"The first time I saw you was in the stairwell. You were carrying that ridiculous stack of textbooks and you smelled like black cherry and you looked up at me and I felt it hit me so hard I couldn't breathe. And I panicked. Instead of saying something honest I made a crack about Omegas in the hallway and you looked at me like I was garbage and you were right. I was."
I'm pressing both palms flat against the door now, tears streaming down my face but the words keep coming because they've been locked behind my father's code for six months and the lock is broken now.
"Every shoulder-check was me reaching for you the only way I knew how. Every comment was me trying to make you see me because the alternative was showing you what I actually felt and that meant admitting the playbook was wrong and if my father's code was wrong then he failed me and he failed my mother and she deserved a mate who was brave enough to reach. She deserved better than the code he taught me and you deserve better than the version of me that followed it."
I'm fully crying now, tears running into my beard, my breath hitching between sentences. Someone at the end of the hall has stopped walking and I can feel them watching but I don't turn around.
"I'm scared, Kit. I'm scared that I ruined this and I'm scared that sorry isn't enough and I know it isn't enough. But I'm standing in your hallway saying all of it because you told me I don't get to be soft in private and act like it doesn't translate to the hallway, and you're right. So here I am. In a hallway. Being the softest I've ever been in my life. And everyone on this floor can hear me and I don't care because you deserved this from the first day and I'm six months too late and I'm sorry."
The silence that follows is the longest of my life. Seconds tick by into minutes and for a moment, I’m sure that Kit isn’t going to open the door, that this is the end of whatever we had.
Then the lock clicks.
The door opens slowly, Kit standing there with his hair damp from a shower and his eyes red-rimmed and his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw set in the stubborn line I'd know from across any room on this campus.
He looks at my face, at the tears still wet on my cheeks, at the way I'm leaning against his doorframe like it's the only thing holding me upright, and his expression cycles through something too fast for me to track before it settles.
"That's a start," he whispers, his voice wobbling a little before he steps aside, leaving the doorway open behind him.
KIT
Ipointattheother bed before Easton is two steps inside the room. "Sit over there."
"Kit—"
"Every time we're in the same room we end up with your arms around me and then I stop thinking straight. So you're going to sit over there and I'm going to sit over here and we're going to have an actual conversation."
Easton sits on the other bed. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between them and waits.
"Why now?" I ask, returning to sit on the edge of the bed. "You had six months. You had every hallway and every class and every time we crossed paths. Why is tonight the night you stand outside my door and tell me about your mother?"
"Because you told me I don't get to be soft in private and act like it counts. And because I sat on that bench tonight and realized I'm turning into my father. Portraying strength insteadof being honest. Choosing how things look over how they are." He swallows. "My mother spent her whole life trying to teach me not to be him and I've been spitting on that since she died." He drags a hand down his face. “I guess it didn’t really hit me until you yelled at me. You melt around me Kit. And yeah, you’re a spitfire when I was being mean to—”
I cut him off. “When you were bullying me. Don’t sugarcoat it.” I slide back on the bed a little, watching his expression morph into disappointment.
“Yeah, sorry. When I was bullying you. It didn’t really click until a couple of days ago that I’m a massive Alpha-hole.”
That pulls a slight grin from me. “Yes, you have been that. I still don’t understand why you’d listen to your father. All of his guiding sounds like bullshit.” I’ve always know that Alphas can be massive ego whores but I only really have great examples like Declan and Iris running around the school. Relationship wise, I don’t really know anyone else.
Easton leans back on his hands, his thighs spreading a little. He has no idea what he’s even doing to me, my gaze dipping to the slight bulge in his shorts before moving back to his face. "Kit, my father’s been in my ear ever since my mother died and everything my father wants, he’s gotten. It just kind of looked like cause and effect. Hell, it’s worked for me here too. Except with you. The one person I needed it to work on, it didn’t." He leans forward again, obviously uncomfortable as he spills his reasoning. "That's not an excuse. It's just what happened."
I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, studying his face across the narrow gap between the beds. I heard everything through the door. However, I don’t know what to do with that. I’m well aware biology fucks a lot of us, bringing people together who are polar opposites sometimes but this is a whole new level of what the fuck for me.
"What happens when the next person says something?" I ask. "When one of your teammates makes a comment. When someone in the hallway sees us and has an opinion. Are you going to go quiet? Are you going to ignore me in the hallways? Are you—" I cut myself off, a growl of frustration slipping through my lips as Easton’s face clouds with an apology.
"No."
"That's easy to say in my bedroom with the door closed."
"I just told a locker room full of Alphas that you’re my Omega, Kit.” He stands and crosses the distance between us, his hands reaching for me. I let him, resting my cheeks in his palms as he tilts my head up to meet his gaze. “Devon, Marcus, Terrell, all of them. And then I cried outside your door loud enough for your entire floor to hear. I can't promise I'll get it right every time. But I'm done hiding."
"And when you slip up? Because you will. Old habits don't just disappear because you had one honest night."
"Then you remind me. You get in my face the way you always do and you tell me I'm being an asshole and I listen. Because the alternative is losing you and I already know what that feels like and I can't do it again."
I sit with that for a long time, searching his expression for the lie or if he’s just pushing words I want to hear. But there’s only honesty and longing in his eyes, his thumbs softly caressing my jaw bone.
"If youevertreat me in public the way you used to, I'm gone. No second chance on that one. I'm not going backward."
