Jordy #2
“He’d gone to a friend’s house that afternoon.
While he was gone, his father and I got into a fight.
We were always fighting,” she mused, and to my relief she didn’t sound particularly pained.
Like she was telling a story that had happened to someone else.
I guessed maybe my dad had done a good job of helping her get over all of that and letting her move on. I hoped I could do that for Kieran.
“But for whatever reason that night, it really escalated,” she went on.
“We were screaming at each other, and then… He just got so mad. It was like something broke in him,” she remembered, brows drawing together a bit.
“Well, I guess you don’t need the gory details,” she decided.
“He started hitting me. A lot. I couldn’t really get away from him, and I was afraid he might kill me. ”
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said, my voice cracking.
I could feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, and I quickly wiped them away with my sleeve.
Getting emotional wouldn’t make it any easier for her to finish.
I’d already known that part, but it was so hard imagining something like that happening to someone like her.
She’d always been so kind to me, from the moment I’d met her.
Without her, my dad would have been so lost and unhappy. We both would have.
“It’s alright,” she assured me softly. “That was a lifetime ago. You don’t have to feel upset.”
“I’m okay,” I said, giving a resolute sniff and willing the tear residue to suck back into my eyeballs.
“Anyway, Kieran happened to come home, just then. He wasn’t really a kid anymore,” she explained. I knew Kieran had been 14 when his parents had split up. “He’d started getting bigger, more muscular,” she went on. “He was…”
“Becoming an alpha,” I finished.
She nodded a bit. “I don’t think he’d exactly realized it yet. Not the alpha part, of course he didn’t realize that until… Well, until it happened.”
Clearing my throat, I was glad she hadn’t extrapolated much on that thought.
I always felt incredibly embarrassed discussing the secondary puberty that happened when someone started presenting as an alpha or omega.
I remembered feeling like a circus freak the first time I’d felt myself leaking slick, and how miserably humiliated I’d felt after that when my dad had dragged me to a specialist to test my blood for the omega hormone.
If Kieran hadn’t already shown as an alpha, I might have cried for feeling so foreign and strange and alone.
Of course, I didn’t feel that way for long. And I definitely didn’t feel that way now. I was thrilled to be an omega, otherwise I couldn’t be Kieran’s mate.
“I mean, I don’t think he realized that he’d become too big to really be physically bullied anymore.
He mostly just avoided being home at the same time as his father,” she explained.
“But when he came home and saw what was happening, he…” She trailed off, gesturing with her hands. “Well, he defended me.”
The way she phrased it felt ominous, putting a little curl of anxiety in my stomach. “Meaning?”
“Well, he… He got Michael off me.” It was rare for anyone to ever even say Kieran’s dad’s name.
I didn’t like hearing it. “And then, I think…” She hesitated again.
“I can’t really say what was going on in his head.
Because, like I said, he hasn’t really talked about it.
But I think maybe everything that Michael had done to him, and to us, over the years…
I think it had all been kind of building up. ”
Suddenly understanding, my hands tensed where they rested on the table.
“So he snapped, is basically what you’re saying.”
“Basically,” she agreed. “It took a lot, but I was finally able to get through to him and get him to calm down. By the time the police and the ambulance got there, his dad was in pretty bad shape. Really bad,” she reiterated, and she didn’t have to keep going for me to understand. Kieran had almost killed him.
“Did Kieran get in trouble for that?” I wondered, unable to stop myself from asking.
“No, not really,” she said. “He was so young, and the police took my statement. I was in pretty bad shape too, so it wasn’t very hard for them to believe me when I said he’d only been defending me.
And then once Michael came to in the hospital, I’d already left him and taken Kieran.
He didn’t press charges, and he didn’t contest the divorce.
I think… I think maybe he was afraid of what Kieran might do to him if he tried anything. ”
I didn’t say anything, my mind racing with the new information.
So much was clicking, making sense now. The way he’d always warned me about alphas, insisting I should be afraid, even of him.
Especially of him. The way he always looked so guilty and filled to the brim with self-loathing when he’d gotten a little too excited or rough with me.
The way he’d been so desperate to keep himself from me.
He was afraid of hurting me. Or hurting someone because of me.
My stomach pitched, and suddenly all I wanted was him. I wanted to reassure him of my love, that I’d love him forever no matter what, and I’d never, never, been afraid of him. And I never would be.
When he chose that very inopportune moment to come stomping down the stairs, looking grouchy and out of it, as he often did after waking up, I had to grit my teeth and clench all my muscles to keep from springing up out of the chair and going to him.
Because on top of looking grumpy and half-dead, he also looked chiseled and sexy and dark and brooding.
And I was so in love with him, I was half sick with it.
She looked over to him, giving my hand a quick squeeze, like she was silently asking me not to say anything to him, not to mention that we’d had that talk.
It was totally unnecessary, but I hoped to reassure her by giving Kieran a casual greeting.
She echoed mine, telling him good morning like always.
“Morning,” he mumbled, barely sparing either of us a glance as he stumbled to the refrigerator. He had no idea we’d been talking about anything important. It was a relief. I didn’t want him burdened with the knowledge yet, though I knew I’d have to let him know at some point.
Mom left the table to go finish whatever last minute chores she’d decided were so urgent that they had to be done immediately, and he sat down across from me with a bowl of cereal.
One thing that definitely wasn’t contributing to the danger of our parents finding out about us was the way that he acted with me when we weren’t totally alone.
He hadn’t let slip even one smidgen of real affection for me, and this morning was no exception.
I wasn’t offended. The way he acted with me in private more than made up for it.
When he started scrolling his phone, I knew it was a good time for me to catch our mom, out of his earshot, to wrap up our little conversation.
“I have to pee,” I announced to him as I stood. He flicked his unimpressed gaze up to me, raising an eyebrow.
“Okay? Do you want a chaperone or what?”
“Yeah,” I answered, blinking innocently as I lowered my hand to my crotch, lightly cupping it there in a crude gesture. “Can you hold it for me while I go?”
His spoon dropped out of his hand, clattering into the bowl and spraying a few drops of milk out onto the table as he frantically glanced around for a sign that either of our parents had heard me. When he was sure they hadn’t, he turned back to me with his eyes narrowed, his cheeks darkened.
“You’re testing my fucking patience, Jordy,” he hissed. He really hated when I teased him now, but he should have known I wasn’t dumb enough to say anything where anyone could hear us.
Snorting, I pranced away from the table, making sure to sway my hips just a little. I didn’t have to look back to know he’d be checking out my butt. I wanted to make sure he remembered it was there, because they’d be leaving really soon.
Ambushing her in the laundry room, Mom jumped a little, startled, when she saw me hovering in the doorway.
“God, Jordy!” She said, shaking her head and laughing at herself a little bit. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I just, um… I just wanted to say thank you for talking to me about all that stuff. And I’m sorry if it made you feel bad or anything.”
“No, sweetie, you didn’t,” she promised. “I’m perfectly okay now. If it made you feel better, then I’m happy to help.”
“Um, yeah. It did,” I admitted. Better wasn’t exactly the right word, but it had helped me a lot. “Love you,” I tacked on at the end, and she smiled, bringing out an arm and pulling me against her in a hug.
“I love you too.”
Finally, my dad came out of the bedroom, all showered and dressed and ready to go.
“Oh, Dad,” I remembered suddenly. “I’m about to change the sensor for my glucose meter.”
The sensors expired about every 2 weeks, and it usually took about an hour for the new one to sync to the app. I always let him know when I was changing it, just in case he chose that hour to check my levels, he wouldn’t think I’d spontaneously died or anything.
“Thanks for letting me know,” he said, leaning down to give me a kiss on the top of my head. “We’ll see you guys tonight.”
“Bye! Have fun,” I said, giving them a friendly wave as they made their way out into the living room.
“Bye,” Kieran said, though his farewell didn’t sound nearly as enthusiastic. Of course he wouldn’t want them suspecting he was excited to be alone with me or anything.
When the front door closed, the key from the outside engaging the lock with a click, we both stared at each other as the silence settled around us.
When I stood up and walked by him to gather up the stuff I needed to change out my sensor, he reached up and grasped me around the hips, pulling me to him briefly.