always meant to be mine. He will always be mine.
I don’t have it in me to deny that right now.
Grant crawls into bed next to me, his body heavy as he slides beneath the covers. He wraps his arms around my waist as if he’s afraid I’ll reject him, and when I don’t, he buries his nose in the crook of my neck.
“Tell me that this isn’t going to ruin everything. That you’ll still give us a chance. Because now that Derrick is gone, it feels like he took our chance at winning you over with him.”
“I...”
How do I put into words that I know he and Ivan were a part of the lie, but that it doesn’t hurt the way it does with Derrick?
It feels like Sax betrayed me, and Sax is Derrick. He was from day one. Sure, they went along with it, pretending the conversations I was having with them were with Sax, but he was the one I talked to the most. He’s the one I watched smile on video.
It feels easier to separate that hurt from the other two. Whether that’s fair to Derrick or not, it doesn’t matter.
“I’ll still give you a chance, Grant,” is what I settle on.
His heavy exhale brushes my neck as he pulls my body closer to his than I thought possible. We press flush against one another, and I can feel every hard edge of him.
“I hate history,” he whispers against my hair. “Ask me when the first season of Expected aired, and I can tell you the exact date. Don’t bother asking whether I know about one of the wars. I don’t. I fell asleep in history class.”
His broad hand begins rubbing soft circles on my stomach as he speaks.
“It was me who shaved half of my head because I thought I was edgy. Eventually, I had to take it all off because it looked ridiculous. It’s why I wear my hair long now. Well, that and it gives me a defined look. And if I want to make it as a model, I need one of those, apparently.”
It wasn’t a surprise that Grant models. He looks like he belongs on the streets of Milan, not here in bed with me. Even with his eyes shadowed and hollow, his hair hanging limp, he’s still one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life.
“I can’t sing. It sounds like a dying cat. Or maybe an elephant whose tail got stepped on.”
I’m not able to smother my laugh, and his hands tighten around me as my chest bounces.
“I’m an exhibitionist, if you didn’t realize. Plus, I’m weirdly into ears. Like, I want mine chewed on, and I want to chew on yours.”
“I think a lot of people are turned on when their ears are nibbled on.”
He shrugs and places a soft kiss on my neck. “Maybe. Derrick hates it. Ivan is indifferent. But me? Shit, that’s the fastest way into my pants. Something about the breathy noises has my knees weak. Is that what ASMR is?”
Our conversation flows so naturally that outsiders might think we’ve known each other all our lives. “I’ve never understood ASMR.”
“Me neither, but if that’s what it is, I may have to subscribe to some accounts.”
His proximity and the conversation have my body heating, and it’s impossible for me to ignore. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I know so much about you, and I need you to know me, too. I want to level the playing field. It’s not fair to you that I know that you want to be blindfolded, so now you know I want you to bite the fuck out of my ears.
” He clamps his teeth onto my lobe with gentle pressure and groans, the sound ghosting across my ear and lighting my body on fire. “And to bite yours.”
I can feel him hardening, but he doesn’t grind against me or try to initiate anything. He seems content just holding me close.
“Tell me a secret. Something you didn’t even tell Sax.”
My stomach does a flip.
I told Sax almost everything. Of course, a lot of it was whispered in the dark over the phone, but I don’t know what he shared with the others.
Except for one thing.
Can I share my deepest, darkest secret with Grant?
I don’t really know him. He might as well be a stranger.
That doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure which parts of him I know, but Grant is not a stranger. He feels more like a lover I’ve forgotten.
My mouth is opening before I can talk myself out of it.
“Calvin and I got in a fight before he fell into a coma. He never woke up.”
Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to move on from his death like everyone has expected me to. If I had kissed his forehead and told him how much I loved him instead of arguing with him, would I have been able to heal? Would I have opened his letter sooner?
“What about?”
Now that I’ve started the conversation, it’s impossible to hold my secret in.
“He said that he deserved to die with dignity. He was suffering, Grant. The pain meds weren’t touching what he was going through; he was lucid for less and less time each day.
I refused to leave the hospital. I didn’t want to miss a second with him.
Even if he was out of it most of the time.
It hurt so much when he asked for his Alphas, and I had to continuously tell him they were on their way back.
I wasn’t going to tell him every twenty minutes that they were dead. It would’ve been cruel.”
He squeezes my waist, but doesn’t interrupt me. A silent sentinel at my back.
“He…”
Am I going to do this now? Open my mouth, admit my darkest secret to the world? My parents?
Fuck, what are my parents going to say?
“He asked me to unplug his respirator. He wanted to choose when he died, how he died. I was sixteen, Grant. I couldn’t.
How could he have expected that of me? We fought over it for hours.
It was one of his longest periods of lucidity there at the end, and instead of enjoying it, we were yelling at each other.
He called me selfish. I said he was the selfish one.
It was bad enough I had to watch him die, but he wanted me to be responsible for it? ”
I’ll never forget the way he looked at me from that hospital bed. He cried so much, his voice was hoarse from begging. All he wanted was to choose when he left this world.
And I couldn’t do that for him.
I couldn’t give him the last thing he asked of me.
“Even though we were pissed at each other, I didn’t go anywhere. I fell asleep with my head on his lap, like I had every night. When I woke up, he was in a coma. And his opportunity to die with dignity was gone.”
Maybe that’s why the letter hit me so hard. He talked about his dying wish in it, but it wasn’t actually his dying wish.
That was written before we fought. Before he begged me to help him die.
“There was a PS on the letter he gave me asking me to forgive him. He wrote that letter while he was still lucid and setting up his estate. Was he asking me to forgive him for dying? Or did he plan this? Did he know he was going to ask this of me?”
“He was selfish.” Grant’s voice is hard. When I pull away from him, he looks furious. “Asking you to do that had to have been the most selfish thing he could have ever done.”
“But-”
“No. You were sixteen. You were a child. He shouldn’t have put that on you. You have five parents, and he asked you?” He grabs my cheeks with both hands. “You were going to feel guilty no matter the outcome.”
“He was hurting. I owed him that.”
“And you weren’t? You may not have been the one dying, but you were the one who had to continue living. And sometimes that’s harder.”