Page 7 of Run Wild Omega

“I don’t care enough about you to hate you.”

“Well, fuck.” He clears his throat.

I know I’ve hurt him, but I can’t bring myself to take it back. I can’t feel sorry for him when he was the one who broke me.

I look at his mouth—those pillow-soft lips that look so out of place on such a rugged, masculine face—and I’m instantly transported back to the backseat of his old pickup truck.

We were seventeen, stupid kids who didn’t understand the way our designations were screaming at us to bond. I remember the heat of his mouth on my skin, the rough scrape of his stubble against the soft curve of my breast. I remember the wet pull of his lips tugging on my nipple, the way he had looked up at me with such hungry, worried eyes after.

“Is this okay? Tess, tell me if it’s not okay.”

He was always so careful, even when we were losing our minds to hormones. He was terrified of hurting me. And then came the scare. Two lines on a pregnancy stick in the bathroom of the gas station, and the world almost ended. We were just kids. We were terrified.

Thank the heavens it turned out to be a false positive.

And Wyatt, in his infinite, stoic wisdom, decided that the solution was to cut his own heart out to save me. He told me I deserved more than a small-town life with a guy who had nothing to offer. He told me he was holding me back.

He pushed me away, and I ran. I ran all the way to Denver and straight into the arms of Marcus Alden.

God, I’m such a fool. I traded a love that was real but messy and terrified for a lie that was polished and fake. I let Wyatt’s rejection define me, and then I let a narcissist use me because I was so desperate to be chosen.

Heat floods my cheeks, and it’s not from the cold. I feel stupid. I feel gullible. Wyatt broke my heart because he thought he wasn’t good enough, and I believed him. Then I proved him right by falling for the first man who gave me a second glance, only to find out I was just a side piece in a boring academic drama.

“You’re staring, Tess,” Wyatt says softly. He takes another step closer. The scent of pine resin washes over me, intoxicating and suffocating.

“I’m just wondering why you’re here,” I snap, trying to summon some of that “wild” energy everyone thinks I have. “Shouldn’t you be out saving a lost hiker or something? That’s what you do, right? Save people? Even if they don’t want to be saved?”

His jaw tightens. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, Wyatt.”

He stares at me, silent and judgment-free, and it undoes me. He knows I’m lying. He can probably smell the misery on me, the lingering scent of heartbreak and shame that I can’t scrub off no matter how many showers I take.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. I watch his hands—large, scarred, capable hands that I remember tracing the lines of my own palms. He shakes one out and brings it to his lips.

“You don’t smoke.”

“I started in the service.” The words filter through the cigarette. He flicks a lighter, the flame illuminating the sharp angle of his cheekbone for a second before he inhales.

He exhales a plume of gray smoke that mingles with the fog of my breath. “It helps.”

“With what?”

“The quiet.”

The silence stretches between us, taut and vibrating. But it’s not quiet; it’s loud. It’s screaming with things we can’t say.

I look at the cigarette, then back at him.

“I should get back inside.” I turn toward the door.

“Tess.”

My hand freezes on the handle. I don’t turn around. “What?”

“Do you really want me to leave?”

“I don’t care what you do.”