20
hannah
I wake up at some point and notice that Ellis isn’t in the bed, and that goes in and out of me in a way that doesn’t feel good. But, also, it’s a dull feeling, like I am losing the capacity to get very angry at him for this shit. This is how Ellis is. I am getting used to it.
This must be how Andrew feels.
Speaking of my brother, he has called me and texted me, something I see when I go downstairs to the living room to get my purse.
I go through it to find the Plan B pill, which I have been carrying with me everywhere I go, sort of waiting for the moment when I feel certainty.
Ellis being gone?
Well, I’m teetering on the edge. But then I find my phone. It was on do not disturb, so I haven’t heard it make any noise. But I scroll through Andrew’s text messages, and I see that he doesn’t know where Callie is.
Ellis and Callie are together, and I’m sure, very fucking sure, that I’m not having that man’s baby.
So, I go into the kitchen and I pour myself a glass of water, and I take the pill.
Then I call Andrew back.
“Ellis is gone, too,” I say.
“So,” says Andrew, “they’re together.”
“Probably,” I say with a sigh, shaking my head.
“You know, it’s just so frustrating, because I keep feeling like she and I are turning a corner or something, and then—” Andrew breaks off. “Hold on, she’s calling me.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just text me if you find anything out.” I hang up.
I’m reeling. I still don’t know how I feel about any of this, about sex with three men or the way they all focused on me, all three of them working together to pleasure me.
That was amazing.
But the person tying all of us together is Ellis, and Ellis is incapable of being in a relationship with anyone except Calliope, I think.
He just can’t help himself. He wants to be my boyfriend, but he can’t help but be attached to Callie. They’re whatever they are, and it’s never going to end.
I have to be strong. I have to end this. I can’t sit around and let him do this to me over and over again. I mean, right? Isn’t that what anyone would advise me?
It’s only that… if I do that… what do I go back to?
Absolutely freaking nothing.
I wonder about Gatlin, about Kane, about whether either of them could be interested in me without Ellis.
As if summoned by my thoughts, I hear someone padding down the stairs. I look to see that it’s Gatlin. He’s only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. He comes over to me, looking around. “Where’s Ellis?”
“Fucking my sister-in-law, probably,” I say wryly.
Gatlin sits down next to me on the couch. “Okay, right.” He rubs his temples. “You’re going to take the Plan B, aren’t you?”
“Already did,” I say.
He sighs, but he nods at me. “I completely get it.”
I look up at the ceiling. “Maybe I’m being ridiculous. Do I have a leg to stand on being annoyed with what he did? He just watched me have sex with two different men.”
“Key word there is watched,” says Gatlin. “He doesn’t offer to make his relationship with Calliope part of his relationship with you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want that,” I say. “I mean, I am not even a little bit attracted to Callie.”
“Well, there you go,” says Gatlin. “It’s not the same thing.”
“But that discussion about boundaries and stuff? The one you said we should have? I don’t feel like we had it.”
Gatlin sighs again. “You’re going to leave him, aren’t you?”
I shut my eyes and open them again. “I mean, I should, shouldn’t I? What person would tell me to stay?”
“Not a single person,” he says. “No one would tell you to stay. We let him go, too. We didn’t kick him out, but when he said he wanted to go… we didn’t fight him that hard.”
“He says he was messing around with other alphas?”
“He was flirting with other alphas, I guess, but not having sex with them,” says Gatlin. “This is new for us, his leaving in the middle of the night to fuck someone else. I don’t know how I even feel about it.”
“I don’t think he knows how he feels about it,” I say. “It’s like they’re both miserable, like they make each other miserable. Like they don’t even like it with each other. If he wanted it, maybe it would be different, but I think he wants to stop.”
“I think that’s part of why he’s so alluring,” says Gatlin, thoughtful. “That way of his, where it’s like he’s out of control, like he’s swept up in a whirlwind or something? It makes me feel swept up, too, and I’m a bit of a grounded person, so I like it. It excites me.”
I nod. “Sure. Kane’s that way for you, too, I guess.”
Gatlin considers. “You’re right. Maybe I’m just attracted to people who are completely the opposite of me.”
I laugh. “Me too.”
“Of course, there’s you. You’re not like that. You’re not a daredevil or a risktaker. You seem like a pretty grounded person, too.”
“Yeah, I think I am.” I think about it, trying to determine if I’m risky in other ways, but I only seem to take weird risks when it comes to Ellis. “I think risk makes me aroused or something?”
“That’s it, exactly,” says Gatlin. “Risk is hot. Did you ever hear about that study they did, where they had people cross a shaky bridge or a sturdy bridge, and there was an attractive person at the end, and the people who crossed the shaky bridge were more attracted to that person than the people who crossed the safe bridge?”
“No, I never knew that,” I say. “Huh. Weird.”
“Yeah, got to be something to do with adrenaline.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Seems kind of crazy.”
“One of the things you start realizing about humans is that we’re not nearly as rational as we think we are,” says Gatlin. “We’re just big balls of impulse and chemicals, making sense of it later.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, but I kind of don’t want to think that.
“I think we can tame the chaos of the world, though,” says Gatlin. “Obviously, we can. You look at all the things we’ve done as a species. The pyramids. The tarot deck. Phantom.”
I laugh. “Right, humans are pretty amazing in a lot of ways.”
“Anyway, I keep feeling like I know what kind of future I want and that I know how to get it, but that I can’t convince Kane to give it to me.”
“Ellis thinks you’re kind of traditional,” I say.
“I’m not traditional. I’m a bisexual alpha who does tai chi.”
I smirk. “Yeah, but he seems to have the impression you want to settle down and have a traditional sort of life.”
“I can’t,” says Gatlin. “I can see that now.”
“Well,” I say, “maybe it’s what I want.”
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “You and me, there’s something here. Maybe there’s something with me and Kane, too, I don’t know.”
“Oh, there is,” says Gatlin. “I felt him in the bond when he was making love to you. But you’re going to leave Ellis.”
“I should,” I say. “I really should. And I’m too young to get pregnant.”
“Which is why you took that pill,” says Gatlin. “I’m relieved, actually. I didn’t know how I’d feel, but I don’t want that kind of pressure right now, especially with Ellis being… Ellis.”
I smirk. “Yeah. But, you know, maybe we owe it to ourselves to try to see what’s here. And if there’s something here, maybe it could be the right mix of traditional and non-traditional. Maybe I might want to have babies sooner than later.”
Gatlin gives me a look, his eyes very wide.
“I mean, maybe,” I say.
Gatlin’s lips curve into a smile.
ellis
I don’t know what the worst part of coming back to the three of them is.
That they’re not really even angry, just resigned, as if they never expected anything better for me?
I apologize, of course, I apologize a lot, and they’re sort of stone through all of my apologies, which is fair, I guess.
They don’t tell me it’s all right what I’ve done, but then, they wouldn’t, because it isn’t.
Maybe the worst part is that I’m relieved when Hannah tells me she took the Plan B, and I can see that she’s relieved, too?
Or that they listen to me tell them about the dialectical behavior therapy with very glazed-over expressions, none of them nearly as excited about it as I am?
Or that they all leave me alone afterward?
The last one, I think.
Hannah says she needs space, but that I could call her at some point when she’s had some time. The alphas say they’ve stayed too long as it is and they have to get back to work.
And then, there I am, in a house that smells like them, all alone.
It feels awful.
And I think, for maybe the first time in my life, about just enduring the awful, instead of trying to escape it, trying to replace it with something that feels better, or trying to fix it in some way.
In some ways, it reminds me of being back in the Polloi, because the Polloi always thought we were being persecuted in some way and that the goddess would reward us for enduring our suffering.
But it’s not like that.
It’s more like… what if everyone else just doesn’t feel things the way I feel them? What if things are more intense for me? What if, because I’m an omega, I’m more sensitive to pleasure, but also more sensitive to pain?
What if this pain and discomfort I’m feeling is just normal, and sometimes you’re supposed to feel a little pain and discomfort?
It feels like a revelation, actually, weirdly, like the key to unlock all the difficulties of my life.
The way I’ve always thought there was something wrong with me?
Maybe it was just this, that I felt things too intensely.
And maybe all I need to do is know this, know that when I’m feeling discomfort, it’s more intense than the way other people feel it and just endure it.
So, I don’t do anything.
I don’t reach out to Hannah and try to grovel and I don’t whine to my alphas.
I stay home, clean the house, watch TV, play video games, just do whatever I would do normally.
I research therapists and I call around, but it’s a little bit demoralizing, because none of them are taking new patients for months.
Eventually, I start researching dialectical behavioral therapy on the internet.