6 #2
He’s going to her. And he says he loves her at the end of every conversation with her like they are just some old couple, which I guess, in a way, they are, I guess, no matter that she married my brother, Ellis has the prior claim, Ellis is her childhood sweetheart, but—
How did it even happen, the two of them, growing up in the same fucking house?
“Do not look at me like that, Hannah,” he says quietly. “You knew what this was when you agreed to it.”
“Are you trying to get her back?” I say. “Is that what this is?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “We can’t be together. It’s impossible,” he says, but in a way that lets me know that he wants her back more than anything on earth. “So, just… stay. Please?”
I shouldn’t stay.
I should get the hell out of here before this gets even worse.
ellis
Calliope and I have a place where we meet up, sometimes. It’s out near the river, and there’s a little dirt parking lot where we can park our cars and no one else is there. When I get there, her car is already there.
She gets out of her car as I pull in. She gets into my back seat.
I turn off the car and climb back there with her.
She shakes her head at me. “How could you?”
“You told me it was over,” I say. She seemed really serious, too.
She said that she and Andrew want to try to get pregnant, and clearly, having me in the mix with that is not doable.
Not only because she does not want there to be any confusion over who the baby’s father is, but because I can’t even picture myself as a father.
I need to be far out of her life if she’s going to be a mother, and I guess I get it.
“So, two minutes later you go and fuck my husband’s sister?” Her voice cracks. “That is a goddess-damned overreaction, and you know it is.”
She’s very upset because she swears by the goddess, just like we’re back on the compound. And so I don’t say anything, because what is there to say? I overreact. We already know this about me.
“Look,” she says, “I’ve been thinking about it, and if you’re serious that you can’t let me go, then maybe we can try, like, a pack thing.”
“No,” I say.
“But if you’re—”
“We’ve talked about this,” I say. “And we’ve tried this. Andrew is not my alpha, and that’s very obvious—”
“You don’t have an alpha,” she says. “You can’t handle any alpha at all.”
I can’t look at her. She’s right. I can’t handle any alpha at all, but there are things she doesn’t know, also, things that I could explain to her, that Andrew and I don’t click on a visceral level, but that I can…
I have… there’s a certain amount of clicking I’m capable of with the right alpha, anyway.
“So, it would just be me,” she says. “Because that’s what you want, right? Me? That’s why you did this?” She gets out her phone and waves it at me. She pulls it in, and she starts the recording, and we listen to Hannah’s sex noises together. “Is it why? Because you want me?”
My voice is strangled. “You know it is.”
“So, then… you’ll have me.”
“You mean share you, and we’ve talked about this, too,” I say.
“You can’t be fucking serious, Ellis. I’m not leaving my alpha. I’m not running off with you. You’re an omega. What happens if I go into heat? If we both go into heat?”
“We fuck a lot,” I say, annoyed, even though I know the agony that is our double heat without anyone to soothe us.
And I know what it is to be soothed now, by an alpha, to be taken care of, filled, knotted, claimed.
“Anyway, we’re both on suppressants now, so it won’t happen.
” The drugs have been released by prescription now, though—for years—they weren’t widely available because they would have threatened the business of the heat and rut facilities that take in alphas and omegas.
“Yeah, well, if I want a baby, I have to go off the suppressants and go into heat,” she says. “And you can’t give me that.”
Actually, I have knocked her up before. Twice.
The first time, she lost it, just naturally, and it was real early on.
The other time, it was the reason we left the compound, so that we could find some way to get an abortion.
So, anyway, we know I could give her a baby, at least in a physical way, but she’s right, I’d be a shit father, and we’d be shit parents together, and I know she wants some life that I can’t give her, and I don’t—for the life of me—know why I can’t give her what she wants.
I’m an omega. I’m selfish. I want things for myself, and I want her.
“Ellis,” she says, “you can’t think things through. You and me together, we’d be miserable. We’re miserable now.”
“Why’d you ask me to come here if we were just going to have this same conversation again?” I say.
“I could hear her breathing. I knew you were with her,” she snaps. “So, I wanted to see if you’d leave her to come see me.”
“You know I will always drop everything for you,” I say.
She eyes me. She nods.
“But doesn’t everyone in your life do that for you, Callie?” My voice is a little nasty. “Doesn’t everyone just bend themselves into a pretzel to give you every little thing you want?”
“Not you,” she says, fierce.
She’s right about that. I’m devoted to her, but I don’t do her bidding, not like Andrew, who lives to please her.
“Show me your cock,” she says.
“I thought we were never doing this again,” I say.
“We’re not,” she says. “I’m not going to touch you.”
I let out a breath. Okay. But whatever, fine, sure. I undo my pants, and I pull everything aside, and I’m hard for her and she lets out a breath and bites down on her lip as she looks me over.
“Good boy,” she says. “Very good. I want you to play with yourself while you lick me.” She’s undoing her own clothes.
It’s not easy to get into a position in the back seat of my car where I can lick her pussy, but I figure it out.
She tastes like forbidden fruit, something so good that you know it’s too good to be true, like sin and temptation and the sweetness of destruction.
I lick her like I can’t get enough. I lick her and she grabs handfuls of my hair and pulls and shrieks and I don’t stop and I can’t stop and I won’t stop.
Eventually, it’s over. We’re sitting slumped against the back seat, staring up at the ceiling of my car.
“He says,” she whispers, “that he’s been very understanding thus far about this. He says he knows I’m an omega, and that maybe omegas can’t always be monogamous, but he’s monogamous to me, so… I have to stop this, and you know I do, and I don’t know why you’re such a dick about it.”
“You don’t have to tell him,” I say, sulky.
“That is the deal, though. He just wants me to be honest.”
“But it hurts him,” I say.
“Well, he feels inadequate. And what am I supposed to say to him? What is it about you, anyway?” She looks at me, as if she’s going to figure it out now, when we’ve never understood this about ourselves.
“I feel inadequate, too,” I say. “You need him, for whatever reason.”
“Well, this is why I’m saying, maybe I just need both of you, and maybe we make peace with that, and we try to figure it out. I was thinking you just get a vasectomy, like, you don’t even want kids, and then—”
“Are you fucking serious?” I groan. Cut off my ability to ever father a child? Why does that settle weirdly in me?
“Well, that’s the biggest problem, isn’t it? Otherwise, it’s just… we make a schedule. You and Andrew never see each other. And you stay away from the baby.”
“What? I’m not allowed to see your kid?” I sit up, glaring at her. “I’m not going to hurt a child. You know me.”
“I do know you,” she says to the ceiling.
I swear underneath my breath, getting my clothes back in order. “Get the fuck out of my car.”
She sits up. “You don’t get to be like this. You don’t get act all wounded, when we both know—”
“I’m not a monster, Callie.”
“You are so a monster!”
“God, you are such a bitch sometimes.”
“And the fact that you would think you could call me that—”
“Out. Just go away,” I say.
“I hate you,” she says to me.
“I hate you,” I say.
She throws the door open and gets out of the car, and I wriggle up into the driver’s seat, and I start the car, and the back door is still open as I pull out and she screams after me and I peel out of there as my car beeps at me about the door being ajar, and then it slams closed, and I barrel out of there at top speed.
I’m positive that Hannah will be gone when I get back to my place.
But she’s not.
She’s asleep in my bed, still only wearing my t-shirt. I look down on her and I think about waking her up and telling her to get the fuck out, too, because I need to just pack up and go. I can sell this place. I don’t need to even be around that woman.
Calliope Karras-Wihlbilt is bad for me.
I get into the other side of the bed and lay next to Hannah, and I think that I will fix all of this in the morning. I’ll wake up with a clear head, and I’ll send Hannah home, and I’ll pack up my shit, and I’ll go elsewhere.
Maybe I’ll call them, even.
They did say that if I wanted…
Yeah.
Maybe I will.