Page 67 of Pin My Alpha
The air leaves my lungs. I feel nailed to the floor. “Is that what you think this is? That I want to own you?”
“I don’t know what you want.” The words crack, just for a second, and he swallows hard to get them back. “You keep talking about taking care of me like it’s some kind of gift.”
“It is.”
“For you,” he shoots back.
“For us.”
He lets out a bitter little laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t know how to do ‘us,’ Declan. There’s you, and your bar, and your whole life, set. And there’s me. The kid with the binder, trying to prove he’s useful enough to stick around.”
My throat feels tight. “That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” He points a sharp, trembling finger at the new sign glowing behind the bar. “I fix your business. I make myself indispensable. And in return, I get to stay upstairs and not feel like a charity case. Like some twenty-one-year-old omega you took in because you were lonely.”
The heat that pushes through the hurt is sharp and ugly. “You think that’s what you are to me?”
“I think that’s what happens.” His voice is flat. Dead.
“I’m not him, Shay. I’m not Darren.”
The name lands like a stone. His whole body goes rigid, his face wiped clean of everything. He just stares.
“I know,” he says, but the word is hollow.
“Do you?” My own hurt makes me cruel.
His eyes are too bright. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell the truth?”
“Use her against me.”
“I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on in your head.”
“Well, you don’t get to!” The crack in his voice is real this time. “You don’t get to listen to one phone call and act like you have a right to any of it.”
“So you’re just going to shut me out?”
“Yes.”
The quiet finality of it hits me harder than a shout. “Then why are you still here? Why come back at all? Why build a nest in my bed if you were just planning on leaving?”
His breath hitches. “It wasn’t fake.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I told you,” he says, his voice a rough whisper. “I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?” I demand, stepping forward again. “You can’t want me? Is that it?”
He finally looks up, and his face is wrecked. “I can’t need you, Declan.”
The words don’t make sense. They are a rejection of the one thing I know how to give. Something inside me snaps.
I slam my hand down on the bar.
The sound cracks through the empty room, sharp as a gunshot. The wood vibrates under my palm.
