"Why?"
"To mess with me."
I smiled. "Sounds like him."
There was a loud clicking sound I wasn't expecting that made me jump. I practically leaped into Marcus' arms, my heart beating so quickly I could hear it in my ears.
He placed his arms around me. "It's okay, it's just the water heater. You can hear it knocking in here sometimes."
I nodded against his chest. "You're right. Sorry, I'm just feeling a little jumpy."
"That's understandable," he said. "Do you want to come sleep in my room?"
"Is that okay?" I asked.
He kissed me on the forehead, which I wasn't expecting. "Of course it is."
A pit had openedin my stomach like a sinkhole ever since we found out Eva lost her Streamverse account, but the feeling was compounded about tenfold with how I'd responded to Joon.
In hindsight, bonding with another member of my own fuckin’ pack shouldn’t have made me fly off the handle like that. But I had the same hardwiring as most alphas, and my hindbrain had kicked me in the dick so hard that I’d forgotten myself just long enough to say something that Ireallydidn’t mean.
Not only had I majorly lost my shit when my partner obviously needed me, but my packmate had needed me too. And I just... ignored it for my own hurt and jealousy.
That didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel likeme.
But now that it’d happened… I wasn’t entirely sure how I was supposed to fix it.
There wasn't any excuse for what I said, and I wasn’t going to bother trying to make any. I just needed to come up with a way to repair the damage before I made things worse. Because,knowing me and my absolutely flaming case of foot-in-mouth disease, I probably would.
At least once.
I patted the towel over my short curly hair, looking at the dark circles under my eyes in the steam-fogged mirror with a sigh. Usually, I wasn’t the one sleep ran screaming from—that honor fell to Cameo—but last night, I was pushing it to call the stewing I was doing rest.
Sleep? I didn’t know her. Not with my own fucked up words playing back to me on a loop, Joon’s struck expression looming behind my eyelids.
Funny. It seems like you have a type.
What the fuck was wrong with me? Why did I say that? And worse, I'd just let it fester since. Avoiding meeting Joon's eye at all costs as we tried to console Eva about her account termination and the break-in.
It'd been... tense. And the few times I'd managed to pluck up the courage to look at my boyfriend, if he even stillwasmy boyfriend, I'd regretted it almost instantly. His deep, dark eyes finding mine to share his hurt with me as easily as if he'd said it aloud.
Maybe I was projecting, but I doubted it.
What I said... It wasn't okay. But how was I supposed to make it up to him?
To both of them, really. Because it wasn’t only Joon I’d hurt yesterday. It wasn’t Joon’s stuff that I’d flung about the room—and after seeing Eva’s reaction to finding her home turned over, the guilt was chewing me up.
She didn’t deserve that, hadn’t done anything wrong, and still someone felt the need to just… insert themselves where they didn’t belong. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t okay.
And I’d done the same fuckin’ thing to my packmate.
I felt sick with it.
Wrapping the towel around my waist, I clicked off the light to the bathroom as I swung the door open into my bedroom, freezing in place at the sight of the man waiting for me on the other side of the door.
If I weren’t so in my own head, I probably would’ve smelled him first, candy apple hanging in the air, oversweet like it wasn’t quite ripe enough with the omega’s nerves.
Joon sat on the bed in a pair of my green plaid pajama bottoms—I could tell they were mine from the way that they were too long, a couple of inches hanging past his feet, but still fit, for the most part, at the waist. Well, that, and I was about the only person who owned anything, no matter how small, in this house that had any color other than Joon. And, now that she was staying with us in a more official capacity, I guessed I should’ve included Eva in that too. Really, she was the anomaly. I wasn’t sure there was anything in the omega’s entire wardrobe that was black. Cameo would be delighted, finally someone he could sort laundry for that wouldn’t be a complete chore.
