“Talk to me, sugar. I’m not asking for a lot, here. You were happy as fuck afterward, then something changed. What happened?”
She huffed, an angry little sound like that of a dog forced to lie down when it didn’t want to. “Why aren’t you still mad?”
He tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
“I screwed up. As soon as we finished…you all were over it.”
He couldn’t help his frown, not when he couldn’t seem to understand her point. “Of course. We weren’t all that mad to start with, but there was a consequence, and we needed you to learn a lesson. Once you askedus to stop, you’d learned it. Why would we still be mad?”
She shifted, as if the words she wanted to say—the ones she needed to say—were alive inside her and fighting not to come out. “People don’t get over things that fast.”
Ah.Kyle let out a soft sigh as the pieces came together. He didn’t answer right away, trying to soothe her with the stroking of his hand through her hair. Finally, he found the words. “We’re talking about your father, aren’t we?”
She tensed but didn’t answer. She didn’t really need to.
He nodded, continuing the gentle touches. “We’re all going to do things sometimes that aren’t great. If I do, if Daniel or Trent do, we’ll apologize. What would you do if we honestly apologized and atoned for what we’d done?”
“I’d forgive you.”
“Exactly. You made a mistake, sugar, and they happen. They’re part of life. We dealt with it, and the second it was over, we were over it. We wouldn’t keep punishing you for something we’d already handled.”
She let out a slow breath that warmed his thigh. “I remember one time I snuck out. I was only eight—it wasn’t like I was going anywhere bad, but I’d wanted to play with this other kid across the street. I ended up out after dinner, because I didn’t realize it had gotten late. It wasn’t like I ever got to play with anyone normally.”
The hitch in her throat broke his heart. “What happened?”
“If I’d gotten home when my mom was the only one there, nothing would have happened. She’d never havetold my father, but I stayed out too late, and he was already there.”
He kept his temper in check. She didn’t need his anger, not for old ghosts. There was nothing he could do about them. “Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head, then nuzzled against his thigh, the action seeming unconscious, as though she needed to seek him out for comfort. “My father didn’t believe in hitting females. He thought that was beneath him, beneath any alpha. He never raised a hand, not to my mother, not to me. He never needed to. There was something so cold in his eyes, though, like a part of him had died, something that should have killed him too but somehow hadn’t. He told me how disappointed in me he was, how he didn’t ask much of me and I couldn’t even do that one thing. He locked me in my room for two days—no food, nothing. I drank water from the bathroom faucet, but no matter what I did, no one would open the door or even acknowledge me.” She trembled, and Kyle grasped her hands, pulling her up and into his lap. He stroked his hand down her back, trying to make up for the horrible memory.
Still, the tough omega kept telling it. “Two days later, my mother let me out, told me to get cleaned up and dressed and come down for breakfast. I was starving, but I was so happy to be done. I said good morning to my father at the table, and he ignored me. Sitting in that room alone for two days wasn’t enough for him. He still wouldn’t speak to me, wouldn’t acknowledge I even existed. I gave him the card I’d made, a stupid one out of scraps of paper. I’d even destroyed one of my stuffed animals to add pieces of fur, trying to make it special. I thought if I couldapologize right, he’d forgive me. He’d see I didn’t mean to be bad.”
Even without knowing the end, Kyle could see the train barreling for her, knew in the way she spoke that the story didn’t end with some great make-up moment. “What happened, sugar?”
She curled against him. “He didn’t even open the card. He picked it up, walked over to the trash and dropped it in. I’ll never forget him talking to me, finally, after days of silence.‘I ask little of you, Corrine, and you still consistently disappoint me. A worthless card doesn’t change it. I’m not sure why we even punish you, because it doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference.’I remember staring at the trash can, thinking about all the work I’d put into the card. I asked him what I could do, and he shook his head.‘Nothing. Some people, they’re born bad.’He left then, going to work, and I sat in my room all day, repeating that over and over again. It didn’t matter what I ever did, he’d never forgive me, not for anything. Not for breaking the TV one time when I was playing in the house, not for being out when I wasn’t supposed to go, not for waking him up because I was throwing up when I got the stomach flu. They were all just points against me that I was never going to be able to make up for.”
Kyle purred, the soft sound strange since he never did it as a rule. He pulled her tighter against him and kissed the top of her head. “He was a dick, sugar, and we aren’t him. I can’t say you’ll never disappoint us, that you’ll never do something we wished you hadn’t. Fuck, we’ll do things that disappoint you, too. That’s life. But I can promise that we’ll make what we want clear, and we’ll work it out, and after we forgive you, we will be good.” He curled his fingers around her hip,knowing that the next thing wasn’t going to go over so easily. “And you aren’t bad. You know that, right?”
She went to push off his lap, just like he expected.Clearly, those words have struck.
He held her close. “I’m serious. Your father, he didn’t know shit. He thought good meant someone he could control, something weak and malleable. He wanted pets, not partners. The fact that you weren’t born a mindless yes-ma’am doesn’t make you bad or broken. It makes him an idiot for not seeing how amazing you are.”
“Real amazing,” she muttered against his chest. “I keep getting in trouble.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, you do, but guess what? I like when you get in trouble. Pretty sure Daniel does, too, and even though you might be sore, I could taste how muchyouliked it. Getting in trouble doesn’t make you bad, it makes you human. It’s just a fact of life when you’ve got people trying to create something together. So, yeah, you’re trouble. Hell, you broke my nose the first time we met, but you’re trouble that is completely worth it. I wouldn’t want some girl who didn’t have a backbone, who fell over at a strong word or hard look. You? You’re tough, and you’re strong, and you don’t take shit from anyone. Those things don’t make you defective or bad, they’re theexactthings that make me—” He snapped his mouth shut before he made the disastrous mistake of actually finishing that sentence.
That time she did manage to twist away, to look into his eye with more fear than she’d had when Daniel had pressed his cock to her ass.
It seemed the end of that sentence was more frightening than a bit of anal…
Kyle didn’t try to pretend away what he’d almost said. He didn’t make excuses, didn’t try to lie. What was the point?
They both knew damned well what he’d nearly uttered.
“Thisisn’t real,” she said.
“You sure about that?”
