Page 46 of Nursing the Alpha
He wasn’t looking at me, but I didn’t need his eyes to see the fear radiating off him. His shoulders were rigid. His knuckles were white around the strap of his bag. He waspressed as far against the carriage wall as he could go, like he thought I might lunge for him.
Like he didn’t trust me not to.
It gutted me.
The fight drained out of me all at once, leaving only a hollow ache where it had burned. My hands fell limply to my sides, and I forced myself to take a step back.
The other alpha didn’t move. He stood there like a sentry, his glare hard and unrelenting. “Good choice.”
Flynn still didn’t turn. He didn’t have to.
The rejection in his posture, the fear in the stiff line of his neck—it was enough.
As the train lurched forward, the doors slid shut between us, and I stood there in the too-bright carriage, every nerve screaming with the need to run after him. To fix this. To hold him one last time.
But I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
Instead, I stumbled back to a nearby seat and sank into it like a man twice my age.
The carriage was quiet. A few people threw cautious glances my way, but then returned to their phones, their conversations. To them, I was just some stranger, some unwanted disturbance.
They didn’t know.
They didn’t know how much of a wreck I was.
I dragged my hands down my face, rough and trembling. The bitter tang of regret burned at the back of my throat.
I’d ruined it.
Not just a good thing. Not just any relationship.
Therelationship.
The only one that had ever mattered.
I’d ruinedhim.
My sweet, soft Flynn. My light, my tether, my home.
And this time, I didn’t know if I could ever get him back.
16
FLYNN
The clock read 2:47 a.m.
I stared at it from the edge of my bed, legs curled up to my chest, my fingers twisted tight in the hem of my sleep shirt. I wasn’t sure if I hated or loved that glowing red display anymore. It was the only constant on nights like these.
Nights when my chest felt too heavy to breathe.
Nights when no matter how I shifted, no matter how many pillows I piled under my arms, the ache wouldn’t subside.
I pressed a palm over one swollen pec and hissed softly at the sharp, needling pressure. My body felt full. Too full.
I needed relief.
