His eyes searched mine. “I do.”
“Then it was. It was our first date. Which means weare, technically, dating.”
Reed smiled all the way through dinner.
Afterward, we moved to the couch and he settled into his spot and then went to pick up his book, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Not tonight.”
His brows knitted together. “No?”
I settled down next to him, our thighs touching. “No. There’s something we need to talk about.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.” I put my hand in his and we threaded our fingers together. His skin was warm and a little rough, but his touch was gentle. “But we should talk about what happened at Emma’s this morning.”
He immediately tried to pull away, but I stopped him, wrapping my other hand around where our fingers were joined. “Reed, don’t. There’s something I need to say.”
He swallowed, his eyes widening slightly, as if bracing himself for a blow. “Say it.”
“When Lacey brought up Jeremy, I saw the way it affected you.”
“It’s nothing,” he said immediately. Too quickly, in fact.
“It’s not nothing. I just—I know that I’ve shown up out of the blue and I don’t want to make any demands of you. I know your situation is hard.”
“I’m the alpha,” he said, his jaw tightening. “What’s hard about that?”
“Let’s start with the fact that you probably feel completely fucking alone all the time.”
His breath left him slowly. “That’s the trade-off to power, right? Being alpha is a lonely job.”
“One you didn’t ask for. And I’d bet pretty much every dollar I own that you didn’t want it, either. And now you’ve got to make the rules and everyone’s looking to you for decisions.”
I expected him to argue with me or contradict me. What I didn’t expect was the quiver in his lower lip, the sudden desperation in his eyes.
“I don’t want it,” Reed admitted, his voice going thick.
“You’re miserable, aren’t you?”
He shrugged, but I could feel the tremor in his hand. His entire body was trembling.
“You’re not betraying them by speaking your truth. You can trust me, Reed. I want you to know that.”
“Did I tell you how I became alpha?”
“No.”
“Jeremy was my closest friend growing up. He was alpha before me. And then he died—he became a vampire. And suddenly it passed to me. The power always passes to the next strongest wolf in the pack, until no one is left.”
“That’s a shitty way to become leader.”
“It was my fault. I wasn’t fast enough to save him.”
I felt that like a punch to the gut. I hadn’t been fast enough to save Paul, either.
Reed’s shoulders turned inward and he let his breath out in a rush. “Fuck, Harris. I’m afraid I’m going to screw everything up. That I’m going to get us all killed.”
“You won’t.”
