Professor Ellis is saying something about Heathcliff and obsession and the destructive nature of wanting someone who mirrors your worst impulses and I would find the irony funny if I had the capacity to find anything funny right now, which I don't, because I haven't slept properly since Tuesday and everything tastes like cardboard and my brain has developed a charming new habit of replaying the words "good boy" on a loop every time I close my eyes.
I am fine. I am handling this with maturity and grace and the emotional resilience of a well-adjusted adult.
My notes for the lecture so far consist of the date, the word "Heathcliff," and a drawing of a coffee cup that I startedabsentmindedly and then scribbled out because it reminded me of the student commons and the student commons reminded me of his knee against mine and his knee reminded me of the wall and the wall reminded me of the bed and the bed reminded me of things I am not going to think about in a lecture hall surrounded by forty other students who don't need to smell my scent go sweet because I can't control my own biology.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I almost ignore it because Professor Ellis has a policy about phones that involves public humiliation and I've already been publicly humiliated enough this week. But my hand moves on its own, tilting the screen just enough to read under the desk.
It’s from a number I don't have saved but recognize from the student directory I stress-stalked three months ago.
I meant every word.
My heart slams into my throat so hard I choke on my own breath and Milo glances over, his brow furrowing. I shove the phone back into my pocket and stare at the PowerPoint slide so hard the words blur, four words burning a hole through my jeans and into my thigh.
I check the message twice more before the lecture ends, each time telling myself it's the last time, each time reading the four words and feeling them land in the same cracked-open place in my chest that Easton put there on Tuesday night.
Milo has been watching me not take notes for the last twenty minutes and I can feel his gaze on the side of my face. He hasn't said anything because Milo knows how to pick his moments, a skill he developed hanging with his Alpha while being taught by his brother that sometimes silence is a good thing. The fact that he's waiting means he's building up to something I'm not going to like.
The lecture ends and I shove my empty notebook into my bag, Milo falling into step beside me as we push through the doors.
"So," he says.
"No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said 'so' and your face is doing the thing it does when you're about to ask me something I don't want to answer. Whatever it is, the answer is no, I'm fine, nothing happened, and I don't want to talk about it."
"You haven't eaten a real lunch in three days."
"I'm on a diet."
"You called diets a scam invented by people who hate joy. Direct quote, last Tuesday, while eating mozzarella sticks."
"People evolve, Milo."
He grabs my arm gently enough that I could shake him off but firmly enough that stopping feels easier than fighting. Students stream past us on both sides, Milo's face dropping the neutrality and replacing it with something that looks annoyingly close to worry.
"Kit. Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"You're wearing the same hoodie you wore yesterday and the day before. Your scent has been off all week. You flinched when someone dropped a book in the hall this morning, and you've checked your phone eleven times during a fifty-minute lecture. I counted." He pauses, letting each observation land. Fuck, I thought I only checked it two or three times. "Something happened on auction night and you're not okay and I need you to stop pretending you are because you're scaring me."
Milo and Avery are the only people on this campus who has never looked at me and seen a project or a problem or an Omega who needs managing. Milo’s just way more vocal about it. He just sees me, the messy loud defensive version that most people get tired of after a week, and he's still here after two years.
"I slept with someone," I say, quieter than expected. "At the auction. After."
Milo's eyebrows climb. "Okay. That's not necessarily a crisis. Was it bad?"
"It was the opposite of bad and that's the problem."
Something clicks in his expression. "It was Easton."
I don't answer, which is an answer, and Milo's expression cycles through surprise and concern and something that might be a very suppressed I-told-you-so before settling on careful. "Okay," he draws out the ending of the word. "And how are you feeling about that?"
"How am I feeling about sleeping with the Alpha who has spent six months making my life a living hell? I feel great, Milo. I feel fantastic. I feel like a rational person who makes excellent decisions and definitely doesn't have any complicated emotions about the fact that he called me a good boy while he was inside me and I asked him to say it again."
The words are out before I can stop them and the horror of having said them out loud, in a corridor, where anyone could hear, floods through me so fast my face goes hot. Milo's mouth opens, closes, and opens again.
