16. Shay #2
Soren’s cheeks go pink, but he keeps going. “I don’t know Declan as well as you do. But I know he loves you. Everyone can see it. And maybe he said the wrong thing because he was scared, too.”
My laugh comes out sharp and ugly. “And that’s supposed to help?”
“No.” He twists the edge of his sleeve around his fingers. “I just mean… you deserve someone who wants to take care of you. You don’t have to earn it first.”
The words land and I can’t breathe around them.
Soren looks down before I can answer, like he’s embarrassed by how honest he just got. The room smells like all of them, their familiar scents layered together under the soup and cold brew and the clean laundry smell of our apartment.
Home.
The word gets under my ribs and digs in.
“I didn’t ask to be taken care of,” I say, my voice quieter than I want it to be.
“No,” Milo says. “But you asked to be loved.”
I look at him.
His eyes are shiny. Damn it.
“I didn’t—”
“You did.” He gives me this sad little smile. “Every time you stayed upstairs. Every time you went back. Every time you helped with the bar even when you kept pretending it was only work.”
“That was work.”
“Sure,” Benji says. “And I’m the mayor.”
Jude pushes to his feet so fast the desk chair wheels back into the wall. “Okay. I need more soup, because if I stay in here, I’m going to say something that gets me murdered.”
“You’ve already said several things that qualify,” I tell him.
“Come on, Milo.”
Milo glances at the pot. “There’s enough.”
“Second batch,” Jude says, grabbing the pot handles before Milo can object. “We need to reheat it.”
“It’s hot.”
“Then we need to make it hotter.”
“That’s not how—”
Jude puts a hand on Milo’s shoulder and steers him toward the door. Milo looks back at me, worried, but he goes.
Soren follows, pausing in the doorway.
“You don’t have to be perfect for somebody to choose you,” he says softly.
Then he’s gone, too.
The door clicks shut.
Benji stays.
Of course he does.
He doesn’t look at me right away. He moves to my desk, plucks a napkin out of the brown paper bag he brought, then sits on the edge of my bed with a pen. His knee bumps mine. Familiar. Easy. He starts drawing on the napkin without asking.
A heart.
Then a dagger through it.
Then another dagger, because apparently the first one wasn’t making the point.
“You’ve always had a flair for subtlety,” I say.
“Fuck off.”
There he is.
I swallow another bite of soup. It tastes like nothing.
Benji keeps doodling. “They’re all being annoying.”
“Thank you.”
“But they’re right.”
“Never mind.”
“Don’t make me agree with Jude twice in one night. It feels medically dangerous.”
I stare at the scar through my eyebrow in the dark reflection of my laptop screen. My curls are a mess. There are bruise-colored shadows under my eyes. I look like someone who got hit by a truck and then argued with the truck about liability.
Benji’s pen scratches against the napkin.
“I know your whole thing,” he says.
My jaw tightens. “Do you.”
“Yeah.” He looks up. His expression is pure Benji, which is to say he looks like he’d rather chew through his own arm than be caught having a feeling. “Because it was my whole thing.”
That shuts me up.
He taps the pen against the napkin. “I spent months acting like Knox showing up again was the worst thing that could happen to me. And some of it was fair, because he hurt me. But most of it was just easier than admitting I wanted him anyway.”
“This isn’t the same.”
“No. It’s not.” His mouth pulls sideways. “You’re worse.”
“Rude.”
“You’re welcome.”
I huff out a laugh before I can stop it. It dies fast.
Benji holds my gaze.
“Independence isn’t the same as being alone, Shay,” he says.
I look down at the soup.
“I told myself the walls were keeping the bad stuff out. They were just keeping me in.” His voice is low, all the sarcasm gone. “You already let him in. That’s why it hurts this much. You don’t get to un-know that.”
The room is still.
I can hear Jude talking too loud in the kitchen. Milo telling him to stop touching things. Soren saying something too soft to make out.
But in here, it’s just Benji and me and a napkin with a heart stabbed clean through.
“You don’t understand,” I say.
“I understand enough.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice gets sharp because it has to.
Because if it doesn’t, it’ll break. “You didn’t grow up watching my mom become whatever some alpha needed her to be until he got bored.
You didn’t watch her pack up her life because he said he had a better apartment, then come home crying because she didn’t know how to pay the electric bill without him. ”
Benji doesn’t flinch.
I hate him for that.
“She’d always say it was different,” I keep going, the words spilling out before I can drag them back.
“Every guy. Every time. He loves me, Shay. He sees me. He wants to help. And then suddenly she’s got nothing.
Again. She’s standing in our kitchen trying to figure out who she is without some alpha telling her. ”
My eyes burn. I blink hard, refusing.
“I can’t do that,” I say. “I can’t be her. I can’t be some college omega with a rich older alpha paying for everything while I play house upstairs.”
“Declan isn’t your mom’s exes.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” The word comes out too fast. My hands are shaking around the bowl. “That’s why it’s worse.”
Benji goes quiet.
Because there it is.
Declan isn’t some guy who picked me up because I was available. He’s not temporary. He didn’t make me smaller. He listened when I had ideas. He gave me room behind that bar. He let me save something he loves and treated every spreadsheet like it mattered because I made it.
And when he got scared, he did what scared people do.
He reached for the thing he knew.
Money. Safety. A plan.
He did it wrong.
But so did I.
I took the worst thing he could’ve said and used it to run before he got the chance to say anything else.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
I set the soup on the desk because suddenly I can’t hold it.
Benji folds the napkin in half, creasing the little ruined heart until the dagger disappears.
“He fucked up,” he says. “You fucked up. Congratulations. You’re both people.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’m not comforting.”
“I noticed.”
He bumps his shoulder into mine.
The contact nearly undoes me.
I stare at my duffel bag by the door. The zipper is half-open. A stupid slash of green peeks out.
Benji follows my gaze.
“You took the towel,” he says.
“Don’t start.”
“Not starting anything. Just saying, people don’t steal sweaty bar towels because they’re indifferent.”
“It smelled good.”
“Yeah.” His voice goes softer. “Because it smelled like home.”
A raw sound tears out of my throat.
I press my lips together, but it’s no use. My face just… crumples. Fast and ugly and completely against my will. One second I’m sitting here trying to look like I have this handled, and the next I’m covering my face with both hands because if Benji sees me cry, I will have to fake my own death.
He doesn’t say anything.
He just sits there.
Which is worse. And better. Both.
“It’s too late,” I whisper into my palms, the words barely making it out.
Benji’s knee stays pressed against mine.
“I broke it.”
He’s quiet long enough that I have to look up.
His eyes are wet, too, which he’ll deny under oath. He doesn’t tell me it’s fine. Doesn’t say Declan’s waiting, doesn’t promise I’ll walk back into Byrne’s and get forgiven. This isn’t one of Jude’s stupid romance movies where everybody says the perfect thing at the perfect time.
He just looks at me like I’m worth the truth.
“Then you go find out,” he says. “That’s the part nobody can do for you.”