I purse my lips, really mulling over the question.
I think of the way Paxton’s hand is always gentle and warm, the way he’d held himself back when I knew he wanted to knot me as badly as I did. I feel the way Billie’s hands scratched up my back and the way her hair looked spread across my pillows the next morning. I trace Rhett’s bonding bite, careful to keep from breaking open one of the scabs.
“I want all of them,” I say after a while, letting my gaze drop from the ceiling back to them. “Which is just so… Omega of me.”
They both smile and shrug.
“Then tell her that,” Ollie says like it’s that easy. Maybe it is? “If you don’t want to hide, then don’t. She’ll either get on board or not, but you’ll hate every minute of whatever this might be if you’re keeping it hidden when you don’t want to. Secrets are the freaking worst.”
I eat another cracker and sigh.
Ollie isn’t put off by my silence.
“Look,” she continues, “it might suck balls in the moment, but a fight now is way better than waiting for it all to explode in your face. Trust me.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “You’re right.”
Noa smiles again and eats a grape.
“Thank you,” I offer.
When I slide into bed several hours later, Billie turns to me, her face lit by the street light outside. She kisses me, her hand skimming down my side. I swallow down all of the feelings, allthe words I want to say. I’ll hate myself in the morning for it, will wish I had talked to her now, with Ollie’s words still fresh in my mind.
Instead, I twist, letting her slowly kiss her way down my stomach and between my legs, ignoring the twisting in my gut when she covers the bond mark on my hip with a a savage grab.
Chapter Thirty-Five
CARYS
It takes me two more days to be willing to talk to Billie about everything. The scratches along my back have faded, the worst of them now only pink welts. Rhett’s bonding bite is scabbed over, too, healing just as quickly as Paxton’s did. The shop finally hits a small lull, and I have the chance to actually catch up on all of the administrative stuff that’s been pushed to the back burner since the middle of December. I process Billie’s paycheck, the last hours she worked before going to California, but I don’t deactivate her profile in the software. A whole storm of conflict twists my stomach when I exit out of the program.
I flip the sign to closed, lower the light in the front room, and then hide in the back, working on inventory and deep cleaning while the pre-game plays on my phone. It’s not until I get a text from Billie that I finally gather my courage and walk the four blocks to my apartment.
Ordered Greek.
Billie’s perched on the sofa, her plate of food mostly empty on the coffee table, and she’s slowly sifting through a book she hadn’t had this morning. She glances up as I cross to the kitchen, dropping my bag on the counter but ignoring the food. Nerves swell up in me fast enough to rob me of my appetite and make my hands tremble.
“I have a trip to Prague in June,” Billie says after a long stretch of silence. “Would you want to go with me?”
June’s peak wedding season, so I should say no. Instead, I slowly turn to her and frown.
“Just you?”
She nods, her eyes flinty with resolve as she stands and closes the distance between us.
“It’s for two weeks, but I know weddings are busy during the summer. You could come for part of it and then fly back if you have a big order that needs to get delivered.”
June’s also the off-season for the team. “What about…”
I trail off. I haven’t said his name around her. Neither has she.
She traces my lips, and then my jaw, her eyes catching on the bond mark.
“They don’t need to know. Secret, remember?”
My stomach drops all the way to the floor.
“You’re going to keep all of this a secret for six months?” I can’t keep the desperate disbelief out of my voice
