The crosswalk signal changes, people streaming around me. Nicholas checks his phone again, scrolls, and then looks back up.
I’m going to walk into that café and ask this man for money. I’m going to sit across from the brother of the Alpha who destroyed me and use our history as leverage to save a club that isn’t even mine. Nicholas will say yes, because he’s never been able to say no to me, and I’ll walk out having exploited the one person in Sebastian’s orbit who ever treated me like I was worth being gentle with.
Sebastian’s voice, hits me hard, bringing up his controlling nature even after he’s long gone.“You want to belong to someone, Wilson? You already do.”
The crosswalk signal changes again to Don’t Walk. I turn away and begin the twelve blocks back. When I reach the apartment, Ilock myself in the guest bedroom and sink down against the wall until I hit the floor.
“Got held up. Couldn’t make it. I’m sorry,”I type, watching each letter appear on the screen.
A minute passes before the phone vibrates against my thighs, sending a small shock through my body.“No worries, sunshine. Everything okay?”his message reads.
I hate that name. I hate it because it describes a part of who I used to be around Nicholas, a Beta who smiled and dreamed and wanted things. I’m nobody’s sunshine now. I’m just a disaster.
Yeah, everything’s fine.I type back. Everything isnotfine.
11
Nicholas
The text came in at 12:07.
Got held up. Couldn’t make it. I’m sorry.
I’ve reread it fifteen times, even after I responded to Wilson, even after I contemplated following him and finding out where he lives just for my strange peace of mind. Instead, I’m still sitting here, surrounded by the espresso and the cinnamon rolls they bake fresh every morning, the chair across from me still empty.
My coffee is untouched. The foam has gone flat, a thin skin stretched across the surface. I stare at my phone, my thumb resting against the edge of the case, Wilson’s words burning themselves into the part of my brain that’s been collecting data on him for the better part of a decade.
He was here. I saw him on the sidewalk across the street, his hands shaking in his pockets, his jaw working around somethinghe couldn’t swallow. He waited at the crosswalk through three light changes, then turned and walked away. I stayed at this window table and let him go, because chasing is what my brother does.
Got held up.
Wilson Ashford has never been good at lying. Even when we were younger, his tells were obvious to anyone paying attention, the way his eyes dropped to the left and the way his voice flattened, stripped of its usual inflection. My brother never noticed those things because he didn’t care whether Wilson was telling the truth. He cared whether Wilson was compliant.
I set my phone face-down on the table and press my palms flat on the wood. Five years of patience, and here I am in a coffee shop reading a text that says I wanted to come and I couldn’t.
Wilson was twenty-one when I met him at a backyard barbecue with warm beer, music too loud, and two strangers on coolers talking until the sun went down. He told me my jokes were terrible—and he was right—so I told him another one, and the laugh that came out of him turned into a cough that became the foundation for the next year of my life.
I was going to claim him. The plan lived in my head with the clarity that young love produces, all the details mapped out including an apartment big enough for two, then three, then a pack; the bite I’d place on his shoulder with his permission, his eyes on mine, his body willing.
Wilson needed time to trust, and I had all the time in the world. Decades of patience for a man who’d choked on his beer because my jokes were so bad they circled back around to funny.
My brother saw how I looked at Wilson. He’s always had a talent for cataloguing what other people love and calculating what it would cost to take it away. He’d sit across from me at family dinners, listen to the stupid, lovesick weight in my voice when I said Wilson’s name, and file every syllable away.
I hosted the family dinner that unraveled everything I’d planned. Sebastian arrived in a tailored suit, smelling of something expensive, and every head turned as he walked in. Wilson was enchanted, hell, everyone always is enchanted at first. Sebastian’s gift was making you feel like the center of something beautiful. You don’t notice the walls closing in until the door has already locked behind you.
The claiming happened so fast. I was still adjusting to the idea of Wilson dating my brother when Wilson called me from his bathroom, voice bright with excitement to tell me about the bite. All I could say, through clenched teeth was, “I’m happy for you.”
I burrow the low growl trying to worm itself into my chest as the memories continue to surface. The barista glares over at me and I manage to take a sip of my cold coffee to earn my lack of purchases over the last however long I’ve been here.
Every time Sebastian invited me into their bed, I swore I’d say no. I opened my mouth to refuse, but then Wilson stood there with those brown eyes, and my body overruled every boundary I’d set.
I remember Wilson beneath me, his back arched, hands fisting the sheets, thighs trembling as my knot swelled inside of him. I went slow because I couldn’t bear for it to end, because Sebastian could revoke his invitation at any moment, and because each time I pushed inside Wilson and felt him open for me, something in my chest cracked wider. Losing that connection would be what finally finished me.
Sebastian always watched, one hand resting on Wilson’s back, neck, or thigh. The claim was visible even as he shared what he’d taken. I told myself it was only physical for Wilson, a novelty, my brother’s Beta enjoying a second body in the bed.
I clung to that lie for years because the truth was unbearable.
The coffee shop door opens, letting in a gust of cold autumn air scented with a cologne that probably costs more than mostpeople's rent. Marcus Voss slides into the chair across from me as if every empty seat is his by right.
