by Flynn Eire
I swayed on me feet. “I was willing!”
“What?” several people gasped.
“I was willing,” I repeated, lying through my teeth. “He whispered in my ear what he was going to do and I didn’t say no.”
“Wally, don’t cover for him,” Zibon said, grabbing my arm.
“It’s a death sentence,” I choked out as my legs turned to jelly. Zibon caught me before I hit the ground, lowering me down. “I was willing. I’ll swear to that under oath. Let him go.”
In a flash, Roarke was there, pulling me onto his lap. “I’ve got you, babe.”
“Goddamn you,” I whispered so no one else would hear.
“I’m sure he has,” he muttered, kissing the top of my head. “Let’s get you to bed.” I flinched and he sighed. “I’ll sleep on the floor. I didn’t mean it like that.”
I nodded and let him help me to my feet. Of course it was Evan’s gaze I met. His eyes were so full of pity that I glanced away, hanging my head as I walked back into the cafeteria with Roarke. His arm slid around me possessively when we were in full view of all the people staring at us. I couldn’t deal with that so I pulled away. Then I had a better idea. I walked over to the dessert area and grabbed a tray. I picked out chocolate cake, cherry cheesecake, and a few other goodies.
“Babe, what are you doing?”
“Eating my feelings. I don’t have booze and Nate said this works just as good sometimes,” I muttered as I snagged a fork on my way out.
“Is it really that bad to be—” I shot him a look and Roarke wisely snapped his mouth shut. I headed out of the cafeteria and down the hall and right past the elevator. “We taking the stairs?”
“No, we always have sex in your room. I’m going to my room.”
“But my room’s bigger. So is the bed.”
“Then go stay there,” I snapped. “Hey, look at that. You get a choice.” Wow, I didn’t know I even had the ability to be passive-aggressive but it seemed I did.
When we got to my room, he took my keys from me and opened the door, knowing there wasn’t a good way for me to do it and not dump the tray all over the floor since I’d overloaded it. I set it down on my desk and stared at it, not really wanting it.
“If I go get the scotch from my room, will you promise just to have some for your nerves and to help you settle a bit but not drink the whole bottle?” Roarke hedged as he moved closer. I nodded, not knowing what else to do.
I was pretty sure I was in shock. I jumped when the door closed. Yeah, definitely in shock. I hadn’t realized he’d moved away or heard the door open.
Suddenly standing took too much energy. I crumbled to the floor, sobbing wordlessly. I was mated. I’d always wanted to be mated… Once I’d fallen in love. Not like this. Never like this. This was a nightmare.
“Oh, Wally,” Roarke whispered, pulling me into his arms sometime later. I hadn’t even registered he’d come back. He held me tightly and kissed my hair. “It’s okay, babe. I’ll be a good mate and we’ll work through this, I promise. I didn’t mean to do it like this, I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to mate you. I’ve missed you so much. Give us a chance.”
“I just wanted to see why I liked holding his hand,” I wailed, shaking against him. “It wasn’t a date. I didn’t know it was a date. I thought it was about work.” I pushed away and punched his chest. “Evan said he wanted to hang out because he liked me and he took my hand. No one’s ever held my hand and I liked it. I just wanted to know why. That’s all it was. I was honest with him and I didn’t know if we were over. He thought we were but I said I wasn’t sure. You were ignoring me and I thought maybe you were but it wasn’t a date.”
“I wasn’t done,” he rasped. “I wasn’t ever going to be done with you, babe. Not with the way I feel about you. I was trying to respect your wishes and not fuck up any worse. I was waiting for you to tell me what you wanted. What did you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.” I kept punching him. “Not ignore me! That’s what hurt so bad to begin with. Can’t you just be normal?”
“No,” Roarke snarled as he pushed me back onto the carpet, his larger frame surrounding me. “What we have isn’t normal, boring, or something that will end up fizzling out. I fucked this all up and I’m sorry for that, but normal isn’t what we are because we are the real thing I have waited centuries for. I suck with people, having spent so many years pulling away from them, and I handle things like shit. But I have known you were mine since I almost lost that fight when I saw you were watching me.”
“What?” I whispered, losing the hysterics and blinking up at him.
“I saw you,” he huffed as he adjusted his jaw. “After I beat Cornelius and I was claiming my victory. I looked up and saw you watching. All I could think about was you being the one under me after that. The next guy I was in the ring with, I kept getting distracted, glancing up at you instead. I almost lost because I didn’t want to lose sight of you again or risk you leaving before I got a chance to talk to you. Then you stayed after and I thought maybe someone up above did like me after all.”
“You saw me?”
“Yeah, I saw you,” he murmured, staring into my eyes. “And I saw the way you started leaving when it was time for me to fuck who I beat after the fight but you made sure to be there for the challenge. You didn’t say much, like me, but that had to be a clue. Then when Nate told me the whole deal was off, that he didn’t want to do it anymore, I knew you guys were friends and I thought maybe you said something. I asked why after they set the whole thing up and Nate told me it wasn’t my business. But I heard him tell Matteo.”
“So you weren’t ever really upset about not having the ménage?”
“To get confirmation you liked me?” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Hell no. I was elated. I fucking ran all around looking for you, deciding I didn’t want to wait another second instead of dancing around each other now that I was done with the challenges. It was never just about sex for me, Wally. It was you. I wanted you.”
“Then why ignore me? Why go from eating with me to treating me like any other post-trans and—”
He let out a frustrated growl and jumped to his feet. He scrubbed his hands over his hair and paced around.
“Because I didn’t want to be the idiot again who was the only one who felt something! I was falling for you and you seemed happy with just sex. Clearly I didn’t call that one right and I’m a tool. But that first day after we had sex? I was already sitting down with people. You walked over with your tray, and I was smiling at you, waiting for you to join us. You went over by your friends and didn’t look at me. I thought that’s how you wanted to play things.”
“Oh,” I whispered, trying to remember back as I sat up. “I was looking around for you and Zibon called my name. When I sat down, I found you and you never looked at me.”
“Because I thought you were brushing me off!” He frowned as my eyes filled with tears again and I folded my hands in my lap. This was exactly why things were never going to work between us. There had been too much that had gone wrong, too many misunderstandings, and just crap. “How about we table this for tonight and get some rest? I’ve put too much on you already.”
I shrugged and pushed up to stand, my arms feeling like jelly with everything weighing on me. Roarke was there though to help me. Then he set me on the bed and knelt down to take off my sneakers and socks.
“I didn’t say this earlier but thank you.”
“For what?” I mumbled.
“Not letting them charge me for mating you against your will. I am sorry for the way I did it.”
“But not that you did it,” I seethed, jumping to my feet. He stood as well, staring at me with big eyes. “Roarke, we’re never going to work with all this crap between us. And you just tied us together forever. How could you do that to us? You should be apologizing for that too.”
“I won’t,” he choked out, reaching out to cup my cheek. I pulled away though and it was as if I’d slapp
ed him. “I won’t apologize for making you my mate as if I regret that you are. You are not a mistake I made—how I handled it was.” I shook my head, and he moved forward, grabbing my arms and shaking me. “Admit it. If I told you that I regretted mating you, how fast would that send you off the deep end?”
“It would be the truth at least. You can’t want this.”
“I do,” he swore to me. “I want you. I don’t care if it takes a decade to prove it to you, but I will. I don’t want my ex or a hundred others. I want you, Wally. If you believe nothing else, trust that, and we can make it.”
I shook my head and pulled away. I didn’t know how. How could I take that leap after everything we’d been through? It just wasn’t reality.
8 Roarke
My heart shattered again when he’d pulled away from me the night before. I watched the man I loved more than anything pull off his shirt and jeans and crawl into bed. Then he turned onto his side without even looking at me. “There’s enough room for you to sleep on the other side. The floor gets too cold.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, taking any crumb he’d give me at this point. I hit the lights and undressed—keeping my boxer briefs on—before sliding into bed next to him. I screwed up so much, we both had, but I wasn’t going to mess this up. We were right together. I knew it.
I didn’t sleep at all, and when Wally started crying sometime around three in the morning, I pulled him against me and whispered everything was going to be okay as he let out all his worry and pain. I wished he could believe as I did. I’d never known anything as surely as I did that we belonged together.
I just had to figure out how to prove it to him. Giving him space—even though he’d asked for it—hadn’t been the right thing. Backing off when he’d been upset about overhearing my stupid phone call hadn’t been either. God, how I wished I hadn’t answered that fucking day. My ex was still screwing up my life and head even from across the world. Mostly because I let him.
No more. Wally was my life now and I loved him.
We showered separately after we got up, and as I much as I wanted to wash his back and jump him, that wasn’t the way to be there for him. Space was bad, showing him we were more than sex was good. That much I’d figured out in my own stupid head. Fifty years in a broken, messed up relationship had me so turned around from what true north was that I was struggling to catch up.
When we headed out to breakfast, I slid my hand in his, pretending I didn’t see the way his mouth fell open. Instead I raised our hands to my lips and smiled at him as I kissed his. Then without pushing things or saying anything, we walked to the cafeteria. But he let me hold his hand the whole way. Once we were there though, I asked what I was dying to know.
“Did you get the answer you needed?” I murmured as I handed him a tray.
“Is that why you held my hand?” he accused, narrowing his eyes. “To show you could be like Evan?”
I bit back an angry comment, already having given myself a pep talk about patience and to not let my normal quick temper get the best of me. “No. I wanted to before, but now that I know you’re open to it, I was glad to do it. I realized it might also answer a question you had, and as someone who wants to know the answer because we’re in this together, I’m asking, working on my communication with you.”
“Oh.” His face lost his anger and he reached up and pulled on his lower lip like he always did when he was thinking or studying. It was an incredibly sexy gesture that made me want to find the nearest flat surface and get him naked when I saw him doing it. “It was comforting with Evan, but better with you. Not just someone cared—more we’re falling in step and you’re at my side.”
“I am and we are,” I assured him, leaning in to kiss his cheek. He flinched but didn’t pull away. That was progress at least. I was a very goal-oriented person and one of my current ones was to have him able to accept my kissing him for real by the time he needed my bite in two days’ time.
A tough but achievable goal in my mind.
When we had our trays filled, I saw Wally looking around as if lost. “Let’s sit by your friends,” I suggested easily.
“You punched and hurt some of them. I don’t think you’re high on their favorite person list,” he drawled.
“Then this gives me the chance to apologize. They’re important to you and so I’ve gotta mend that bridge.”
His jaw dropped open and then he shook his head. “You’d do that? For me?”
“Babe, I’d offer you my nuts on a platter right now if you’d stop looking at me like I was the enemy,” I admitted, forcing a smile.
He shrugged and led the way. I bit back a smile when I heard him mutter under his breath, “Don’t do that. I like your nuts where they are.”
He wasn’t kidding about not being welcomed if the death looks I got when we sat down were anything to go by. They could get over it. I’d faced way more hostile environments than some post-trans pouting because I’d handed them their asses. I apologized, only getting some grunts in reply.
But then no one said anything as we ate and that was awkward. I didn’t want Wally to start getting flack from his friends about me being around which would put more strain on our relationship.
“I’m heading up a supply run today,” I informed Wally as if just mentioning it in passing. Sure enough, Lance, Mark, Zibon, Bowie, and Verge perked up and stopped pouting. “I figured you’d want to replace that bottle of booze you drank of Nate’s, babe. Anything else you need?”
Wally bit back a smile and then looked at me from under his lashes. “Are you bribing me?”
“Bribing you? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” he snickered, shaking his head. “Bribing me. Showing there’s presents and perks coming.”
“I think it’s called courting you, dumbass,” Zibon muttered, reaching across the table and poking Wally with his fork. “You really are stupid with this stuff. Shut up and accept. It’s not bribing when they’re apology presents.”
“Your friend’s right,” I chuckled, sipping my coffee. “Bribe is if I want you to do something. Like say sleep in my bed tonight because yours is hard as a rock and mine is specially ordered and new. That’s a bribe. I’m making up for the fact you drank your friend’s booze because of me.”
“Oh, yeah, you should reimburse Nate and Matteo for the Jack I drank,” he agreed, smiling. “Yeah, that’s cool.” Then he yelped and shot Mark a dirty look.
“He asked what else you needed,” Mark reminded him. “Dude, we’re out of study supplies and I am not making another deal with Kevin to get more. He totally raked me over the coals with that shit.”
“What did he make you do?” I asked, fascinated to be on this side of the conversation for once. I hadn’t been a post-trans in a really, really long time after all.
“Dickhead made us wash all the trucks and vehicles for two weeks just to get good snacks, a case of Monster, and some of the good highlighters and stuff,” Lance drawled. “And I still had to pay for it all. That was just his price to get it since we can’t leave camp.”
I let out a whistle. “Wow, he really got you guys good. Sam’s way nicer than that and he’s off camp more often for medical supplies since he’s got the credentials to purchase the stuff.” I glanced between them. “What are the good snacks?”
They started listing things like kids at Christmas and it was hard not to laugh.
“Traitors,” Wally muttered, pouting.
“Hey, you eat them too,” Zibon reminded him. “And you hated washing the trucks.”
I slid my hand onto Wally’s thigh. “If you don’t want me to be nice to your friends, I won’t.” His face fell and I pulled back my hand. “I was just kidding around. I wasn’t saying it was a trade for anything.”
“Oh, right, okay—no, of course,” he rambled, his cheeks heating up. I felt his hand on mine under the table and he moved it back onto his thigh. The tension ease from my muscles, realizing I’d handled that the right way.
Good. Being open and honest with Wally was best. Got it. I could learn. He sighed when his friends kept listing more things. “Guys, we don’t have money.”
I rolled my eyes. “I think I can handle a cart full of junk food and caffeine to make sure you’re fueled to study.”
“Yeah?” he hedged, glancing at me.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and made sure I was looking into his eyes. “I told you before when I was heading up supply runs. You never mentioned needing stuff. I would have gotten things for you. That’s why I brought it up. I would have preferred that than you having come over after being tired from washing trucks until late.”
His eyes lit up with understanding. “That’s why you kept telling me about them. I thought you were just really excited to get out of camp like it was lame here.”
“No, not even,” I assured him. He smiled at me then, and I saw just a little more baggage between us gone. This was why I needed to be patient. A bit at a time I would chip away at all the misunderstandings if I focused. “Babe, will you get me a refill?”
I handed him my coffee mug. He nodded, smiling like the old Wally who seemed happy to make me happy. I waited until he was out of earshot and zeroed in on Zibon who was making a list of everything they wanted me to get for their study stash.
“What else does he want, like, or need that he won’t tell me?” I demanded.
“Why should we help you?” he countered, narrowing his eyes at me. “One snack run doesn’t mean we’re on your side or not just playing nice for Wally’s sake. You put him through hell, dickhead.”
“And warrior or not, badass or not, there are five of us who can get you in your sleep if you fuck with him again,” Mark threatened, twirling his knife in his hand.
I smiled as I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest as I looked at them all. “Oh, I like you guys. I really like you guys. Here I thought you caved over some fucking chips and dip but you were just playing. Nice.”
“I’d rather wash trucks for a year than fucking bail on Wally,” Zibon sneered. “We’re playing nice with you for him. You mated him and that’s hard enough on him but you fucking break him again and we will gut you in your sleep and set him free.”
