17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Sasha
The sight of her has lived like a presence in my mind for weeks now.
Fuck, months, if I’m being honest with myself, which has been something new my therapist has requested of me.
Healing starts with honesty. Personally, I think healing starts with torture.
Because honestly forces me to admit there hasn’t been a single fucking day that I haven’t thought about her. Not one.
She looked so fucking perfect beneath the moonlight.
It spilled across her features, giving her an ethereal glow that had threatened to send me to my knees.
The ache in my chest tightened until it became difficult to tell one thought from the next.
I knew every inch of that woman once. I knew the cadence of her laughter.
The warmth of her skin. The scent that had become synonymous with home before I’d burned that home to the ground with my own hands.
I hadn’t intended on seeing her the other night.
Or at least I hadn’t intended for her to see me.
Every home game since she returned as head coach, I have hidden myself away in the stands.
All so I could watch her. Watch the way she commands an entire locker room without ever raising her voice, but not being afraid to put a bunch of Alphas in their place if the moment calls for it.
Watch the respect every Alpha and Beta willingly gives her.
Watch Holden and Dominic settle naturally at her sides as though they’d finally remembered what a real leader looks like.
Watch the pack I’d spent months tearing apart learning how to survive without me.
That realization hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced. More than anything I’d been forced to confront these past few months. The world hadn’t stopped turning after I broke it. It had simply learned to keep spinning without me.
She fucking destroys me. Completes me. Changes me in ways she’s unaware of, because I can’t bring myself to surface from the shadows that hold me hostage.
I am a masochist. That is the one thing I know for certain.
Sitting in the stands week after week is terrible for my health. Denying myself of the one person I am desperate for is a kind of self-control that I didn’t think I could possibly possess.
It takes everything I am to sit in the stands and not march down to the box and beg for her forgiveness. To show her that the man I was before is gone.
I know I’ve still got a long way to go when it comes to my recovery, but I am making moves that even my therapist is encouraged by.
After months of struggling, I was finally able to tell the therapist every single ugly detail of my childhood.
I left everything on the table. I had skirted around my truth for far too long, but I’d laid myself bare.
The only way I could ever start to move past it was to strip myself down to my bones.
Bleed myself dry and start again. Rebuilt the man that was made, and transform into whatever, whoever the fuck I am now.
Nightmares reared their ugly heads, making sleep terrifying for weeks until I learned to let them go.
To turn them into something I could control, rather than let them control me like they had done for most of my life.
I’m damaged. That’s the truth. But I realize now that the only way forward is to take one step at a time.
To do the work. To accept change and embrace each day that comes my way.
Each day is a day closer to feeling happiness.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
It took me a long time to wrap my head around what my therapist tried to get me to see.
That the best kind of revenge against the man that hurt me is to rise above the pain. To find happiness for myself.
Just like Holden and Dominic had tried to tell me.
God, I wish I had listened to them when they tried to stop me from self destruction.
But, I hadn’t been willing to listen to them. Apparently, that is all a part of the complex mental health issues that I had been diagnosed with.
CPTSD, anxiety, and depression.
The thing that has consumed me for years finally has a name.
The medication has helped though. Helped to clear my brain from the thoughts that had plagued me for so long.
I am not better by any means. But I am getting there.
I am a lot further along than I thought I could ever be.
My next step in healing might be the one I have been most terrified for.
I have put it off for weeks now. But I knew the longer I put it off, the worse it would feel. I just had to rip the bandaid off.
Which is why I am here. At Lennon’s front door.
I could throw up.
I might throw up.
I could so easily turn tail and run well the fuck away. But I don’t. I need to face her and apologize. I have to. Not just for me. But because I owe her something. Something more than the fucking nothing I’ve given her since she’d returned to Vadena.
I don’t expect anything in return. I don’t deserve it.
I don’t think I ever will, no matter what Holden and Dominic have tried to reassure me.
I couldn’t help the jealousy that had crushed my chest at seeing the two of them with our Omega.
Watching them stand where I should have been was its own kind of punishment.
They hadn’t pushed me out. I’d walked away all on my own.
Dominic and I are alright. But Holden...
For a while there, I’d thought I’d lost him. I had never felt more alone than I did at that moment.
The first thing I had to do was apologize to my packmates.
I hurt them too. I forced their hand even when they tried to fight against me.
They had forgiven me. I had cried into Dom’s shoulder for hours until sleep had stolen me.
Neither of them asked me to explain. They’d simply let me fall apart.
Things still aren’t perfect. I think it's because we now know that we are missing a piece. One that will complete us. Or maybe that’s just the lie I keep telling myself because the alternative is accepting that I destroyed something that can never be put back together.
So I am here in some futile attempt at an apology.
Taking a deep breath, I knock on her door three times.
“Coming!” her muffled voice calls. The single word punches every ounce of air from my lungs, and before I get the chance to turn around and leave, the door is opening.
I hadn’t known what to expect before I came here, but it certainly isn’t what greets me.
Lennon's face is flushed, the edges of her hair drenched in sweat.
Her scent hits me like a freight train. Fuck.
She is close to her heat. It wraps around me before I can stop it, settling deep in my body until every instinct I have screams to close the distance between us. To touch. To soothe. To belong.
I deserve none of it.
Dominic and Holden had said that she had been having spikes these past few weeks. But this isn’t a spike. Or if it is, it’s a fucking strong one.
“What are you doing here?” she demands, her voice icy cold and harder than stone. Every word slices clean through me.
Gods help me.
“I… I wanted to talk.”
“Then talk.”
Her eyebrows are raised, as if me being here is a major inconvenience, and this is my chance to leave.
My chance to hang onto whatever is left of my pride and hightail it out of here.
I can’t move. I am nailed to this spot because I know if I leave, there’s no chance I’ll get the courage to come back again another time.
I need to do this.
“I wanted to apologize—” I begin, but stop at the snort that escapes her.
“Apologize? Really? After all this time?” She rolls her eyes, stepping back so she can close the door. “Fuck off, Volkov.”
“Wait!” I slam my hand against the door, stopping it before it clicks shut. Lennon’s eyes widen in surprise, even though she is still pissed off, that much is evident. “Please just,” I sigh. “Please, I only want to talk. To explain everything. I know you don’t owe me anything. But…please, Lennon.”
She stares at me for a few long moments. I see the war written across her features. She doesn’t want to let me in. I get it. I wouldn’t want to let me in, either. But she’s better than me because she steps back, opening the door, giving me a small, unimpressed nod, inviting me in.
I follow her into her lounge room, taking a cautious seat on her couch as she gestures for me to sit.
It’s strange being in here while she is awake, which is an absolutely insane thing to think considering I’m on the chopping block right now.
Still, I never claimed to be a good person, even if I am trying to be better.
There will always be something about my moral compass that is off-kilter when it comes to the ones I love. Fuck, don’t go there idiot.
She deserves better than me. She doesn’t need me spilling that kind of truth. Not after she walked away that first time.
Lennon stares at me expectantly, even as she remains quiet. Okay then. Taking a deep breath, I prepare myself to spill my guts out to her.
“I wanted to talk.”
“Yeah, I kinda gathered that when you told me,” she replies, and I curse myself for ever being born because I can’t seem to string a fucking coherent sentence together.
“I wanted to explain. To…get things off my chest. I don’t expect you to give me anything. I don’t deserve that, I know…”
She sighs, walking over and sitting beside me on the couch. Her scent is fucking paralyzing. Her body emanates pure fucking heat and I swallow. Deciding to just go for it before I lose my nerve.