Lib Novel Page 27
“My snoring?” she hisses. “You snore, you big oaf.”
She’s smiling, and he’s smiling, and I want to throw myself off a bridge. Being around this much love and happiness when my future feels like a swirling black hole is almost too much to bear.
Bigby grins, kicking the throw pillow back up onto the bed before heading out into the hallway. When he closes the door softly behind him, I turn to Rosa, unaware I’m crying, until she folds me in her arms.
We crawl onto the bed together, and she holds me, petting my hair until I calm down enough to talk. But I don’t want to talk about Byron. It feels like all I do is think about him.
“What were you and Bigby doing?” I ask, hearing how vulnerable my voice sounds.
“Just—we went for a run. Hunting. Up near Aris’s house,” she says, clearing her throat. “We try to shift together at least once a month. Bigby read somewhere that it helps to release intimacy hormones.”
“Gross,” I whisper, “like you guys need more of those.”
Rosa smiles, then runs her hand over my hair again, tucking it away from my face.
“Talk to me,” she says, clearing her throat. “I know that, when we first got here, there was so much going on with Bigby and me, and then we were in California, and I just—I feel like so much has happened with you, and I don’t even know where to start. Will you just tell me about it?”
She wants me to tell her about Byron, and the thought of it is equally horrifying and humiliating. The truth about what happened between the two of us has been buried inside me for so long that it feels impossible to unearth, impossible to put into words.
Rosa got her happy ending. She has her man, her mate, the person who will have her and Kaila’s backs no matter what, through thick and thin. I don’t have that, and, apparently, I never will. It’s mortifying and pathetic, which is part of the reason I’ve kept it to myself for so long.
But she’s my best friend.
“I…” I start, twisting my hands together. “Byron is my mate.”
“Yeah,” she says, softly, and I wince. It’s obvious to everyone—surely, they can smell it on us, and it’s even more apparent after we started hating each other, and the scent remained. I close my eyes against the idea of that, of how obvious it’s been to everyone that he didn’t want me.
“Well, he’s my mate,” I continue, laughing sarcastically, “and he doesn’t want me. And now we’re blood-bound, and he doesn’t want me. It’s excruciating.”
“Yeah,” she says again, nodding and shifting down, cuddling into me. “I can relate to part of that—I remember how much it hurt when Bigby left. But the blood bonding thing—how does that feel?”
I close my eyes again. Most of the time, I’m actively trying to forget how it feels, to have our lives tied together like this. But now, I breathe, exploring the feeling.
“Have you heard about amputees?” I ask, softly, “And how, sometimes, they have these phantom limb pains—like, even though their arm is gone, they’ll feel it hurting, and it’s like—it can’t hurt, because it’s not there, but they still feel it?”
“Yeah,” Rosa says, softly, brushing a tear away as it rolls down my cheek.
“Well,” I say, laughing a bit at myself again, trying to lighten the mood. “That’s what it feels like. Byron is my phantom limb. And it hurts.”
My voice breaks on that last word, and Rosa lets out a little sigh, the corners of her lips turning down.
“I told him that I loved him,” I say, my voice raspy, “and he left. I told him he was my mate. He said that I was mistaken.”
“Oh, honey,” Rosa says, wrapping me up when I start crying again. “Everything is going to be okay.”
When we wake up the next morning, it’s to Kaila giggling, holding a tray of breakfast precariously while Bigby watches, his hands fluttering around, ready to catch it in case it falls. The orange juice sloshes over the edge of the glass and onto the tray, but she manages to set it on the bed, coming around the side to kiss me on the forehead.
“It’s time to feel better, Auntie Olivia,” she whispers. I reach out, running a hand over her hair, hugging her little body to mine, hating how much it hurts to see Rosa happy with her little family, knowing it’s something I’ll never have.
“You are so right,” I whisper back, a tear escaping when she pulls back and steals a piece of bacon from the tray.
Chapter 11 – Byron
I’m not watching Olivia. I’m just going through the standard surveillance for the town, checking on the pack center, monitoring outside Aris’s house. After the vamp attack, I’ve been extra careful to watch the surrounding area for any weird movement.
But I’m switching cameras right when I catch movement outside of her apartment, and it makes my entire body go on high alert. I sit there for a moment, staring at my monitor, willing it to be fake, willing it to be a mirage from the pixels.
And then I see it. Three figures emerged from the dark and headed straight for her apartment building.