Chapter 8
jude
I wake before either of them because apparently, my survival instincts don’t care how warm the bed is.
For three breaths, I don’t move. The room is gray with early morning light, the blinds cutting pale lines across the floor and over the chair where my jeans are hanging half-off one arm. My shirt is near the desk. One sock is by the foot of the bed.
Hollis is asleep beside me, mostly on his stomach, one arm stretched across the space I must have crawled out of during the night.
His face is buried in the pillow, his hair is a mess, and without all that eager Alpha attention turned outward, he looks enormous and soft in a way that makes my fingers curl against the sheet.
His hand is open near my hip, like his body reached for me before his brain could tell it not to.
That’s the problem.
I slide out from under the blanket carefully, every muscle in my body protesting enough that I decide not to think about why.
Thinking about why means thinking about last night, and thinking about last night means remembering Hollis shaking under me while trying so hard to stay still.
It means remembering Bishop’s cock in my mouth and how perfect it felt there.
It means remembering the way I stayed afterward longer than I should’ve because Hollis' purr was under my cheek and Bishop’s hand was warm against my back.
So I don’t think about it. I get dressed instead.
My shirt is inside out when I find it, but fixing that would require taking longer, so I pull it over my head.
My jeans make too much noise when I yank them off the chair.
Hollis doesn’t stir, but I still freeze with one hand at my waistband. “Door’s not locked,” Bishop says.
I stop with one shoe in my hand, the rest of my clothes gathered badly against my chest. Bishop is sitting up against the headboard, awake enough that I know he saw the whole pathetic search-and-rescue mission for my jeans and kind enough not to comment on it.
The blanket is low on his hips, his hair mussed, and his eyes are steady on my face instead of drifting anywhere else.
“I wasn’t sneaking,” I whisper.
Bishop doesn’t argue. He just looks at me, which feels worse than being called out. I shove my foot into the shoe and reach for the other one, already halfway to the door in my head, but his voice follows before I can get there.
“We want you, Jude. Not just another night like this, although I won’t complain if there’s a repeat. This is about wanting you.”
My hand tightens around the second shoe.
There’s a joke somewhere. There’s always a joke somewhere, some clean little exit wound I can use to get out of the room without bleeding out my emotions.
This time, I can’t find it. Hollis breathes softly into the pillow between us, still asleep, still reaching across the empty space like his body hasn’t accepted I’m already gone.
“You don’t know me,” I throw back at Bishop, quickly rebuilding my mental walls.
“I know enough to want to.”
I glare at him as he slowly tangles his fingers with Hollis’, a gesture that holds more love and adoration in it than I can bear. I always knew Hollis was softer than the other Alphas on the team, but I had no idea he was such a... teddy bear.
My face scrunches up a little, my heart beating a little too fast for my liking, knowing full well my scent is probably sweetening as well.
I make a mental note to grab blockers on the way to class.
“I don’t do this,” I push out, refusing to let Bishop see anything I don’t want him to.
Ever since that incident last year, I haven’t let anyone get close.
Mostly because they were using me but also because I didn’t want to get hurt again.
Bishop’s gaze holds mine. “I’m well aware, Jude.
We also don’t do this.” His eyes drop to Hollis, a smile forming on his lips as he looks back at me.
“My Alpha is precious to me but he can’t always be vulnerable around everyone.
They weaponize it against him and he’s too nice to fight them back.
” Bishop swallows carefully, tilting his head to the side, making me realize that last night wasn’t just a way for me to let go.
It was also for Hollis. “If tonight was all there was, then I’m grateful for every moment of it.
But if not? The offer stands when you change your mind. ”
When.
I get the second shoe on without looking at him.
The door is only six steps away, and I make all six before I can do something humiliating, like ask what he means by the offer or glance back at Hollis’ sleeping hand one more time.
My fingers close around the knob and I swing the door open.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I say. The words feel like ash on my tongue, though, because not once from the stage until this morning did they pounce onto my scent.
They didn’t talk about the smell of my slick.
They don’t tell me I smelled like whatever sweet, soothing thing it is that I smell like.
It was all about touch and consent and letting me drive the moment.
I don’t know what to do with that so I just hurry back to my dorm.
Everything is exactly how I left it. One unmade bed.
One desk covered in notebooks. One laundry basket I keep pretending is a temporary storage system.
I check the time, realizing I have at least an hour before I have to be anywhere.
I drop my shoes by the door and crawl into the corner with my knees pulled to my chest, before grabbing my spare tube from the drawer. I liberally slather it across my gland, only relaxing when my body seems to do the same.
“I should avoid them,” I tell myself. Nothing good has ever come from trying to date on campus and I don’t have time to spare for dating online or anyone outside the school.
Avoiding Bishop and Hollis should be easy.
Knotlocke’s campus is huge, the athletic building has enough side entrances, and I have spent the last year perfecting the art of being difficult to find.
Not to mention, even as the team’s manager, I hardly talk to anyone on the team, Bishop and Hollis included.
By lunch, I’ve already rerouted around Bishop twice, handed the splits clipboard to Maisie before practice so I don’t have to stand near lane four, and changed in the single-stall bathroom near the old equipment hallway instead of the locker room.
A few people have asked how last night went, others jab at the whole encounter, and Reece. ..
The problem is that Hollis notices everything with his whole face.
He doesn’t follow me. He doesn’t crowd. He doesn’t corner me by the pool or call my name when I leave practice early with a fake errand about inventory sheets.
He just looks at me from across the deck like he’s trying very hard to respect a boundary and survive the experience at the same time.
It’s genuinely awful. I would prefer a villain.
Villains are easier. Villains wouldn’t make me feel guilty for dodging them.
Bishop is worse because he doesn’t look hurt. He looks like he knows exactly what I’m doing and has decided not to save me from my own bad coping mechanisms. Every time I glance up and catch him watching me, he turns his attention back to practice like he isn’t waiting.
By Thursday, stuffed into an art elective for my last credits to graduate, I’m exhausted from the logistics of avoiding two people who are actively giving me space.
I picked the class because it sounded like the least offensive option available.
Introduction to Visual Interpretation. No exams, one short paper, and allegedly no required presentations, which I now know was a lie because Professor Albright keeps using phrases like “group discussion” and “shared analysis.” I arrive two minutes late with coffee in one hand, my backpack sliding off one shoulder, and a sincere desire to sit in the back and be perceived by no one.
The back table is already occupied with a handful of Omegas I’ve found easy to disappear around.
Everywhere else, I have to perform. With them, I’m just another Omega, trying to graduate, and part of or at least hovering around a sports team.
I don’t recognize two of them, but then there’s Blair who has two chairs claimed through sheer entitlement, one boot hooked on the rung of the empty seat beside him, his lip ring catching the light when he looks up.
Granted, Blair has enough money to buy the school, and the very one who funded my escape from auction night, so he’s alright in my book.
His eyes find me, then the chair. “Sit down, swim tragedy. We need a fourth before Milo tells the professor the blue in this painting represents tax fraud.”
Milo points the pencil at him and immediately drops it. “It does feel financially haunted.”
Parker covers her mouth, laughing into her sleeve. “It’s a still life of pears.”
“That’s how they get you,” Milo giggles.
Blair nudges the chair out with his boot, and the professor glances at me from the front of the room, already annoyed by my hesitation. I plop into it before I get yelled at. “Terrible sales pitch,” I mutter, setting my coffee down.
Blair smiles like that was a compliment. “Still worked.”
Parker leans around Milo, her expression warm enough that I immediately distrust it. “I’m Parker. Milo. Blair, obviously.”
“Condolences,” I say.
Milo grins so hard his whole face gets involved. “Oh, I like him.”
“You like everyone,” Blair says, reclaiming his pencil from the table and passing it back to him.
“That’s not true. I didn’t like Chad.”
Parker bursts out laughing before slapping a hand over her mouth. “No one liked Chad. No one likes anyone when they’re snooping around our mates.”