Page 42 of Knotting Hill
“Wow.”Cassidy looks at me with her black-eyelinered eyes and lets out a breath.
“Yup.”
“You sure?”
I nod. “Yeah. This whole thing has made me realise what I want, what I’ve been denying to myself for a while.”
“Are you going to tell the St. Lucs then?”
I glare at her. “No. What do they have to do with any of this?”
She purses her lips. “Don’t you want to get to find out?”
“No. So what if they say they’ve changed? What if they get bored of me when they’ve got me and cheat on me or ditch me? I can’t, Cass.”
“So, you’re holding their pasts against them? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but weren’t you about to shag Franco last night? Hmm. You weren’t too bothered about his past?”
“That’s different,” I huff, seriously getting annoyed with her. “That was just a shag. Long term…I can’t see myself with the St.Lucs, just like I wouldn’t see myself with Franco. They’re good for a night and then bye-bye.”
“You’re missing my point…”
“Which is?” I practically growl.
“That you were going to shag Franco and then not look back. How is that different to what the St. Lucs used to do? And believe me when I say it isusedto.”
We glare at each other for a long few minutes.
I heave a sigh of epic proportions. “Okay, you’ve got me there. But I’m not trying to court anyone or trying to convince them I’ve changed. And you know I don’t sleep around that much. Franco was a knee-jerk reaction. I doubt I would’ve gone through with it. I nearly walked out, but he saw me first.”
“A knee-jerk reaction to what?”
I pinch my nose, trying not to remember.
“Storm…”
I scrunch my eyes shut. “Russell’s scent, okay? It threw me completely off with how enticing it was.”
“So, you smelt the alpha and then decided to jump on another one to get it out of your nasal passages?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
She snorts. “Oh, this is good stuff. You couldn’t make it up.”
“Fuck off.”
We exchange a smile, but then she goes serious and looks away. “I have to confess something.”
“Let me guess. You’ve been helping JP and his crew get to me?” I ask sardonically. I mean,someonehad to tell them what my favourite song was. It’s old, and a stab in the dark just isn’t possible.
Her gaze shoots back to mine. “How did you know?”
“They know some stuff. I can only imagine it was you. Plus, you were trying to get me to go to drinks with them,andIbet you had something to do with Elle’s drinks thing before my heat.”
“Hear me out…”
“No,” I say, not angrily, but fed the fuck up of the St. Lucs. “I can’t look past the number of omegas their dicks have gone in. Even during a rut, that’s way more than I can fathom. And it’s not even about the sex. It’s about the fact that players don’t change. They look for challenges and then get bored when the challenge is over.”
“I don’t think that’s the case here, but I’m out. You’ve made your feelings clear, and I won’t say another word, for or against.” She holds her hands.
