Page 70 of Two For the Show
That’s not my experience.
She cried out from that first hit.
But not the others.
That first was enough to drop her to the ground, and he followed her.
I don’t understand how it got so bad.
One moment they were fighting, the next he was kneeling over her, splattered in her blood.
How did they get there?
Shouldn’t she have been able to calm him down?
He seemed like he was calming down.
Until he wasn’t.
The neighbors had heard the commotion and called the cops, and they came in moments after he dropped the award.
We didn’t even have the time to process what we saw before they placed him in handcuffs and hauled him away from her still body.
We had tan carpet.
The cops almost immediately labeled him an Omega in Storm because, apparently, he was in pre-heat. I guess Alphas can tell that kind of thing.
But why did he seem like he was calming down at first?
Was he even in Storm at all?
I have trouble thinking about that. If he weren’t in Storm, it would change everything. The way I view my childhood, the way I have lived my entire life.
It’s easier to say he was in Omega Storm.
Because I’m not sure I can handle it if he weren’t.
Thank you so much for trusting me with this.
Chapter 28
Holy shit.
My hand is shaking as I hold the phone, scrolling through the text messages that it took Dexter over a month to write. The timestamps are all over the place, with some in the middle of the night and others during the day. Five messages in a row, then nothing for two days.
It couldn’t have been easy for him to write. To relive.
I’m acutely aware of his presence next to me. I don’t know how he wants me to react. Should I ignore the revelation and continue with our evening? That seems impossible to do. Like, “Hey, you spilled your guts out on a screen for me, let’s eat ice cream and watch reality TV.”
That doesn’t feel like the right path.
Can we talk about this? Process it together?
When I look up and see the tears in his eyes, the way he chews on his bottom lip, and wrings his hands, I can’t hold myself back from taking care of him.
“Alpha,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around him. He’s bigger and stronger than I am, but I haul him into mylap all the same, burying my face into the crook of his neck.
He smells rotten. The usually tart sweetness of his caramel apple scent has completely transformed with his grief into something nearly unrecognizable. I hate it. I hate knowing that he’s hurting like this.
