Page 121 of My Unhinged Alphas
Another wave hits.
By the time it passes, I’m shaking so badly I can barely wipe my mouth. The cheap motel bathroom light buzzes overhead. The tiles are cold under my knees. I can hear muffled movement outside the door, then voices too low to make out.
Then the door opens.
Not all the way. Just enough.
I look up, ready to tell whoever it is to get out, and see Vale standing there.
Of course it’s him.
He doesn’t come in right away. Just stands in the doorway like he’s asking permission without saying the words. “I’m not going to touch you,” he says quietly.
My laugh comes out thin and ugly. “Great. Amazing. Thank you for the restraint.”
He takes that without flinching.
I hate that a little.
I wipe my mouth again with the back of my hand and sit back against the side of the tub because my legs don’t trust me anymore. Everything in me feels wrung out. Hollowed. The kind of sick that leaves your body but not your nerves.
Vale steps in then, slow and careful, and shuts the door most of the way behind him. Not enough to trap me. Enough to keep the others out.
That, more than anything, tells me this was his idea.
He crouches a few feet away, not close enough to crowd me. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I look at him, breathing hard through my nose. “For what?” I ask. “You’re going to have to narrow that down.”
His face tightens slightly. “For pushing.”
I don’t answer.
He goes on. “You didn’t want to go there. We should’ve stopped.”
There’s no defense in it. No trying to tell me it was necessary. Just the apology laid there between us, quiet and plain. And that, for some reason, almost undoes me more than the questions did.
I drag my knees up and wrap my arms around them because I need something to hold. When I look at him again, really look, the scar catches me first.
It always does. Not because it’s ugly. Because it makes the rest of his face feel more honest.
In this bathroom light, he doesn’t look like a killer. He looks tired. A little older than me, maybe not by much. A man with a ruined cheek, clear eyes, and too much control in the way he holds himself. The kind of man I might’ve seen on a train or in a grocery line and looked at twice for completely different reasons.
But I know better now. I know what his hands can do. I know how calm he is around violence. I know what kind of world he belongs to.
And somehow that makes the disconnect worse, not better.
“You don’t look like a monster.”
“No.”
“But you are one.”
He goes quiet in a different way. Less guarded. More resigned.
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
Something in me shivers at the fact that he doesn’t lie.
