Page 130 of My Unhinged Alphas
He keeps going before I can decide whether to ask. “The fire happened when I was seventeen.”
My eyes catch on the scar again.
He doesn’t look at me. Just keeps staring into the ceiling-dark, speaking into it like it’s safer than speaking to me directly.
“There was an old outbuilding on the property. Half workshop, half storage. He liked sending me in there when he was angry. Said if I was going to waste space in his house, I could at least make myself useful somewhere else.”
I don’t say anything. I think he needs the silence more than comfort right now.
“One night,” he says, “when I was seventeen, there was a storm. Power kept cutting in and out. He sent me out there anyway.” His voice drops a little. “I remember the smell first. Fuel. Heat. Then smoke.”
He stops.
I can hear him breathe in once, slow and deliberate, like he’s forcing air through a place in himself that doesn’t open easily anymore.
“When I realized what was happening, it was already too late to get clear. Something came down. I don’t know if it wasshelving or timber or part of the roof. I remember the impact. Then I remember fire.” His hand shifts once over his ribs, almost unconsciously. “My face. My neck. My shoulder. I couldn’t see properly for a while after.”
The motel room feels even smaller now. The dark around us tighter.
“How did you get out?” I ask quietly.
He answers after a beat. “I don’t remember all of it.”
That feels true and not true at the same time. Like he remembers enough and has decided the rest stays buried.
“I remember clawing at the door,” he says. “I remember the metal being too hot to touch. I remember thinking I was going to die there.”
The words go through me like cold water. I hug the blanket a little closer to myself. “And when you woke up?” I ask.
His laugh this time is very soft and has no humor in it at all. “I was alive. Which apparently disappointed him.”
I go still.
He doesn’t take it back.
“Your father said that?” I ask.
“No.” He shifts his head slightly on the pillow. “He didn’t have to.”
Chapter 20
Lena
“What aren’t you telling me?”I ask.
He turns his head then. In the dark I feel his eyes on me before I can fully see them.
“Lena.”
“You’re holding something back.”
“Yes.”
The honesty of that knocks the breath out of me more than denial would have.
“Why?”
His answer comes low and immediate. “Because you’re already in enough of this.”
