18
hannah
There’s someone knocking on my door, and I guess I’m not surprised when I see it’s Ellis.
“I am not ready yet,” I say and shut the door on him.
He stops me, wedging a hand in the door. “Look, I brought you some better makeup,” he says. “And I’ll help you get ready for the date if you let me in.”
“The date,” I say, realizing this, “is not just with Gatlin, it’s with all three of you.”
“Yeah,” says Ellis. “You’re cool with that, right?”
I should have realized, of course, that was what it was. “This is just a lot to take in.”
“You want me to do your makeup, right? I’m really good at it.”
I shake my head at him. He’s standing out there in a black clingy t-shirt and pair of jeans, and he’s too gorgeous for words, as usual, and I waver. “You don’t make me look that much better with the makeup, you know. You just make me look like me, but wearing makeup.”
“Oh, come on, I have mad skills,” he says, and he’s pushing his way into my apartment. “Besides, I have to grovel.”
“Oh, okay,” I say. “I don’t think it works if you announce that’s what you’re doing.”
“The thing with Callie was a mistake, and I know that now, and it’s never going to happen again.”
“Definitely don’t say that,” I say. “You’re delusional about her.”
“No, I’m not,” he says. He thinks about it. “Okay, maybe I am. But the point is, I want you, and I don’t want her. I have a past with her, but I don’t have a future with her. You and me, this is different. It’s better.”
“Ellis, stop,” I say. “You’re saying this because I haven’t taken the Plan B, that’s all.”
“Not…” He wavers. “Look, here’s the thing. Kane really wants you to take the Plan B, and Gatlin really fucking does not, and I…” He looks me up and down.
I lift a shoulder. “Do you want me to have your baby, Ellis?”
“Maybe,” he says.
I let out a noise of disbelief, and I can’t even be in the same room with him.
I walk out, back towards my bedroom. On the one hand, I’m disgusted with him for saying that.
On the other hand, it makes me feel whatever thing I feel for him, that messed-up thing where I crave him even though I know he’s bad for me, and I cannot have a baby with a man I feel like that about.
I know this.
Why haven’t I taken the pill already?
He’s talking. “You don’t have to, and I would never ask that of you, but it feels… the idea of it… it’s good.”
I turn on him. “Is it good, or is it like when you’re pretending to be my boss and telling me to let ugly men touch my boobs?” I say. “You’d love it if I’d let you make use of my body to grow your baby, because you love using me.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not being very grovel-ly, am I? I can do better.”
I put my hands on my hips, waiting.
He squares his shoulders. “I’m very, very sorry.”
I wait.
“It must have felt bad when you walked in on us like that.”
I wait.
“So, I’m sorry about that.”
And then, it is quiet.
“That’s it?” I say finally.
He shoves his hands into his pockets, making a face. “No, clearly, I can do better.”
“You don’t know how it felt,” I say, “because you never feel the way I feel, invisible and unimportant. And then you make me feel important, but then you rip it all away, because what do I matter to you, really, if you won’t choose me?”
“You’re not invisible,” he says, taking a step towards me. “You’re very important. I do choose you.”
“But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like you don’t give a shit about me or my feelings and you only care about your own. It feels like you can’t be bothered to worry about me. Or your own mates, for fuck’s sake. It feels worse than bad.”
He bows his head. “Yeah, I know. I know that having me as a boyfriend is kind of a punishment. You deserve better than this, and I know that.”
“I do deserve better,” I say. “And I want you to feel bad, because I feel bad, and now you should feel bad, and I want you to suffer, at least a little, because that’s only fair.
” I glare at him, and he looks really pathetic, actually, and kind of miserable, and it isn’t as satisfying as I hoped it would be.
I throw up my hands. “Look, whatever, I forgive you.”
He raises his gaze and furrows his brow. “You shouldn’t, though. I mean, not yet. I mean, if you have a modicum of self-respect—”
“Well, that’s the thing, I don’t,” I say. “Have self-respect, that is. When it comes to you, I have none at all.”
“Okay, well, whatever. I hate myself, too,” he says. “It’s why we’re, you know, on the same level in some way.”
“Fuck you, I do not hate myself,” I say.
“I’m not saying I want you to have my baby, but if you wanted to, I would… it wouldn’t be bad.”
“Well,” I say, “I’m probably going to take the Plan B. After the date, I’m probably going to take it.”
“Okay,” he says.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
Moments pass.
“Let me do your makeup,” he says.
I sigh. “Oh, fuck it. Fine.”
He crowds me in the bathroom and blocks my view of the mirror and gazes at my face and gives me orders in his soft and scratchy voice, and his dark curls hang down into his eyes as he tilts his head this way and that way and then smears eyeshadow on me and uses his thumb to put lipstick on my bottom lip.
He backs away eventually and lets me look at myself in the mirror.
I have to say it’s one of his better makeup jobs. I don’t look like someone other than myself, but I do look good. I smile at my reflection. “Not bad,” I say.
He slides an arm around me. “You look amazing.”
I look up at him. Has he ever said anything like that to me?
He looks down at me, and the expression on his face is familiar, and I realize this is the way he looks at me, and I can see that there’s something in it, something that…
I don’t know if it’s love, like he said, or something else, something less intense, but he, uh, he likes me.
It’s real, genuine fondness in his expression, and I don’t know when that happened.
But whenever it did, I was entirely oblivious, and I didn’t even think I was ever going to get that from anyone.
I take a deep breath, and I push out of his arms. I go into the bedroom.
He follows me. “You like my alphas?”
I turn to him. “I mean… am I allowed? We’re going on a date, so I guess I’m allowed?”
“You’re allowed.” He grins. “They’re very easy to like.”
I grin, too. “They are. But I don’t understand, Ellis. Since when am I allowed, because you kicked me out for having sex with Gatlin—”
“That’s not why.”
“You were jealous.”
“Okay, maybe that’s why, and maybe I was jealous, but I’m not now. It’s different.”
“Why is it different? Because I could be pregnant and you want Gatlin to be around to compensate for your lack of fathering capacity?” Maybe this is a little sharp, but he deserves it.
“No,” he says. “No, I swear, it’s just… I felt jealous, but then it faded, and I don’t anymore.”
I don’t believe him. But I keep going, because there’s more. “How did you end up with them? And why are you the way you are about them—well, the way you were—why did you keep them a secret? Why did you practically melt down when they were mentioned?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m dramatic. I overreact.”
“No, you’re an omega,” I say. “My mother is an alpha, so I know all about big reactions. It’s okay. I don’t mean to imply that because your actions were surprising, there’s something wrong with you. What I mean is, is there something about them I don’t know that I should?”
“No,” he says. “No, there’s nothing bad about them.
I mean… maybe Kane talked Gatlin into letting me leave them.
Kane’s very easy-come-easy-go. He likes big parties and lots of fun drinks and buying new suits you’re only going to wear once.
He can move through things quickly, and I think he decided—when I got to be a little bit of a handful—that maybe I could be one of those things he moved on from. ”
“That’s… maybe bad,” I say.
Ellis thinks about it. “No, because he didn’t mean it. He’ll say shit, and then go back on it immediately. He’s been the one trying to get me to come back with them. He told me he loved me. Gatlin doesn’t say that.”
“He doesn’t?”
“He did once. I didn’t say it back. We had a discussion, and then it was like, Gatlin wanted it off the table until we were in a better place, and it’s never come back on the table. We’ve just gotten into worse and worse places, admittedly.”
“But why?” I say.
“It’s my fault,” he says.
“It can’t all be your fault,” I say. “And if you want me to be in a relationship with these men, too, if you want me to even consider having a baby and letting them be involved, I need to understand everything.”
He lets out a breath. He gestures for me to sit down on the foot of my bed. “Okay, well, if we’re starting at the beginning, you should sit down.”
ellis
I’m not sure exactly how to explain all of this to Hannah.
Partly, it’s because I don’t want to go back and relive it.
It was a difficult period of time in my life, and when I think of it, I feel my chest grow tight and my jaw clench and there’s an ache behind my temples.
I was trying so hard, all the time, not to go to Callie.
I explain to Hannah that I found out about the website, the invite-only, alphas-only website through another omega.
He was a guy I met at a modeling event, because I did try to get into modeling, but I failed at it.
I got followers on social media, but not enough that I could write my own ticket. I booked things, but I screwed them up.
One time, I just drank too much the night before, slept through my alarm, and got a real late start. They fired me via text while I was on my way to the place where I was supposed to have been an hour ago.