The gym noise blurs into a wall of sound around me, the squeaking sneakers and the crowd and Devon calling out a play that I should be running, and all I can think about is Kit's voice in the athletics building saying we're not okay and the way hisface crumbled when I reached for him and the four days of silence that followed.
We lose by nineteen. It's the worst margin of the season and I'm responsible for at least half of it between the turnovers and the missed shots and the defensive breakdowns that happened because my head was in the bleachers instead of on the court.
The buzzer sounds and I walk toward the tunnel without looking up, without scanning the crowd for Kit, because I don't deserve to look at him right now and he doesn't deserve to see me searching for him like a dog that can't learn its lesson.
The locker room is funeral-quiet when I push through the doors. Guys strip out of jerseys and kick off shoes and nobody talks because the loss was bad enough to kill the usual post-game noise. Devon sits in front of his locker staring at the wall. Marcus runs a towel over his head with a roughness that suggests he's imagining it's something else.
Terrell hasn't even untied his shoes. The air smells like sweat and frustration and the particular brand of Alpha aggression that fills enclosed spaces when a team of competitors has just been humiliated on their home court.
I sit in front of my locker and pull my jersey over my head and wait for it.
It comes from Devon, the particular brand of blunt honesty that Devon uses when he's frustrated and doesn't have the filter to soften it. "You going to tell us what's going on with you, or are we just supposed to pretend that wasn't the worst you've ever played?"
I lean back against the lockers, my head hitting the metal as I close my eyes. "Leave it alone, Dev."
"I can't leave it alone. We lost by nineteen at home. You had six turnovers. Six!" He pulls his jersey off and throws it into the hamper hard enough that it thumps against the wall behind it. "Is this about the Omega? The one from the auction?"
The locker room goes still, everyone waiting for my response.
"Devon," Marcus says quietly, a warning.
"No, I'm asking. This is senior year for a lot of us and the last chance we have to show who we are before we get signed somewhere or thrown into the corporate world. I watched that Omega scream at you in the hallway on Thursday and now you can't sink a free throw, and if your head is this messed up over some Omega—"
"Don't call him that."
The words come out of me, twisted up in a growl hard enough that Devon's mouth closes. Not some Omega. Not that Omega. Not the diminishing, dismissing framework that every Alpha in this room including me has used to talk about Omegas since we presented.
Kit isn't some Omega who scrambled my focus. Kit is the person I spent six months hurting because I was too much of a coward to do what my mother told me to do, which was ask for what I wanted and risk hearing no.
"His name is Kit," I tell them, my voice sounding different to my own ears, stripped of the usual performance. "And yeah, this is about him. All of it. The auction, the hallway, the last week, tonight. It's all about him."
Devon stares at me. "East—"
"I've been in love with him since September." The sentence comes out like I'm pulling a hook from my own chest. "Since the stairwell, since the first time I smelled him, since before any of the hallway shit started. Every time I shoved him or made a comment or knocked his coffee out of his hand, it was because I wanted him and I didn't know how to say it without losing everything I thought mattered. My image, my standing with you guys, my father's voice in my head telling me that Alphas don't chase." I look around the locker room and every face is turned toward me and none of them are laughing. "I followed whatI’ve been taught for Six months and it destroyed something that could have been good, and now he won't talk to me and I can't play basketball and I'm telling you all this because I'm done pretending. I'm done choosing my image over the truth."
Nobody speaks. The silence stretches and it's the loudest thing I've ever heard all fucking night. And then Devon breaks the moment. "Six turnovers," Devon says finally, his voice much quieter now. "That's what love does to your handles, apparently."
It's not forgiveness or acceptance but it's Devon making a joke instead of making it worse, and right now that's enough. I pull on a clean shirt and leave without showering because the truth didn't stop at the locker room door and the person who needs to hear it most is sitting in a dorm room three buildings away.
The walk across campus takes four minutes and I spend every one of them dismantling the last of my father's voice. Alphas don't chase. I'm chasing. If they want you, they come to you. He's not coming and I don't blame him. You don't bend. I'm about to break.
Kit's floor is quiet when I step off the elevator. His door is closed and the hallway smells like industrial cleaner and old carpet as I move to stand in front of his room with my hand raised to knock and realize that I have no speech prepared. No playbook. No framework for what I'm about to do. Just the truth, sitting in my chest like a grenade with the pin already pulled.
I knock. There’s no answer. I knock again, harder. "Kit, it's me. Please open the door." There’s no reason to even think Kit is here.
But I can smell him, faintly, black cherry bleeding through the crack beneath the door, and my Alpha reaches for it with a desperation that makes my hands shake.
"I know you're in there," I say, pressing my forehead against the wood. "And I know you don't want to see me. But I need totell you something and I need to say it now because if I wait I'm going to lose my nerve and I've been losing my nerve with you since September and it's cost both of us too much."
Nothing. The door stays closed. I close my eyes and let my forehead rest against the wood and start talking.
"My mother was an Omega." There’s no good place to start, so talking about her seems like the best spot. "She died two years ago. She died two years ago in a car accident that broke her hip and it caused some internal bleeding but by the time they knew it, it was too late. The orthopedic surgeon was the last person who tried to save her and that's why I want to do what I want to do, in case you ever wondered. She's the one in the photo on my desk. The one you looked at that first night in my room."
I hear something shift behind the door.
"She was the only person who ever told me that being soft wasn't weakness. She used to say that the bravest thing an Alpha could do was ask for what he wanted and risk hearing no. My father is the opposite. His code is that Alphas don't chase, bend, or show need. If an Omega wants you, they come to you. And when she died he was the only voice left, so I ran his playbook because it was the only one I had."
My voice is cracking and I don't care. There are footsteps at the end of the hallway, someone coming back from the bathroom or a study session, and I don't care about that either. Let them hear. Let the entire floor hear. Kit asked me to earn this publicly and I'm going to earn it even if publicly means crying outside his dorm room while a stranger walks past.
