“Do it,” she said, holding out her arm. It was trembling, but she kept it there.
She could do this.
She had been through far worse.
North took hold of her wrist more gently than she expected him to. “Are you certain?”
“Please just do it before I chicken out.” If this got rid of her thumping headache and dizziness, it was worth it, right?
“But don’t stop holding me,” she told Jared. “And maybe distract me.”
“All right,” Jared said as North gently pulled off the bandage. “Tell me, have you ever had a Daddy?”
North cursed quietlyas Angie stiffened.
Really?
That’s how Jared chose to distract her? By distressing her further?
“What . . . what do you mean? I have a father.”
“Your sperm donor wasn’t a father,” Jared spat out. “He was a fucking asshole who deserved a long, slow death.”
North started hooking up the IV.
“Then why did you ask me that?” she asked.
“You know why. You’re a Little, aren’t you?”
She swallowed. “Right. I figured you had to know.”
“I had my suspicions when I found you in the closet years ago,” Jared told her. “But you were also slipping in and out of Little space while ill.”
Angie glanced at them both. “Sorry for my behavior.”
She spoke in a stiff, formal voice that North hated.
“Never apologize for your needs, for who you are,” North told her.
She gaped at him in clear surprise.
He didn’t know why he’d said that. She was getting to him and he hated that.
He was supposed to be stepping out of this life. Away from Jared.
Away from her.
Not that she mattered. She was nothing to him.
Right. Keep telling yourself that.
“North is right,” Jared told her. “Never apologize for who you are.”
North studied them together. They looked so right. He’d made the correct decision.
Now Jared just had to get on board.
“I’m not a Little anymore. And I’ve never had a Daddy. I don’t want one either.”
