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“No, I’m not,” he said, shaking his head at me. “No, fuck it, I don’t care about anything at all. I will light myself on fire for the chance to be with you, Leo. I can’t live without you. I think about you constantly. I’ve been very fucking depressed these past few weeks.”

“Have you?”

“Every day, I get out my phone and look over our text message conversations and I stalk all your socials and then I type out some big, long apology message.”

“Seriously? And then you delete it?”

“And then I revise it for forty-five minutes,” he said. “Until I decide I can’t come up with the right words and delete it. Then, before I go to sleep, I compose apology texts in my head, and I go to sleep thinking, ‘That one, definitely that one.’ But then, in the morning, either I can’t remember it, or it sounds dumb.”

I carefully laid my head back down on his chest. “I want to hear one of these apology texts.”

He put a hand on my back. “Uh, okay. ‘I know you probably don’t want to hear from me ever again, and I know you probably don’t want anything to do with me or with anything from that part of your life. It must feel like all that any of us did to you was hurt you and use you. It must feel like, between me and my brother, we’re the worst things that ever happened to you, so—’” He broke off. His fingers had brushed the edge of one of Damian’s bite marks.

My breath hitched.

He moved his hand away, making a tiny noise in the back of his throat.

“Vincent—”

“The fucking worst thing that ever happened to you,” he said in a ragged voice.

“That’s not—”

“Anyway,” he interrupted me, “at this point, I would start revising it.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, because I’ve just talked you out of ever forgiving me.”

I laughed. “You’re not the worst thing that ever happened to me, Vincent. Neither is Damian.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I said. “But I can’t forgive you if you don’t ask for forgiveness.”

“Uh…” He tightened his grip on me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t protect you back then. Either of you—Damian or you. And I’m sorry that I somehow got a crush on you when you were way too young for me. And I’m sorry that crush just got bigger and bigger the older we got. And I’m sorry that I sometimes thought to myself that Opal was the next best thing to you, that being with Opal was sort of like being with you by association—”

“What?” I said. “You’re not serious.”

“And I’m sorry that I knotted you while you were in heat,” he plowed on.

“Oh, don’t apologize about that!”

“And I’m sorry I was such a coward about being with you,” he said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more decisive with you. I’m sorry I didn’t just take charge, tell you what I wanted, you know, shape up and be a man or whatever. Be an alpha.”

“Actually, maybe I’m glad you haven’t done that,” I said, snuggling into him. “I do want to be with you, Vincent, but I’m glad you were careful about making sure I was choosing it.”

“Yeah? That was okay?” His hand moved up and down my bare back. “I thought that you, uh, that people decide things for you all the time. Omegas are treated like they don’t have their own desires sometimes, just because they’re really good at submitting to other people’s desires. But I know you do want things, and I thought it would be wrong to steamroll over you.”

“It would be,” I said.

“So, uh, I’m not sorry about that.” His hand stopped its movement. “I’m not sorry for letting you make up your own mind. But I am sorry for not making it clear what I wanted. Because you weren’t sure of me, and that must have created anxiety for you. I want you to be sure of me, always sure of me. I want you to be able to count on me.”

“Okay,” I said. “I want that, too.”

“I haven’t been that kind of person,” he said softly.

“Sure you have,” I said, shutting my eyes, thinking about all the times I had depended on Vincent Lowell throughout the years.