Chapter Seventeen
I wake slowly, feeling fuzzy and hot behind my eyelids. I’m surrounded by a delicious scent and suffocatingly warm.
I crack open my eyes and blanch.
Not my room.
The events of last night filter back all blurry and otherworldly, like they belong to a dream instead of reality. Connor’s arm and thigh are draped over me, caging me in like he was afraid I might try and escape in the night.
My entire body’s flush with his, and his hand has snuck beneath my shirt to palm my belly.
Then I feel his erection prodding into my back through his thin pajama bottoms, and it’s fucking huge. I resist the urge to grind up against him.
I try to extricate myself from his grasp without waking him. I’m halfway out from under him when he yanks me back against his chest and grumbles sleepily.
Then someone knocks at the door to the apartment. It’s not quite a cop knock, but they sound impatient.
Connor sighs, then kisses my forehead and rolls off me, his weight lifting off his side of the bed. Was he awake this whole time?
"Expecting someone?"
"Go back to sleep. I’ll get rid of them."
I burrow back under the covers and try to chase after the delicious dream I’d been in. It lingers just on the edge of memory, more of it drifting away every second I don’t reclaim it, until I can hardly remember it at all, just fleeting details and emotions.
I relent and roll out of bed, weaving toward the bathroom to splash my face with cold water. My hair looks like a rat’s nest, and I slept with my makeup on. Eyeliner and mascara are smudged out of place, making me resemble a hollow-eyed skull.
There are voices from the living room, and I still. He invited them inside?
I open the bedroom door a sliver to peek out and go rigid.
Connor and a familiar woman stand by the couch. She’s aged well, and she’s as expertly put together as she always was, wearing a spotless cream sweater with her pretty blond hair up in an elegant chignon.
“Surprise!” she yells and flings her arms around Connor’s neck, sinking into a familiar embrace.
My heart slams into my throat.
No.
Not again.
My gut lurches. The door I’m leaning against creaks, and Cassandra’s gaze darts my way.
I stumble into the living room in Connor’s t-shirt and boxers. They both turn to me, Cassandra still clinging to him.
Cassandra’s here. In his apartment. Throwing her arms around Connor.
My scent shifts, pungent this close to my heat. Connor’s nostrils flare, and his eyes go wide.
Cassandra’s still clinging to him.
"Lana—" Connor starts.
Cassandra slides off him and levels me with her icy blues.
"Hello, Alanna…Crane, wasn’t it? Fancy seeing you here."
Connor’s eyes are wild as he seeks mine. All the banked heat of last night is gone.
"This isn’t what it looks like," Connor says.
It’s like a punch to the gut.
My breath hitches, and my eyes slide away from his. The walls wiggle through the sheen of tears. I want to melt into the floor.
Cassandra beams up at Connor, her teeth big and unnaturally white.
“I trust you. What’s going on?”
My heart is doing a base dive off a bridge. It’s a lodestone sinking into a bottomless well.
I want to scream at him. I want to gouge her eyes out. How dare she come here, interrupt us?—
But he belonged to her first. He's never been mine. Only in fading dreams.
Connor’s gaze swings between us. “That’s not?—”
Cassandra turns to me. “Alanna. How have you been? You stayed in Crestwood after high school, right? I don't know how you do it. This town was always too small for us."
“I—I—” I can't formulate a response. All I can think about is how she's still touching Connor's chest.
My mind is a nauseating blend of jealousy and sinking hope. My omega is yelling at me to stake my claim on Connor, while the rational part of me wants to sink through the floor.
I step back through the doorway and shut the door, then bite my hand to stifle my scream.
Connor’s words of “Lana—wait—” follow me through the wood.
I lean against the wall and sink to the floor, trying to control my breathing.
“Connor, I need to speak with you,” Cassandra says.
My blood roars in my ears. I have to get out of here. Everything was so perfect, and now it’s so wrong. My severed mating bond rears its head with a vengeance.
My entire body shakes, and I think I’m going to be sick. I bolt for the bathroom and heave up last night’s dinner, then try to gather myself despite my panic.
I’m a fucking sitting duck without my phone.
I need to get out of Connor’s clothes.
I need to get out of here .
I pick up a pair of basketball shorts lying on the ground and tug them on over the boxers, yanking the drawstring as tight as it’ll go so they don’t immediately slide down my hips.
I spot Connor's keyring—expensive and minimalist and uncluttered, just like the rest of his life, next to his e-reader and glasses on the nightstand. Fragments of a dissolving dream.
I grab his keys and eye the window, lamenting that it sits over a thick holly bush. It's probably not even painted shut like the ones at my apartment.
Instead, I exit his bedroom and head straight for the door.
I try not to look at them, but Connor has joined Cassandra at the breakfast bar. His expression is pained. Cassandra is preparing coffee, moving through the kitchen in a familiar dance. She’ll know how he takes his. They’ve prepared it for each other for years.
They have routine. History. He chose her.
Not me, never me.
My mind darts back to my conversation with Connor about him and Cassandra.
‘We’ve outgrown each other. Neither of us was interested in long distance, and she doesn’t want to move back east.’
They weren’t reasons. They were excuses. Things easily overcome if they ever wanted to get back together.
Connor’s guilty face locks on me, and I summon an imaginary wall between us, rapidly slotting in brick after brick like a demolition video played in reverse.
“Coffee?” Cassandra asks.
I want to scream.
“No thank you. I’ve got to get going.”
Connor takes a step toward me, and I wave a jerky hand. His scent is chaotic. Panicked. But it pales in comparison to mine.
Unsuppressed, my current level of distress is pungent. Cassandra’s oblivious—a beta’s nose can’t pick up on these signals. They aren't meant for them.
I fumble with the door, then jerk it closed behind me.
I dart for the porch steps and take them two at a time, focusing every inch of my dizzy, dehydrated mind on not stumbling.
I don’t know why I’m running so fast.
He won’t chase after me.
He never does.