Page 222 of My Unhinged Alphas
Havoc is leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded, expression unreadable in the way it only is when he has stopped performing. Lena stops in front of him and lifts a hand to his face, fingers brushing the corner of his mouth where it’s split from the fight.
“You don’t have to make yourself easier for me,” she says softly.
His eyes change.
Only a little. Enough.
“You can be as strange and difficult and inappropriate and batshit crazy as you actually are,” she continues, tears still clinging to her lashes. “I don’t want some perfect, sanitized version of you. I love you like this.”
For once, Havoc has no immediate answer. He looks at her as if she has handed him something he doesn’t know where toput. Then he gives a short, almost disbelieving laugh and says, “That’s a terrible lapse in judgment.”
“Probably,” she says.
His hand comes up and closes around her wrist, not to move it away. Just to hold it there for a second longer. “But useful,” he murmurs.
She smiles through the remnants of tears, and I see the exact moment he gives in enough to kiss her. It’s brief, almost careful, and when she steps back from him he looks more unsettled than before.
Then she turns to Knox.
He has been standing very still, as if any movement might become an admission. Lena goes to him more slowly, perhaps because she knows him well enough now to understand that he needs time even when he wants the same things the rest of us do.
“I love you,” she says.
Knox’s jaw tightens.
She takes his hand before he can hide it behind his back. “You don’t always have to be the one who holds everything together. Not with me.”
He looks down at their joined hands.
“You can be tired,” she says. “You can be afraid. You can be gentle. I won’t think less of you for any of it.”
For the first time since I have known him, Knox looks almost stripped of language. His thumb moves once over the back of her hand. “Lena.”
“I mean it.”
He studies her face, searching for something, perhaps the place where comfort turns into pity. Whatever he finds, it seems to satisfy him, because his shoulders lower by a fraction. “I love you too,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
Lena’s face crumples for half a second before she steadies herself and kisses him. His hand rises to the back of her neck,careful even now, and when they part he keeps his forehead against hers for one extra breath.
Then she comes to me.
I’m not ready.
She stops close enough that I can see the faint tremor in her mouth. “I love you,” she says.
My chest tightens painfully. “Lena?—”
“No.” She shakes her head once. “You don’t get to decide for me that wanting you is wrong. You don’t get to keep punishing yourself forever and call it penance. I am your penance. You just have to accept me.”
“I do,” I groan. “God knows I do, Lena.”
I think of Tomas.
Of my father.
Of the fire.
Of every year since, spent believing survival itself was something I had to answer for.
