Chapter 35
35
Hazel
The Dutton Estate was as familiar as my own home, and I loved seeing how much things had stayed the same. While I was grateful to Elizabeth for clearing out my house so that my pack could make it our own, it was nice to see some things were still the same. Pieces of my past blending into my future.
As Rhett and Jude peeled away from me in the foyer to go talk to Kevin and Elizabeth about their omega foundation and the new security protocols, I wandered up the curved staircase to where I knew Calla’s room was.
My fingers slid along the polished rail, and I remembered Crew’s brothers, Jameson and Oliver, challenging him to see who could slide down the fastest. Ollie won by default when he tumbled over the last few feet of the railing and crashed into the table below. He’d needed six stitches over his left eye. Once she’d stopped freaking out, Elizabeth had been furious.
At the top of the steps, I noticed a nickel-sized gouge in the wall. I remembered Calla knocking me and my top-heavy backpack against it when we’d been charging up the stairs after school. We’d been laughing and carrying on, and no one ever said anything about the imperfection.
Pictures I’d seen since I was little lined the hallway. Family portraits of the Duttons at all ages. First it was just the parents with Crew, then with Crew and Jameson. Then another when Ollie had come along, and finally one of the entire family with a newborn Calla.
There were more framed photos of school dances, graduations, and events. It told the story of this family. Of the love and camaraderie they shared.
And there were pictures of my family mixed in, too. A vacation picture of me with my front teeth missing as I stood on a beach between Ollie and Calla with Jameson and Crew making faces at us from behind. Mom and Elizabeth dressed up for an event. Dad with Joel, Kevin, and Grant.
I paused at the last picture, taken at the last school dance Calla and I had attended together in high school. Calla had been invited by no less than ten boys, but she shot them down to go with me. She said a best friend was always the best date.
“It was a fun night,” Calla mused, coming out of her bedroom at the end of the hall and standing beside me. She rested her head on my shoulder. “Remember Toby Gibbons trying to sneak in a bottle of vodka?”
I snorted. “Yeah. He got expelled.”
“He’s a teacher there now,” Calla told me with a soft laugh.
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “I heard he married another beta and they’re expecting their first baby.”
I stepped back. “I guess everyone’s moved on with their lives.”
A shadow passed through her eyes. “Most of them, yeah.”
“And you?” I asked, not willing to let my friend hide what was really going on from me.
She forced a smile. “Me? I’m good.”
“Calla, I know I was gone for a while, but you’re still my best friend.”
“I know that,” she argued, looking away.
I reached out and squeezed her hand. “I know when something’s wrong, and something is definitely wrong. I know things went to shit, but I didn’t forget what you told me about the pack you were seeing.”
Her lips thinned. “I don’t want to talk about them.”
I held fast when she tried to step away. “Cal, talk to me.”
Unexpected tears shone in her eyes. “I can’t.”
My heart twisted as I watched her face crumple, and I pulled her in for a hug. Each little gasp and sob broke my heart, and all I could do was hold her and hope she shared some of the burden with me.
“I’m so tired, Hazel,” she whispered, shuddering in my arms. “I’m just so tired.”
“Please let me help,” I murmured, stroking her hair. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
Sniffling, she pulled back and glanced around like she was worried someone might come down the hallway any minute. “In here.” She waved me into her room.
Calla’s room had always seemed like it was designed for a fairy tale princess. Pinks, purple, and creams with curtains that shimmered and sequin accent pillows. The duvet was like curling up on a cloud, and that wasn’t even counting the nest that was on the other side of her bathroom.
If the rest of the house was like coming home, entering Calla’s bedroom was like entering another dimension.
I froze in the doorway, gaping at the yellow walls and sharp white lines of the industrial furniture. Gone were the soft pastels and sparkly things. Everything looked so… sterile. So clinical.
So un-Calla.
My best friend was stiff as she glanced at me. “I redid my room. Thought I could use something more adult.”
I hesitantly took a step into the space. “It’s… different. But if you like it, then that’s all that matters.”
“Of course I do,” she replied, the brittle bite in her tone a dead giveaway that she was lying through her pretty white teeth.
Clearing her throat, she gestured to the small sitting space by the balcony doors. Gone was the plush window seat swathed in gauzy pink and white curtains that she would spend hours daydreaming and drawing in. Now it was just a window with two chairs and a stark white end table between them.
I made my way over and sat, my confusion only growing.
“You don’t like it.” Her tone was wooden if not a smidge accusatory.
“Do you like it?” I countered.
She flinched and smoothed a hand over the back of the other chair before sitting in it. “I mean, it’s not rainbows and fairies, but we all have to grow up sometime, right?”
“It has nothing to do with growing up,” I pointed out as gently as I could. “You’re the one who told me to trust my instincts as an omega. To lean into things that feel right.”
“And you should,” she answered.
“Then why aren’t you doing that?” I pressed, trying to be understanding, but none of this added up. “Cal, you can’t tell me this makes you happy. I know you.” My insides were all tangled, and I felt the questioning tugs of concern from my pack. I quickly shot back a soothing energy so they knew I was okay.
“Maybe you don’t know me anymore,” Calla finally shot back. “You knew a little girl who thought she’d find her perfect pack and ride off into the sunset.”
“I remember.”
“Yeah, well, I grew up,” she finished bitterly.
“Calla, look at me.” I waited until I had her attention. “I’m not your parents or your brothers. You can’t get rid of me by telling me what you think I want to hear. I don’t care if I was gone for four years or forty. Maybe I’m out of line for pushing, but I love you too much to let you keep going like this.”
“Like what?”
“You look miserable,” I said with a soft sigh. “Every time I see you, you look sadder than the last. And when you’re not sad, you’ve got this empty, vacant stare that tells me something else is going on. Plus, you told me the other pack forced you to do something you didn’t want?”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she huffed, picking at an invisible smudge on her skirt.
“Please don’t lie to me,” I murmured. “If you really don’t want to talk about it, then fine. It hurts, but I’ll understand. Just don’t lie to me. It was a big deal. I know you’re trying to play it off like it wasn’t, but that doesn’t change facts.”
She stood abruptly and paced to the balcony doors. Pushing aside the curtain, she peered out.
I knew the view of the back yard. Of the pool, the tennis court, and the garden that Elizabeth adored. On a clear day, like today, the Pacific Ocean was visible on the horizon.
“I don’t want anyone to know,” she finally whispered. “My parents, my brothers…” She gave me a pointed look.
I swallowed. “Cal, you know I love your brother. The best I can offer is that I also won’t offer up anything you share in private. And I think Crew would understand that. But, honey, based on what you told me before? I think it might be a good idea to tell someone.”
Her shoulders sagged as she gave the barest of nods. “I was a wreck after you disappeared. Mom was busy setting up her foundation, Crew was with the FBI. Jameson was in college, and Ollie had gotten a full athletic scholarship. The dads were busy at work, and I just felt… forgotten. You know I didn’t have many friends, and it didn’t get any easier being an omega.”
I winced, remembering all the girls who always hung around Calla, but it was rarely for her. It was because of her three hot older brothers, or Kevin’s media empire, or the Dutton name. I’d even seen parents push their kids to befriend Calla in hopes they’d be invited into the Dutton inner circle.
Crew, Jameson, and Oliver had always taken it in stride. But Calla, my sweet and wonderful best friend, had been gutted every time a friend showed their true colors.
“I loved being an omega,” she added. “Ever since I was little, all I wanted was what my mom had. I wanted a pack to adore me, to cherish me. I was every omega cliché, Haze.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I assured her, wanting to go and hug her again, but knowing she was trying to tell me an ugly truth that had been buried too long.
“Once I graduated, Mom mentioned the West Coast Omega Ball. I’d suppressed my first heat because my parents wanted me to finish high school before I was seriously courted by a pack, and I agreed. But after I was done with school, I wanted a pack. A family.” A sad smile played on her lips. “Babies, even.”
Calla had presented like most omegas, as a teenager. And, like a lot of omegas, her parents—as her legal guardians—signed off on heat suppressants. It made sense, but I also knew that what she was saying was exactly what she’d been telling me she’d wanted since she was a little girl.
“I met the Capshaw pack at the event.”
My jaw went tight, remembering what she’d told me about them. How she’d trusted them with her first heat. How they’d tried to make her into the perfect little Stepford omega. The way they’d cut her to pieces with words before coercing her back into bed by playing on her omega nature.
Yeah, that shit still didn’t sound like anything less than assault.
“I thought they loved me,” she whispered, sounding broken. “But they just loved that I was a Dutton, like everyone else. That, and the fact that I was a stupid little omega who was happy to follow their orders. God, I was such a fool, Hazel.”
“Calla…”
“Everytime they picked out clothes for me, I thought it was their way of showing they cared. When they picked what foods I ate or what drink I had, I thought it was them proving their devotion.” She swiped at her eyes. “But I was an idiot. A pretty little idiot they could control.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I snapped, shooting to my feet.
“Oh, no?” She let out a pained laugh. “I’m failing out of college, Haze. I’ve twisted myself into a pretzel trying to be this perfect omega. Smart, confident, and in control. In reality, I’m falling apart.”
I grabbed her shoulders. “Cal, you’re falling apart because you’re trying to fix something that isn’t broken. You are not broken. They are. What they did to you is criminal.”
She scoffed and twisted away. “They were my pack. They’d been approved by OS to bond me. Thank God for Papa, or they’d have bonded me during my heat.”
“What do you mean?” I asked slowly.
She sniffed. “Papa hated them, and so he said we had a mandatory courtship of six months. My heat happened during the fifth month. I broke things off with them after it. Even still, they tried to sue my parents.”
“For what ?” I demanded, outraged at the freaking audacity.
She shrugged. “They spent a lot of time and energy on me. I mean, the lawsuit was dismissed by a judge almost as soon as it was filed, but still.”
“Those guys sound like arrogant, entitled douche canoes,” I hissed, running a hand through my hair.
“After that, I decided to change. I decided I wouldn’t be that naive, stupid girl anymore.” Her bright blue eyes swept around the room. “I got rid of the stuff that screamed little girl . I bought adult stuff and went to college. I changed everything I could think of. I even cut my hair.” She touched the ends of her blonde strands that fell just below her shoulders.
“And are you happy?” I asked.
She shook her head, looking miserable. “I hate school, Haze. I hate my room. Even my nest feels wrong.”
“Why?” I reached for her hands.
“Because this all feels like it’s for someone else. Someone that I’ll never be,” she whispered, shoulders hunching.
I wrapped my arms around her again. “Have you thought about talking to someone about what happened?”
She stiffened. “I’m not reporting it, Hazel. Besides, it would be their word against mine, and it’s been years since it happened.”
“Even though it was assault?”
She shot me an annoyed look and jerked out of my hold. “A pack that was about to bond me convinced me to have sex with them. Not exactly a crime. Besides, everyone knows omegas just want sex, right? The two requirements for being an omega are a knot and a nest.”
“It is when they use their influence to manipulate and force you,” I replied.
Calla trembled, looking close to breaking.
I backed down at once, gentling my approach. “Okay, but I meant like a therapist,” I suggested.
“No.”
“Maybe—”
“I’m an omega,” she reminded me. “That means anything in my medical history is shared with my parents. They’ll have access to every transcript of every session, and so will any other pack that courts me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I insisted.
She pressed a hand to her chest. “Maybe not, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still ashamed of it.”
I bit the inside of my cheek because I understood that compulsion. Even now, I was embarrassed and humiliated by the things Donovan had done to me. The things I’d witnessed and endured had left an oily stain on my soul, and hiding that from the world seemed to make the most sense.
“See?” Her gaze was piercing as she leveled it at me. “Not so easy to take your own advice, is it?”
No, it wasn’t.
But maybe it was time I did.