Page 92 of The Mating Game
She slowly tilts her foot from side to side to show me that it is indeed getting better, and I nod in approval before I take another bite of soup.
“Good.”
I can hear the scrape of her spoon as she stirs it in her can, and when I peek over at her from the side, I can see her white teeth pressed against her soft lower lip.
“What is it?”
“I didn’t thank you for taking care of me last night,” she starts quietly, and I feel my heart begin to pound in my ears a little with nerves. “You know…getting me back here…tucking me in…all that.”
“No reason to thank me,” I answer, turning my face away. “Just the decent thing to do.”
“I told you I’m not used to people fussing over me,” she mumbles.
I smile. “And I toldyouthat you should let people fuss over you more.”
She goes quiet again, and I can practically hear the question on her tongue as she obviously struggles to ask it, my body tensing in preparation for the conversation I knew we would need to have eventually.
“You know…about last night…”
There’s a sound of metal against metal that signals my can is empty, but I continue to absently scrape my spoon around the bottom. “Last night?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she huffs. “Did I misread things? It felt like you…I mean, at least, itseemedlike you wanted to—”
“You didn’t,” I say evenly. “Misread things.”
“Then why didn’t you…?”
I experience a familiar panic and the echo of old wounds throbbing deep inside, feeling silly all of a sudden. Like maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it isn’t a big deal to her, and after everything we’ve done, maybe it shouldn’t be a big deal tome. For the life of me, I can’t quite figure out why, but itis, I’m realizing. Itfeels like the start of something. Something that, deep down, I’m afraid might break me all over again.
“There was a girl back in college,” I start, wincing at the thought of her name. “Chloe.”
Tess is quiet, seeming to sense that I need to get this out all at once, and she nods softly for me to go on.
I drop my spoon into my can and let it rest in my lap, eyes downcast as my jaw works and I consider what to say.
“We met during freshman orientation,” I tell her. “She was an omega, like you, and she was open about it. I’d always felt so…different after discovering I was an alpha when I was just a teenager, but she made me feel…normal. For maybe the first time.”
“Did you…?”
I nod. “We dated. You might have guessed that it got intense between us very quickly because of what we were, but I didn’t care about any of that. I was so gone for her, all I could focus on was how it felt like she was theone. We hadn’t been together long, but I was already planning our future. I wanted to make her mymate.”
I see Tess wince from the corner of my eye, and I imagine it’s strange to hear things like this considering the way I’ve been…helping her lately.
She clears her throat. “What happened?”
“My parents wanted me to come home. We had this tradition…and I…” I shake my head, the memories still too painful after all this time. “I made plans with Chloe’s parents instead. We went to the beach. I was on abeachwhen they ran their car off the road.”
“Hunter…”
I feel her small hand curl around my forearm, and that gives me courage to keep going. “It felt like my fault. Like maybe, had I been there, they wouldn’t have…”
“Of course it isn’t your fault,” she says firmly. “You weren’t even here.”
“That’s my point,” I tell her. “Ishouldhave been here.”
Her lips purse, but she doesn’t comment, asking instead, “So what happened then?”
“I felt like I needed to be back here. I felt like I owed that to them, to make sure this place kept going. They loved it so much, I just…” I let out a sigh. “Regardless, it didn’t fit into Chloe’s plans.”
