"I told you back then about my face blindness; besides my mother, you’re the only other people that knew. And you used it against me."
I stop in the middle of the room, my hands shaking with a mixture of arousal and pure rage. My pajamas are tight against my sensitized skin, the silk rubbing against my nipples.
"As kids, you wore rub-on tattoos so I could tell you apart. You actually cared back then. You understood that I needed help to find you in a crowd. But now? You used that same vulnerability to hide. You probably laughed at how easy it was to trick the girl who can't remember what her childhood best friends looked like."
My chest aches. They didn't just lie; they exploited a disability I trusted them with. I turn my focus back to Urie. think about every time he pretended to be a professional over the last two weeks. He was the one I felt safe with. He was the one I let stay in my room.
"Which one are you?" I walk toward him, the pink silk of my pajamas rustling in the silence. "I know Dameon is Saturday. I saw the tattoo on his ribs. He didn't even try to hide the ink. So which mask do you wear, Urie? Are you the safe voice on the RAA who tells me everything is going to be okay?"
Urie flinches as if I struck him. He looks at Dameon, then back at me, his face pale. He doesn't look like a doctor anymore. He looks like a criminal waiting for a sentence.
"Tuesday.” He swallows hard.“I’m Tuesday."
I let out a short, mocking laugh that makes him flinch again. "The safe doctor. Did you enjoy the role? Did you like the power of being the only one allowed to touch the Sunflower under the guise of medicine while the others had to stay behind the glass?"
He bows his head, his shoulders slumped. "I wanted to protect your mind, Zora. I saw the way you struggled. I thought the doctor persona was the only way to stay close without triggering your fear of Alphas."
"You triggered a different kind of fear, Tuesday." I walk toward him. The scent of my heat hits him full force, and I watch his chest heave as he tries to maintain his composure. "You made me trust you. You used my health as a cover for your voyeurism and you think an apology fixes that? Tell me your real name." I can already deduce he's Micah, but I need to hear him say it.
I reach out and grab the lapels of his white coat. I yank him toward me, forcing him to look me in the eye. A faint hint of pine and peppermint that he has tried to hide. The blue of his eyes darken, the pupils swallowing the color as the Alpha in him reacts to my proximity.
"Micah," he whispers, his voice cracking with the strain of his desire.
Micah stands there with his chest heaving, his charcoal shirt tight across his shoulders as he waits for my next move. He looks like he wants to reach out and pull the pink silk of mypajamas aside, but he stays frozen under the weight of my gaze. I turn away from him, my bare feet silent on the floor as I move toward the shadows where Ethan stands. He has his hands fisted so hard at his sides that the tendons stand out in his forearms. All of them have blonde hair, a golden or sandy blur, that used to make them impossible to tell apart in the yard when we were kids, but I know who this one is now.
"I know you, too."
I stop in front of him. I don't need a tattoo to recognize the man standing in front of me now. I reach out and grab a lock of his blonde hair, the strands long and thick between my fingers. I used to sit on the old tire swing in the yard while the boy who barely spoke let me brush and braid his long hair for hours. It was the only way I could be sure it was him when the other blonde heads were running around in a blur. I should have seen it sooner. I should have known the second I saw that golden length of hair when he fixed my rig's Wi-Fi connection, considering how much he let me play beauty salon with it when we were kids.
"Theo. You were the only one who had the patience to let me do this. And you stood in that lobby and let me call you Ethan for two weeks. You let me think you were just a stranger while you watched me every single day."
Theo searches my face with his gray eyes. "I didn't want to hide from you, Zora. I wanted to tell you the first time you looked at me, but Reid said we had to follow the transition plan. He said if we dumped the past on you all at once, you might reject it all. I was just trying to follow the rules so you wouldn't feel overwhelmed."
And there they go again, deciding what is best for me. They treat my trauma like a variable they can manage with a spreadsheet. I yank on his hair, forcing his head down so he hasto look me in the eye. The scent of my heat hits him, and I see his pupils swallow the dark gray of his irises.
"Reid said." I huff a laugh as I glance over at the manager. "You hide behind his orders like they are some kind of shield. You are just another part of the surveillance team. So which one are you on the site? Are you the one who acts like my best friend?"
Theo closes his eyes, a rough sound escaping his chest. "I'm Friday. I wanted to be the one you could talk to without the pressure of the others. I wanted to be the Alpha who made you feel safe to be you."
"You made me feel safe by lying to me, Theo." I let go of his hair and shove him back toward the wall. "You used my condition to gaslight me."
I turn my focus to the last man. Reid Harris. He's back by the balcony, his silhouette framed by the glowing skyline of the city. His blonde hair cropped short and professional, a sharp contrast to the wildness I remember from our youth; he once looked like he'd stuck a fork in an outlet. That is what I remember about him, how his straight hair would stand on end with static running through it.
He played God with my life from a distance, orchestrating every move I made since before I stepped into the lobby downstairs. He is the Sunday persona, the one who dictated my pleasure, while he signed the checks for my residency.
"That makes you Sunday, right? The big boss. The one who pulls all the strings." I walk toward him until we are inches apart. "Did you enjoy the surveillance, Reid? Was it worth the millions you spent to build this high-tech voyeur den? Did the data from my heart rate satisfy the manager in you while you watched me touch myself to the sound of your voice?"
Reid walks toward the center of the room. He moves with dominant stride that makes the hair on my arms stand up. Hestops next to Micah and Theo, his presence anchoring the pack. He looks at me with a dark intensity that tells me the mask of the professional is finally gone.
"I didn't do it for the show, Zora." Reid’s voice is the Sunday voice now, deep and full of an authority that makes my pussy pulse with a rhythmic ache like some kind of fucking Pavlovian response. "I am the one who carried you out of that building in 2011. I am the one who promised you a home where the roof would never fall. I built The Nest because I couldn't trust the rest of the world to keep you safe. I had to know where you were every second of the day because I was terrified of losing you again. We worked hard to give you all of this."
"You built a cage, Reid. I didn’t ask to be saved." I walk toward him until my chest almost touches him. "You watched me through a lens. You watched me masturbate because I was so lonely, but terrified of stranger Alphas. I thought I was losing my mind when I found my instincts reacting to Micah as if he was an Alpha, but he didn’t smell like one. You used my face blindness to hide in plain sight and laughed at how easy it was to trick me."
Reid looks into my eyes with a dark, terrifying focus. "I watched because I love you. Every word I said to you as Sunday came from the man who has wanted you since we were kids sharing a blood oath in the yard. I sat behind that screen because it was the only way I could be with you without triggering the panic that nearly killed you fifteen years ago."
I freeze at the wordLove.It hits me like a bucket of ice water, staggering my momentum. I stare at him, my gaze tracing the unfamiliar lines of his face. He is a stranger. He is a man who spent two weeks pretending to be my apartment manager and fifteen years being a ghost. For him to stand there, amidst the hidden cameras and the layers of lies, and claim love feels like a fresh violation. It is so big and so out of left field that my brain can't even process the logic of it.
"You love me?" I let out a hollow laugh as I take a step back. "You don't even know me.” My gaze goes around all of them. "You know my heart rate. You know my sleep cycles. You know the way I sound when I'm coming to your filtered voice. But you don't know the woman standing here right now. You love a memory from a yard that burned down a decade ago. You love a science project you spent millions to curate."
