"It's Wednesday."
"That makes it worse."
He closes his laptop and crosses the room, standing beside the bed looking down at me with an expression that makes my Omega hum beneath my skin. I refuse to scoot over. He lifts the blanket and slides in behind me anyway, his chest warm against my back, his arm settling over my waist with a confidence that shouldn't feel as good as it does. His nose finds the back of my neck and he inhales, my body melting into him before I can stop it.
This is the pattern I keep telling myself isn't a pattern while I live inside it every other night. In private Easton is careful and warm and says my name like it costs him something precious, and I crawl into his bed and let him hold me and leave before the sun comes up because daylight makes it real and real is terrifying.
My phone buzzes on his nightstand the next morning at two and I extract myself from his arms. Easton stirs, his hand tightening on my hip, and I peel his fingers off one by one and press a kiss to his knuckle, always hating myself later for how tender it is. Then, I grab my shoes and leave.
It’s happened too many times while Easton all but ignores me in public, everyone whispering about what deal I must have struck up to step out of the Alpha’s attention.
The worst part is not even the arrangement. It’s the heat building beneath my skin, strengthening every time I leave Easton’s room. I’ve already checked my calendar. My heat isn’t due for another three weeks but I’m running hot and the need for Easton is growing stronger. Sometimes just a whiff of hisscent has slick gathering around my hole and being this close to him in his bed, surrounded by his scent, has me half-hard and aching.
The secrecy is the thing that's going to break me though. It's eating through me from the inside, this double life where I pass Easton in the hallway like a stranger during the day and curl into his chest at night, where Milo asks if I'm doing better and I say yes while my phone lights up with a text from the guy I'm supposedly over.
I don't want to be a secret. The word sits wrong in my mouth even thinking it, tasting like shame and the back of a closet and every terrible thing I swore I'd never let an Alpha make me feel.
But admitting we're something publicly means standing in front of the entire campus that watched him bully me for six months and saying I chose this.I chose him.
And I can't figure out how to make that not feel pathetic, because every way I frame it in my head it still sounds like the Omega fell for the Alpha who tormented him and isn't that just the most predictable story anyone has ever told? I'd rather eat my own shoes than become a cautionary tale whispered about in dining halls.
So I keep the secret and the secret keeps rotting and I keep climbing into his bed and leaving before dawn and somewhere along the way I stopped being able to tell whether the shame is about wanting him or about hiding it.
It's Thursday afternoon when it all comes apart. I'm walking through the main corridor of the athletics building with Milo, complaining about a group project partner who thinks "collaboration" means forwarding me his half-finished notes at two in the morning, when Easton's voice hits me from behind.
He's with Marcus, both of them in practice gear, and the sound of my name in his mouth in a public space sends ice water down my spine because I know that voice. That's not the hallway bullyvoice. That's the voice from his bedroom, the one he uses when he's pulling me closer in the dark, and he's using it here, in the athletics building, in front of Marcus and Milo and a corridor full of students who have spent six months watching us tear each other apart.
His hand touches my arm. His fingers brush the inside of my elbow, and the casualness of it in this space where he used to shoulder-check me into lockers makes something detonate in my chest.
"Don't." My voice comes out like a blade. Easton's hand stills on my arm. "Don't touch me."
"Kit—"
"You don't get to do that." The words build pressure and they’re going to come out whether I want them to or not. Milo stills beside me, Marcus' eyebrows climbing and I know that every student in this corridor is slowing down to watch because Kit and Easton fighting is free entertainment at Knotlocke and apparently old habits die hard for everyone, not just us. "You don't get to just be nice and think it undoes everything else."
"I wasn't trying to—"
Tears gather in my eyes as everything I’ve worked through over the last week and change since the auction comes crashing out. I know I should probably take this private but the emotion is already there, bubbling up and I can’t stop it. "You humiliated me for six months in front of everyone on this campus. Six months of shoulder-checks and comments and making me feel like I was nothing, and now you want to touch my arm in this hallway like we're okay?"
Easton takes a step back, looking around at the gathering crowd before trying to reach for me. Then he stops and pulls his hands to his chest, confused as my rant continues.
My voice climbs and I know I should stop, that my reaction is disproportionate to a hand on my elbow, that the eruptionisn't really about the touch. It's about every midnight visit and every sunrise departure and the growing suspicion that I am someone's secret and secrets are just another word for shame. "We're not okay. You don't get to skip the part where you earn this. You don't get to be soft in private and act like that translates to here, where everybody watched you tear me apart. That's not how it works, Easton."
I’ve just announced to the whole fucking school that there is something between us and I’m not sure how to deal with that.
Easton’s face cycles through hurt and guilt and the beginning of a defense he's smart enough not to voice, and the fact that he doesn't fire back makes it worse because the old Easton would have matched my cruelty and I would have had something to push against. This version of him, the one that just stands there and absorbs it, leaves me swinging at air.
The corridor has gone quiet. Marcus is staring at Easton as Milo's hand finds my shoulder, squeezing once before letting go. I turn and walk away because if I stay I'm going to either scream or cry and I refuse to do either of those things in the building where he used to make me feel two inches tall.
Milo walks beside me as we push through the double doors and into the cold. My legs are shaking. My face is hot. My entire body is running at a temperature that doesn't match the March wind cutting through my jacket and somewhere in the back of my brain I realize I might have more issues than Easton.
Easton texts me that night.I'm sorry. You're right. Can we talk?
I read it three times and then turn my phone face-down on the nightstand and lie on my back staring at the ceiling, cataloging every crack in the plaster like it's going to give me the answer to the question of how I ended up here. The absence of his arm around my waist hurts almost like a physical pain and my bed smells only like me and I hate that I hate that. I hate that mybody has recalibrated around his warmth so completely that my own sheets feel wrong.
He texts again the next morning. And twice on Friday.Please just tell me you're okay.And then, an hour later,you don't have to talk to me, just tell Milo to tell me you're eating.
I almost break on that one. My thumb hovers over the keyboard for a full minute as I type out the honest response.
