Page 73 of Brutal Alpha Beast
I chuckle. “I do remember that, and you told me that I’ll find it more interesting once I’m older.”
“Well?” She asks. “Have you?”
I shake my head. “Not really, no.”
She laughs. “Of course not.”
The waitress comes with our food, Danielle’s bun-less burger, my full one, and we spend the rest of the lunch catching up, talking about everything, until the check comes and I realize that there’s one thing we haven’t talked about. The very thing I asked her out here for.
“In all seriousness, Danielle,” I say, plopping my card down onto the metal tray. “I am very sorry for the way that I treated you.”
She stops me, growing visibly uncomfortable. “It’s fine. We don’t have to—”
“No,” I interrupt. “We do. I want to.”
She stays silent, watching me with those bewitching green eyes.
“My Mom left when I was so young, and the havoc that wrecked on both me and my dad wasn’t something I could healthily process back then. Still working on it now. I was clouded by so much hatred, so little understanding of how someone could just leave their child like that, and it made me completely irrational. Prejudiced. Ignorant. I understand that now.”
Her face softens, she looks at me with sympathy I don’t deserve.
“I’m not saying this to try to get you to feel sorry for me. I know what I did was wrong. You were my best friend,” I say. “You understood me the most.”
Best friends is easier for us to be right now. I don’t even know how to communicate that I love her. I don’t even feel like I deserve to.
The waitress comes to take my card.
“Hope everything was good for you both!” She smiles.
I nod. “It was.”
After I finish paying, I pop my card back into my wallet. Danielle looks like she’s still processing. She looks sad, which was not my intention at all.
“You don’t have to respond,” I tell her. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I appreciate that,” she says quietly. “And I appreciate that you’re giving witches a chance, because, you know, some of us are pretty cool.”
I smile. “Amen to that.”
Another pause. Not awkward, just settling.
“Do you wanna get going?”
She nods.
“You know,” I say as we’re walking home. “No rush on lifting the spell for the rest of the pack. I understand why it might feel overwhelming. Especially with everything else we have going on.”
She smiles gently. “You know, you’ve really grown up to be a good leader. You’re good at making decisions.”
Instinctively, I wrap one arm around her as we walk. She’s so small, perfectly sized, we fit so well.
“Aww, you’re going to make my ego explode.”
“Oh boy,” she giggles. “We don’t want that.”
“No, we don’t...”
I’m about to make another joke, something about another way she can stroke my ego. Something about the shadow monsters, but then she pauses mid-stride.
