Chapter 39
“Did you see the Beta I brought back to my trailer last night?” Chet, one of the lighting guys, is saying to Nathan, one of the roadies. “God, she was so fucking hot. An ass like a goddamn peach, and those fat fucking lips.”
“But was she as hot as the doc?” Nathan says as he takes a bite of his sandwich.
It’s midday before our last show at this stop, and I stepped out of my trailer to clear my head a little. Since I slept with Alex, I’ve been fighting every Alpha instinct I have not to run to her and beg for her to claim me.
That whole fucking forty-eight-hour time frame was a shitshow, culminating in me losing my virginity to the Omega, and I can’t get it out of my mind. The way her body moved with mine was like a dance we had practiced a thousand times. It felt so right to be wrapped up in her.
But then the haze of the minor rut faded, and fear took over. The look on her face when I tried to disentangle us is the image of my self-flagellation.
“The doc isn’t that hot, you just think that because she’s an Omega,” Chet responds dismissively. “Omegas aren’t all that, anyway. I’ll take a Beta any fucking day of the week. Dexter agrees with me, right, bro?”
I look away from my shoes at the crew. I told Jude I’d try to find out who it was that’s been terrorizing Alex, and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to do that.
Maybe, if I find out who attacked her, I’ll feel better about how my actions hurt her.
“I’m not a fan of Omegas, personally,” I tell them, sitting in one of the folding chairs pushed up to the plain white table. Its top is scuffed from countless times being set up and broken down, but it’s the closest thing we have to a picnic table. “More trouble than they’re worth, honestly.”
“Thass what I’m talking ‘bout,” Chet says around a mouthful of food. “They’re prissy and high maintenance. She shouldn’t be here.”
Nathan shrugs casually. “I mean, sure, but a doc’s a doc. Not like you get hurt a lot.”
They go back and forth, arguing the benefits and pitfalls of having an Omega, not like either of them knows. But I chime in when appropriate, trying to guide the conversation along to see if either of them harbors the secret of what happened to Alex.
Nathan seems pretty indifferent to her presence here, so I don’t think it’s him. But I’m going to have Jude look more into Chet, because the guy is an asshole, and it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that he’d try to force an Omega out of here by any means necessary.
“Dex?” I look up at my twin, who’s currently blocking out the sun’s rays as he stands in front of the table, looking at me. “Can we talk?”
I was wondering when we’d have this conversation, when he’d come to beg my forgiveness for the things he said while he was in a rut. I grunt in affirmation and push back to the table. I mutter my goodbyes to the roadies and follow Dario to his trailer.
His setup is almost identical to mine, although we didn’t plan it that way. After a lifetime of sharing a space, it seems that we’ve taken on similar design habits. He’s got two red pillows on his worn couch, and he pulls one to his chest as he sits down.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Dex. I’m so sorry I said those awful things to you.” The tip of his nose is red, and his eyes are bloodshot. I genuinely believe he is torn up about what he said.
However, there is one thing that bothers me.
“Did you mean it?”
“What?”
“Are you sorry about what you said because it wasn’t true, or because it was true but you didn’t mean to say it?” I know what answer I want, and what the truth is, but they’re not the same.
And he knows it as well as I do.
“Dex…”
“I get it,” I say stiffly, pushing up from the couch. “I don’t think I realized how much you resented me until now.”
He exhales heavily, looking up at the ceiling as he talks.
“It’s not that I resent you, not entirely.
I feel invalidated by you a lot of times, and like everyone expects me to be the agreeable, go with the flow one, forgetting that I have needs, too.
” His voice drops to barely above a whisper. “I think sometimes, even I forget it.”
“Why haven’t you ever said anything?” I sink back down onto the couch and rest my hand on his knee. “Seriously, you’ve never said anything about this before.”
My brother shrugs dismissively. “What was I supposed to say? That I was tired of living the bachelor life and wanted to settle down, but couldn’t because you’d never be ready?”
“Why not find a nice Beta?” I ask him genuinely. “You don’t have to wait for me to be ready for a hypothetical relationship to seek one out yourself.”
“I know you’re right, but I don’t want a Beta. I want our Omega. And she’s here, and you’re being an ass, and she clearly doesn’t want to, or can’t be with us, and I just feel like my happily ever after is over before it even had the chance to begin.”
“Well, Prince Charming, that’s not fully my fault.” I pat his knee a couple of times and then head to his fridge, pulling out two beers. When I hand him one, he sucks down half of it. “I can’t make her stay, Dario.”
He rubs his face with one hand. “I know. But she’d be more likely to if all of us were all in.”
I know he’s not wrong. And I don’t want to stand in the way of his happiness. We don’t need any more resentment between the two of us.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” I tell him softly. “And I’m sorry I didn’t realize how important this was to you earlier. But that resentment wasn’t just from Alex. You went back to childhood, dude.”
An embarrassed flush creeps up his ears. He takes another long swig of his beer instead of answering me right away. “You never noticed?” he asks softly. “The way everything always defaulted to what you wanted, what you needed?”
I try to think back to our childhood, before everything went to shit. I don’t go back there very often, afraid of finding good memories with my father, but for Dario, I’ll try.
“I mean, I noticed that we always did what I suggested, but I thought that it was because that’s what you wanted, too.”
“Sometimes,” he admits. “But also, mom told me I needed to always look out for you, so I did. If you wanted or needed something, I made sure you got it. Most of the time, it wasn’t a big deal.
Our interests have always been mostly aligned.
So when Alex came and you were so adamant against her, I felt betrayed.
Like I’ve done so much for you, and you didn’t even want to try to get along with her for me. ”
Draining my beer does little to calm the guilt churning in my stomach. How have I never noticed that I was guiding everything in our lives? The twin that everything was shaped around?
Dario showed an interest in Alex from day one, and for what felt like the first time, we were misaligned. I didn’t stop to look at that critically, to determine why it seemed like our desires were incongruent with one another.
I just told him he was wrong.
I blew him off.
It didn’t feel good to be on the receiving end of his anger during RutGate, but fuck, maybe it’s a good thing it happened, because I think he may have continued to suffer in silence if it hadn’t.
“You don’t have to agree with me on everything. We’re twins, but we’re not the same person.” I reach over and grab his hand. “You need to tell me these kinds of things before they get to that point.”
He scoffs, but doesn’t pull his hand from mine. “And what, you would have taken me seriously? You’re so blinded by hate because of what Dad did that you wouldn’t even consider getting to know her. Have you even talked to her today?”
“Have you?” I shoot back .
“I’m not the one who fucked her and then scrambled away like my knot was on fire,” he chastises. “None of us handled that situation well, but I saw the hurt in her eyes when you pulled away from her.”
Showering this morning was a sobering experience. I smelled like her. I had to scrub and scrub to get the scent of her slick off of me. As it washed down the drain, I realized it might be the only time I have that experience with her, and I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or bad.
“I’ll talk to her,” I insist. “I just need some time to come to terms with everything. This is a shit ton of change for me.”
“It’s a lot for all of us. Most of all, Alex.
She escaped abuse and almost immediately got attacked, and then scent matched with us, told she’s needed to cure Quinton’s Rot, and then, oh look, she’s now a Foresaken Omega, and she has to be around us to get better, and then her nest is destroyed and she has a heat flash and bonds Matteo and then we all go into a rut and she takes your virginity and walks home alone.
” He gestures in the vague direction of her trailer.
“We’ve fucked this up every step of the way. ”
I look out the window, sighing heavily. “So what, am I supposed to bury all of my fears and worries and throw myself headfirst into a bond with her?”
“No,” he snaps. “You know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying … take her on a date. Get to know Alex as a person, not as an Omega. What’s the harm in trying?”
The harm? What if I fall for her and she leaves?
Or worse, what if she stays?
But I don’t voice those fears to Dario. Instead, I nod solemnly.
“I’ll try, yeah. Not just for her and me, but for you. I owe you that much.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” He pulls me in for a tight hug. “I’m still really fucking sorry it all came out like that, instead of in a rational, heart-to-heart kind of way.”
“Would you have ever said anything if you weren’t under the influence of a rut?” I hold him at arm’s length, narrowing my eyes. “Do you really hate the blond hair?”
“So fucking much.”