14. Shay #2
Then the black tee that somehow ended up in Declan’s laundry because he did a load while I was working on the party invites, and he’d folded it with his own clothes like that wasn’t the kind of thing that could ruin a person.
I shove it into the bag too hard.
“Leave the rest,” Declan says.
I laugh again, short and mean. “Why? So I have an excuse to come back?”
“No.” He takes a breath. “Because it’s yours. You can take whatever you want. You can leave whatever you want. It doesn’t have to mean anything tonight.”
“It already means something.”
“I know.”
“Jesus Christ, Declan.”
He flinches at the sharpness in my voice. Good. Maybe he should.
I reach for the towel.
My fingers close around the faded green cotton, and I stop.
It still carries the quiet, pre-opening scent of the bar—when Declan wipes down the counter and hums under his breath because he thinks nobody can hear him. That’s woven into it now, tangled up with mine.
My throat burns.
I stuff it into the bag.
Declan makes a small sound. Barely there.
I don’t look at him.
“Take it,” he says.
“I am.”
“I mean it. Take whatever you need.”
There’s something in his voice that makes me turn despite myself.
He’s standing by the bedroom door with his arms folded over his chest, like he’s holding himself in place. His eyes are on the duffel. Not on me. The sight of that huge man looking like he’s afraid one wrong move will send me running should make me soften.
Instead, the word need catches under my ribs.
Need.
That’s the whole problem.
“I don’t need anything from you,” I say.
His eyes come up. “That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you mean.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No, Shay. It isn’t.”
“Then say what you mean.”
He opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Of course it doesn’t. Because this is what we do. We fuck. We fight. We make each other come so hard our brains turn off, and then we stand in a bedroom full of evidence and act like words are the impossible part.
I turn back to the bed.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. The group chat, probably. Jude sending ten question marks. Milo asking if I’m okay in the gentlest possible wording. Benji pretending he doesn’t care while absolutely caring. I don’t check.
If I look at their names, I might crack.
Declan takes one careful step into the room.
“I don’t want you to go.”
My shoulders lock.
“Don’t do this.”
“I need you to hear me.”
“I heard you downstairs.”
“No. You heard me apologizing.” His voice goes low, rough around the edges. “I’m asking you not to leave.”
I stare at the half-packed bag.
“That’s not your call.”
“I know.” A beat. “It has to be yours.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because I love you.”
The room goes silent. No music, no traffic from the street below. Just the old fridge humming in the kitchen and Declan standing behind me, dropping words that should be impossible after three weeks but somehow aren’t.
My whole body goes cold.
He loves me.
Of course he does.
That’s the nightmare, isn’t it? That it’s not fake. That he means it. That he could look at all my sharp corners and my spreadsheets and the way I turn every feeling into a goddamn invoice, and still want me enough to say it out loud.
I force my hands to keep moving.
“You don’t know me,” I say.
“I know enough.”
“You know the version of me that saves your bar and sleeps in your bed.”
“I know the version of you that acts like being called good is a personal attack. I know you pretend you hate my music, but you know every song on that second record. I know you text your friends to make sure they got home even when you’re mad at them.
I know you’ve been carrying everybody else since you were too young to have to.
” His voice cracks on the last part. “I know you, Shay.”
My eyes sting.
I hate him a little for knowing.
I hate myself more for wanting to believe him.
“You’re making this worse.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I’m trying to tell you I’m not going anywhere.”
There it is.
The promise.
The thing every alpha says when the room is warm and the omega is soft enough to hear it. The thing that lasts until it doesn’t.
I zip the duffel shut.
Declan watches me do it like I’m closing a door on his hand.
“I can make this easier,” he says.
A warning prickles down my spine.
“Don’t.”
“You don’t have to worry about money. Or work. I can put you on my account. I can give you a key, and you can stay here when you want. You don’t have to take shifts at that boutique if you don’t want to. You can finish school, figure out what you want—”
Every word is a lock clicking shut.
My chest starts heaving, and I can’t get enough air.
He must see it, because he stops talking, but it’s too late.
All I can hear is my mother on the phone, crying because some alpha who promised he’d take care of her stopped answering his calls.
I can see her at the kitchen table, staring at an empty bank account like it had personally betrayed her.
He was so good to me at first.
I pick up my bag.
“Shay.” Declan’s voice goes careful. “I’m not trying to buy you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Because that sounded a lot like you trying to buy me.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“But it is what you said.” I face him fully. The rage comes up clean and cold, burning away the tears before they can fall. “You want to put me on your bank account?”
“I want you to have security.”
“You want me to have an allowance.”
“No.”
“A key to your apartment? So I can come upstairs after I’m done helping you downstairs? So I can be convenient?”
His face goes white. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
“I love you.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I want a life with you.”
“A life where you pay for everything and I get to be grateful?”
“No.” His whole body tenses, panic flashing in his eyes. “Christ, Shay, no. I want to take care of you because I—”
“Because I’m your omega?”
“Yes,” he says, then immediately shakes his head. “No. Not like that. Because you’re you.”
“And what am I, exactly?” My voice rises. I can’t stop it now. “The kid you get to feed and fuck and tuck into bed upstairs while you run your real life down here? The cute little project who fixed your bar and needs you to handle the scary grown-up stuff?”
“You are not a project.”
“I am not your charity case,” I spit.
His whole body goes still.
“I am not some project you can fix with your money. I earned my place here. I don’t want to be handed it.”
“Shay, you earned more than a place here.”
“Don’t.” My hand shakes around the duffel strap. “Don’t stand there and tell me I’m your partner while you offer to put me on your fucking bank account.”
“I was trying to tell you that you’d never have to be scared again.”
The anger slips for one awful second.
Because he means it.
He means every word.
He just doesn’t understand that being scared is the only reason I’ve ever gotten to keep myself.
“That’s not your job,” I say, quieter now. “You don’t get to save me.”
“I don’t want to save you.”
“You do. You just don’t know how to want somebody without trying to build a whole damn shelter around them.”
He looks like I hit him.
Maybe I did.
The thing is, I want the shelter. That’s the sick joke of it all.
I want his key in my pocket. I want his stupid bank account, but only because it means he pictured a future where my name belongs next to his.
I want to sleep upstairs and help run the bar and complain about inventory and have his arms around me at night until leaving feels impossible.
I want all of it.
And wanting it turns me into my mother.
So I can’t.
I shoulder past him.
He moves aside immediately.
Of course he does.
The apartment blurs as I walk through it. The couch where he played guitar. The kitchen where he made pasta. The front door, right there, close enough that I can see the chipped paint around the lock.
“Shay,” he says behind me.
I stop with my hand on the knob.
For one second, neither of us breathes.
“Don’t go,” he says.
Raw. No bar-owner calm. No alpha command.
Just Declan.
Whatever this is, we can fix it.
The sentence hangs between us, and it almost gets me. Almost turns me around. Almost makes me drop the bag and crawl right back into the bed that carries the faint, familiar proof of the two of us together.
But I see the green towel inside my duffel. I see my mother’s face. I hear that panicked voice on the phone.
My hand twists the knob.
“I can’t be here tonight,” I whisper.
Then I walk out the door and leave him standing alone in the middle of everything we saved.