Page 91 of Pin My Alpha
“It’s hot.”
“Then we need to make it hotter.”
“That’s not how—”
Jude puts a hand on Milo’s shoulder and steers him toward the door. Milo looks back at me, worried, but he goes.
Soren follows, pausing in the doorway.
“You don’t have to be perfect for somebody to choose you,” he says softly.
Then he’s gone, too.
The door clicks shut.
Benji stays.
Of course he does.
He doesn’t look at me right away. He moves to my desk, plucks a napkin out of the brown paper bag he brought, then sits on the edge of my bed with a pen. His knee bumps mine. Familiar. Easy. He starts drawing on the napkin without asking.
A heart.
Then a dagger through it.
Then another dagger, because apparently the first one wasn’t making the point.
“You’ve always had a flair for subtlety,” I say.
“Fuck off.”
There he is.
I swallow another bite of soup. It tastes like nothing.
Benji keeps doodling. “They’re all being annoying.”
“Thank you.”
“But they’re right.”
“Never mind.”
“Don’t make me agree with Jude twice in one night. It feels medically dangerous.”
I stare at the scar through my eyebrow in the dark reflection of my laptop screen. My curls are a mess. There are bruise-colored shadows under my eyes. I look like someone who got hit by a truck and then argued with the truck about liability.
Benji’s pen scratches against the napkin.
“I know your whole thing,” he says.
My jaw tightens. “Do you.”
“Yeah.” He looks up. His expression is pure Benji, which is to say he looks like he’d rather chew through his own arm than be caught having a feeling. “Because it was my whole thing.”
That shuts me up.
He taps the pen against the napkin. “I spent months acting like Knox showing up again was the worst thing that could happen to me. And some of it was fair, because he hurt me. But most of it was just easier than admitting I wanted him anyway.”
