That’s the most difficult thing about all of this. My beautiful, precious girl has been suffering, and I didn’t realize how badly. How the fuck does that happen?
I believed the smiles, the hugs, the easy lies that fell from her lips because I’m supposed to know her inside and out due to how long we’ve been together.
We fucked up so badly.
She’s been feeling alone and sad. We just left her alone in those feelings.
Ansel turns the water on in the shower to her favorite temperature, while I say goodbye to my skin. Cassie enjoys a disturbing warmth that turns her skin pink and rosy.
Once she spits and rinses, I begin to help her out of her clothes until Abbott takes over so I can finish stripping.
“You guys,” she mumbles. “I can shower by myself. Winter and Bellamy are alone.”
“The alarm is set now,” Abbott murmurs. “I turned it on from my phone as soon as I let the guys inside the house. We’ll know if anyone attempts to go in or out. Before you try to tell me that I’m keeping them against their will, you fucking know better, Baby Girl.”
“Ugh,” Cass grumbles.
God, she’s so cute, even when she feels like shit.
“They’re fine,” I say, maneuvering her into the large shower stall. I fucking love our shower.
Pulling the hair tie from her hair, I put it on my wrist so I can hold her as the water moves over us.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her, my emotions bubbling up as I breathe in her scent now that the heat helps to clear up my sinus passages. She always smells like lavender and blueberries, and it’s as familiar a scent as mine is.
We actually grew up in the same schools, and our parents went to the same hoity toity events. Her hugs are incredible, her smiles are my goddamned drug.
Her scent becomes more tart than usual and I groan as I kiss her throat.
“I mean it.”
The glass door opens again to admit Ansel and Abbott, and I feel more than hear her wracking sob.
“You…didn’t do anything,” she gasps.
“That’s the problem,” Abbott growls. “Somehow along the way, I turned sex into a weapon. You knew that Nina belonged toPack Thornefield, but you really hit it off with her. A part of you is grieving something that won’t happen.”
“Nina is awesome,” Ansel adds. “I was bummed too. It affected you more because you took all the phone calls to make sure she was safe while we faked our courting.”
God, her mom was such a piece of work. She shouldn’t have been responsible for taking care of a cockroach, much less a human being. She reached out to eligible packs looking for an omega in an effort to get Nina packed up. It’s difficult to do that when Nina’s heart already belonged to someone else.
Fucking clitcicle.
“You got attached,” I murmur. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Precious. We left you in the sea of that emotion, and we were wrong.”
My blonde hair quickly gets in my eyes as the shower soaks it, and I flick my head back to force it back. Abbott’s gaze meets mine, fierce and knowing. Of all of us, he makes it his job to understand every cog in the wheel.
He has to be beating himself up too.
“Without you, we fall apart, Cass,” he rumbles. “Things just kept getting worse, and I kept telling myself that we’d give it time. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“This should be it,” she whispers. “We should be enough, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Ansel says, pulling her gently away so he can begin to wash her hair. His tanned skin glistens as water droplets fall on it, and his muscles bunch and release as he massages the shampoo into her hair. “Alphas are created for omegas, and we operate best in a pack.”
“As such,” Abbott continues, “it’s natural for it to feel as if there’s a hole when that space isn’t filled. Cass, did you know that alphas can go feral without an omega?”
Her green eyes open in shock, watching Abbott for any kind of teasing or deception as Ansel carefully tips her head back to rinse her hair. As the water begins to run down her face, her eyes snap tightly shut, but it doesn’t diffuse the tension any.
