Page 80 of Pin My Alpha
“You want me to have an allowance.”
“No.”
“A key to your apartment? So I can come upstairs after I’m done helping you downstairs? So I can be convenient?”
His face goes white. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
“I love you.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I want a life with you.”
“A life where you pay for everything and I get to be grateful?”
“No.” His whole body tenses, panic flashing in his eyes. “Christ, Shay, no. I want to take care of you because I—”
“Because I’m your omega?”
“Yes,” he says, then immediately shakes his head. “No. Not like that. Because you’re you.”
“And what am I, exactly?” My voice rises. I can’t stop it now. “The kid you get to feed and fuck and tuck into bed upstairswhile you run your real life down here? The cute little project who fixed your bar and needs you to handle the scary grown-up stuff?”
“You are not a project.”
“I am not your charity case,” I spit.
His whole body goes still.
“I am not some project you can fix with your money. I earned my place here. I don’t want to be handed it.”
“Shay, you earned more than a place here.”
“Don’t.” My hand shakes around the duffel strap. “Don’t stand there and tell me I’m your partner while you offer to put me on your fucking bank account.”
“I was trying to tell you that you’d never have to be scared again.”
The anger slips for one awful second.
Because he means it.
He means every word.
He just doesn’t understand that being scared is the only reason I’ve ever gotten to keep myself.
“That’s not your job,” I say, quieter now. “You don’t get to save me.”
“I don’t want to save you.”
“You do. You just don’t know how to want somebody without trying to build a whole damn shelter around them.”
He looks like I hit him.
Maybe I did.
The thing is, I want the shelter. That’s the sick joke of it all. I want his key in my pocket. I want his stupid bank account, but only because it means he pictured a future where my name belongs next to his. I want to sleep upstairs and help run the bar and complain about inventory and have his arms around me at night until leaving feels impossible.
