Page 56 of Act Like You Don't Care
Well, that was one thing we could agree on. I also had more respect for myself than staying with Joseph would have allowed. “Is that what this was? Jealousy? And you saw your chance when we broke up?” That wasn’t right, exactly. Joseph and I had been broken up for years now. This had only started in the last six months.
“I remembered you,” he began, his voice almost dreamy. “Do you remember the summer fair, when the first of the beans and the fresh peas were being harvested? He brought you there, looking for absolution for his sins. Even then, it was obvious you were too good for him. You’d give an alpha strong alpha children to carry on his line and his message. He wasn’t right for you, and those of us watching knew that as well. Even then, we could see how his weakness allowed your natural passion to turn inward, toward your own pleasure, instead of being focused on your alpha, where it should be. We felt sorry for you, caught up in his weakness.” His gaze caressed me. I fought back a shiver of revulsion at the greed in his expression, like he was looking right through my clothes, imagining me on my knees before him begging for his child. In some of the groups, that was part of the mating ceremony. In the more extreme ones, that was how an omega spent all their nights—or at least the ones where they weren’t pregnant.
But his words made me think. The fair had to have been the one we went to during the trip we’d made back to Indiana, maybe six years ago? That trip had been the start of the end for us, though I hadn’t recognized it as that at the time. I studied Joshua’s face, the dark hair and flat cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Not one single memory of him came back to me. He looked younger than Joseph, who’d been a couple of years older than me. How much younger? I squinted, then decided to ask. “How old are you?”
His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I’m trying to place you,” I lied because now I thought I knew who he was. In general, anyway. There’d been a group of teenagers from a different community there to mingle with the young omegas of the local one Joseph was trying to convince me we should join. I remembered it wasn’t unusual for them to do these exchanges—Vinist communities tended to be small and they isolated themselves from the heathens around them in greater or lesser degrees. From the way the local omegas talked, these visiting alphas weren’t going to have much luck. They were old school, even for Vinists, and they’d creeped me out bad enough that I’d hardly left Joseph’s side the whole time we were there. Which had eventually sparked the series of misunderstandings that had led to me realizing I couldn’t live with him and still live. “You were there on exchange, weren’t you?”
His nostrils flared and he nodded. “Yes.”
I leaned back in my chair and stared blindly at him, my mind churning as I tried to figure out what else I wanted to ask him. He still hadn’t told me why. “I still don’t understand why you did what you did? Did you think it would scare me into your arms?” And I have to admit, I flexed a little when I said that to remind him that I wasn’t helpless.
Joshua’s eyes drifted down over my body and I regretted the flex. His eyes came back up to meet mine again, his expression serious. “If you had listened in the beginning, I wouldn’t have had to resort to more extreme tactics. You recognize that, I can see it in your eyes.”
“Preaching hellfire and damnation is supposed to make me want you?”
He waved that off, as if my desires had no value. Which, honestly, in his world they didn’t. “I needed you to know that you had a place, a safe place to come to where you could work on repentance and the salvation of your immortal soul. The wanting would come as it always does in a proper mating. Alphas always want omegas and an omega will come to learn to want their alpha once they lose their fear of their sinful natures. All unions are blessed within a mating. You could be as free with me as you wanted, Thomas. I would be honored to indulge your lustful nature as your mated alpha. It would be my duty and my blessing.”
For fuck’s sake, he was just a horny teenager. I sat up straight and glared at him, my jaw clenched so hard the joints hurt. “So you slaughtered a pig in my trailer and threatened my life and gassed me to save my immortal soul? Or because you’re a fucking horn dog who can’t get his dick wet any other way than to take an omega by the neck and hold them down with threats and violence?”
Joshua slammed his hand down on the desk in front of him. “Thomas! You need to apologize right now. That is so far from proper—” He broke off his tirade and waved down the guards, took a breath, and then faced me again with something resembling calm. “I understand that you are upset and that as an omega with no true guiding hand to show you right from wrong, the thought of being constrained to obey something other than your errant nature must be frightening. But I am here. I will be your guiding hand, the kiss of reward when you progress, and the rod of punishment when you can no longer control your urges.”
“Forget it,” I stood up and stared down at him in disgust. “I hope they throw the book at you. Even Joseph was more alpha than you are. A real alpha doesn’t need to keep an omega beneath him to bolster his ego. Instead, he keeps the balance that was always intended. It’s you Vinists that are out of step with God and reality.”
He rose to his feet, his face brick red. “You have learned nothing, have you? I thought your request to see me was a sign, that you were coming to an understanding of how you’d strayed, that you were looking for a firm hand to guide you on the path back to God. But you’re just as big a sinful slut as you’ve ever been, aren’t you?”
“Damn right I am. And I’m going home now to fuck the brains out of that real alpha I was just talking about. Think about that in your lonely cell.” I slammed the phone down on his screams of rage and watched with my ears ringing and my hands shaking as the guards wrestled Joshua into submission and dragged him out of my sight. I felt sick to my stomach, shaky, and I had to force myself to turn around to face Miles.
Miles’s face looked like… well, I didn’t know what it looked like, exactly. I was fully expecting some pushback or a lecture—after all, he’d argued against me doing this. At the very least, he had the right to sayI told you so. But he didn’t.
What he did do was open his arms, in that subtle way I’d noticed he used with me sometimes when he wasn’t sure what I would do, and waited.
I hesitated for a moment then walked into him and wrapped my arms around his waist. His arms enveloped me, bringing a sense of sheer relief along with them and for the first time in my adult life, I tucked my head underneath his chin, eyes closed, and didn’t worry about looking like a total omega.
“I’ll call Pete, tell him this afternoon is off,” he murmured.
Shit. I still had close-ups and at least one green screen to film today. My stomach did a flipflop of anxiety and Joshua’s face flashed before me for no reason that I could think of. “No, it’s fine. I can work.” I started to pull back but his arms tightened around me.
“You’re shaking,” he pointed out. “You can’t work like that. I gave Pete a head’s up yesterday, he has a Plan B in place. It’s not going to upset the schedule.”
“Really?” I tilted my head back to stare at him in astonishment, then shook my head. “No, it’s not fair. They’ve been working around me for weeks now. I’ll be fine.” I hesitated, then asked, “Will you come hang out, though? Just in case?” My nerves hadn’t settled and my brain kept spinning with the realization that Joshua was never going to change his mind about me. In fact, today’s interview might just have convinced him that the only way he could save me would be to… do all those things he’d talked about in the letter. And what if the community bailed him out?
The room went gray around me, Miles’s face the only thing in my field of vision that had any clarity.
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s never going to stop, is he?” I asked quietly, only sheer determination keeping the quaver out of my voice.
“He’s going to be in jail. I don’t think you need to worry about him for a while.”
I shook my head. “I’ve watched enough cop shows and just as many lawyer shows. It’s not a life sentence, the things he did. What then, once he’s out?”
“Maybe he’ll get some therapy?” His arms tightened briefly around me. “What you’ll do is make sure you’re notified when he’s released and take appropriate steps then.”
I swallowed against the sick feeling in my stomach. “Maybe I will take the rest of the day off.” Throwing up in the middle of a shoot wasn’t considered particularly professional.
“I think that’s a good plan.” He let go with one arm and pulled out his phone. We walked out of the detention center with his arm still around me and me clinging to him like I hadn’t done with anyone since I was a teenager. But after everything that had happened, I was worn out. My strength depleted. So I let Miles be my strength for a little while, let him take me home and tuck me in on the couch with a blanket and a rare and luxurious latte while Badness purred and kneaded on my lap. He sat beside me to watch an old Madeline West movie I’d picked up when I’d realized my co-star was her grandson.
