1. Mary #2
“Let me take you.” His face changed from irritation to concern, and somehow that was worse.
My body had reached a conclusion my heart was still catching up with. Damien wasn’t safe for this. Not because he’d hurt me. He simply wasn’t mine, and the thing waking under my skin knew it with humiliating certainty.
“No.”
“Don’t be stubborn.”
“I’m not being stubborn. I’m exercising my right to choose.”
“You’re shaking.”
“That’s from the effort of not using this textbook to hit you over the head.” I pressed the book flat to his chest and let go. “There. A happy ending for one of us.”
“Marli.”
I turned and strode away before he could produce anything that sounded like an apology that would work. Pride is a magnificent thing.
That pride carried me past the athletic center doors, past hockey players pretending not to look or smell, past the bus stop where a woman gripped two grocery bags.
“Oh God.” I bent at the spine, and pressed my hand against a tree. The bark was wet and rough under my palm, and my breath came out shallow as heat rolled through my pelvis with a promise of pleasure. But tears stung my eyes. I had nowhere to go.
“No,” I whispered, and then hated myself for sounding pathetic and whispering to a tree.
My phone buzzed.
Damien.
I declined it. It buzzed again, and I declined that too, and then it rang a third time. This time Nina’s name was on the screen.
“Hi,” I answered.
“Are you at the clinic?” she said. “Damien tried to call me.”
“No, I’m at a tree.”
“You’re at a what?”
“There’s a tree on the path near the bus stop. It’s holding me up.”
“Marli. You need to get to a heat clinic.”
“You need to be pre-registered.”
“You have time to register, come home, and have a cold shower. You might be able to stop it. Just overload on suppressants.”
“I can’t come back to the room.” I pressed my forehead against the bark, which didn’t help. “Our corridor has eleven alphas on it.”
“Twelve. Josh moved across the hallway.”
“That’s not the support I was hoping for. Please say something useful.”
“Did you find Damien?”
“Yeah, with a girl called Kyla. She wore a cheerleader outfit.”
“Ah, Kyla. She was the one who was caught with two footballers last month.”
“She’s moving on to hockey players. He had lipstick smeared across his lips. I just missed out on catching him kissing her. Though he said she was just being friendly.”
I expected Nina to laugh, but she went quiet for a second. “Are you okay?”
“Damien and I are finished.”
“Finished, finished?” she asked.
“He told me we never agreed we were exclusive.”
“He said what? Bastard. I’m going to key his car.”
“He’s not worth it.”
I swallowed back a sob. I wasn’t going to cry. I opened a browser instead and tapped the name of an online hotel app.
“I’m getting a hotel room until I can get into a heat clinic,” I said. “It has a lock and no witnesses.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“I’m not waiting with my scent drifting through the dorms when I can book a hotel room. Anyway, I have a relationship break-up to drink over.”
“In the room, by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You need alphas. You could save a fortune by skipping the heat clinic and making yourself available to the alphas in the dorms. That would hurt the bastard.”
“I need—“
“Alphas.”
“Men, not boys. And I’ll be fine. I need to find a good Irish whiskey. But I have an emergency heat bag under my bed. Can you grab it and I’ll get the cab to swing by?”
“Marli…”
“See you soon, Nina.” I hung up, booked a last-minute offer in a hotel a fifteen-minute ride away, and ordered a car before I could talk myself out of it.
Seven minutes away.
Jeez, seven minutes is an entire historical era when you’re trying to will away your heat under a tree.
I walked to the edge of campus with my coat pulled tight and my chin down.
Every step pulsed between my legs. My breasts ached under the sweater, and I hated the sudden loudness of my own body.
I hated that some ancient piece of biology could reach into a sensible life and make me question everything about modern medicine.
Damn suppressants. I only missed one… maybe two.
At the curb, I leaned against a lamppost and waited.
My phone buzzed.
Damien: Where are you
Damien: I can take you to the clinic
Damien: Marli answer me
I blocked him for an hour. It should be forever, but I needed to tell him exactly what I thought of him. But for the next hour, I needed his voice out of my head and his concern off my skin.
The car pulled up with its hazards flashing. I checked the plate twice, because I’m a McCarthy after all, and kidnapping is in the family.
The driver watched me in the mirror. “Are you okay back there?”
“Yeah, I’m grand.”
“Is that a yes?”
“For now.”
He pulled into traffic. “You want the hospital?”
“The uni dorms and then this hotel, please.” I showed him the address on my phone.
His nose twitched. “Are you sure? You’ve gone the color my sister went before… Ah, you’re going into heat.”
“It’s the flu.”
“You smell.”
“It’s perfume.”
“You’re going to have alphas chasing the car.”
“Oh God. Please say anything else in your head. I’m already in panic mode.”
He turned the radio down two notches, and we headed to the dorms, where Nina stood by the roadside, my bag in her hand.
“Here,” I yelled. The car pulled over. Nina opened the door and flung the bag beside me.
“Call me when you get there.” She looked at the driver. “And I have your number.”
He pulled away.
The campus slid past the window and somewhere behind me, Damien was annoyed he’d been caught.
The first wave of heat eased and left sweat cooling at the back of my neck. I put my forehead against the cold glass.
Mary McCarthy would have called her sister, Maeve. She’d have admitted she was frightened, but Marli was independent.
“You’re fine. You can do this.” I swallowed hard.