Page 32 of Vallaverse: Twist
He's quiet for a while, but I can still hear him breathing. When he speaks again, his voice has taken on a muddled, distant tone. “You should. I hate me.”
“Where's your Alpha, Laz?” I ask. He shouldn't be alone when he's low like this. It's dangerous. It could lead to unintentional tragedy.
He just laughs weakly. “My Alpha,” he says. “Sure. My Alpha is in the bar signing contracts and collecting checks.”
“Are you safe?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
Before I can answer, he gasps, and I hear a door open loudly on his end. “Gotta go.”
I rake my fingers through my hair, ruining the order I combed into it this morning. I shouldn't have answered that call.
I try to let go of my worry and frustration with Laz as I move through the schedule I'm forcing on myself. My lineup of tasks doesn't leave me much time to mull over facts or speculations. It's by my own design. I can't fall into a hole of sadness and anger again. People depend on me now. I have responsibilities and projects. My life is built around improvement now, where before it was one destructive act after another. Laz is that. Destruction. He will destroy me—again—if I allow it.
But he keeps calling.
Every few nights, he calls. Sometimes I answer. I regret it every time, but I can't seem to help myself.
He sounds different on the phone tonight, though. He sounds broken.
“I shouldn't have left,” he says wretchedly. “I've been so stupid. And selfish. God, I'm so selfish. Why don't you hate me, Brooks? I could let go if you hated me.”
“Let go?”
“Of everything,” he rushes, breathless. “I'm so tired. I don't want to breathe anymore, but my body just keeps doing it.”
“You could leave,” I suggest.
He barks out a sharp laugh, but there's no humor in it. “Yeah,” he snaps loudly, “just like that. I'll just tell Kris to go fuck herself, and I'll leave.”
“You could.”
He laughs again.
I'm about to say something catastrophically stupid, like he could come here to me, stay with me, when a door slams.
“Hang up the goddamn phone, slut.” A command. An Alpha command.
Laz hangs up without another word.
This is killing me. What would happen if I just went up there and stormed in the place and dragged him out? It wouldn't matter how many Alphas were in line to stop me, I could tear through every one of them without breaking a sweat. Just because I've turned away from my violent past doesn't mean that I've let it go. It's always there, just under the surface. The only thing that stops me is the thought that Laz wouldn't come.
Saying you're ready to live a new life is an entirely different thing than meaning it, and he's gotten my hopes up too many times for me to go storming any castle gates.
He keeps calling, and I keep answering. It goes on for weeks. He sounds a little worse every call. Weaker. Sadder. Hollow. Sometimes the calls go on for hours, with us mostly listening to the other breathe, and other times the calls are cut short for one reason or another.
I have to make a choice. Whether Laz is ready to leave his Alpha and the bullshit arrangement they have or not, I'm going up for Shane's big fight next week, and I could so easily break the door down and rip Laz out of there for his own good. I think he might actually die if I don't. I'm as selfish as he keeps claimingto be himself, because I can't let him go, not like that. I don't believe for a minute that he's ready to give up the perpetual false heats, but I do believe I'm enough of a prick to force him into it. I don't think I care about whether or not he makes the choice himself. I'll make it for him, and damn the consequences. I'd rather him be miserable and angry and alive than to let himself fade away into nothing for the sake of pleasure.
That's the part that may have pissed me off the most back then, and I'm not surprised at all to discover that I'm still pissed off about it. If he wanted to be in constant, mindless pleasure every day of his life, I could have given it to him without him destroying himself with fucking R.
The phone rings and I pick it up without looking at who's calling. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Shane says cheerfully. “Got a minute?”
“I always have a minute for you, Shane. Is everything alright?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I'm nervous. Grady said I shouldn't bother you with it, but I don't have any family coming to watch, and I'm just, I don't know...”
