I haven't told Tate. How would I even start. How do you sit across from your brother and sayyour best friend knotted me at an anonymous sex club while I cried and begged. He called me perfect and I didn't know it was him but he knew it was me the whole time. Also I think I might have wanted him for years and I'm only admitting that now because the alternative is admitting I'm just angry.
I'm not just angry. That's the problem I keep circling back to.
If it were just anger, it would be simple. Some alpha violated my anonymity, used insider knowledge to exploit my heat, and I'd never have to see him again. Clean break. Righteous fury. Done.
But it's not some alpha. It's Sully, who makes terrible pancakes at Tate's apartment on Sunday mornings and argues with me about whether pre-med is actually harder than engineering. Who once spent forty-five minutes helping me fix my car in Tate's parking garage while I held the flashlight and tried not to stare at his hands. Sully, who I've been carefully not looking atfor years because every time I looked too long something behind my ribs did a thing I wasn't ready to examine.
Tate's birthday. Two years ago. Sully mentioned it in the club, or near enough. I didn't register it at the time because I was in heat and couldn't process anything beyondtouch me, more, please.But I remember that birthday. I remember showing up late, soaked from the rain, and walking into Tate's apartment and there was a moment, maybe two seconds, where Sully looked at me and I looked at Sully. The room got very small and very warm and then Sully left to get more ice and I told myself it was nothing.
It wasn't nothing.
The pool party. Climbing out of the water and catching Sully's eyes on me before he looked away. The scar on my hip visible above my waistband and his gaze snagging on it. I told myself he was looking at the scar. Just the scar. And I grabbed a towel and covered up and spent the rest of the afternoon on the opposite side of the pool.
Tate's kitchen. Sully shirtless at the counter making coffee. Me in the doorway for maybe three seconds before I turned around. I told Tate I forgot something in my car. I sat in the driver's seat for ten minutes with the air conditioning on, waiting for the heat to pass, and I told myself it was a pre-heat symptom.
It was never a pre-heat symptom. It was Sully. It was always Sully.
And that's the thing that makes the anger complicated. Because if I wanted him before the floor, if some part of me has been wanting him since that rainy birthday party, then what happened at the club isn't just a violation. It's the ugliest possible version of two people finally colliding, all the timing wrong, all the power wrong, everything wrong except the fundamental fact underneath it which is that when his scent hit me across thatroom I didn't just respond to an alpha. I responded tohim. The specific him it had been ignoring for years.
That doesn't make what he did okay. I need to be clear with myself about that. He knew and I didn't and that imbalance is real and it matters. But I'm sitting in an organic chemistry review session smelling a phantom and my chest aches and it's not just the scent-bond. It's missing him. It's missing a person, not a biological response, and I have no idea what to do with that.
My phone buzzes.
Unknown number. I almost ignore it. Then I read it.
I know you probably don't want to hear from me. You don't have to respond. I just need you to know that I'm not going to tell Tate. I'm not going to show up at your apartment, and I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. If you never want to see me again, I'll figure out how to live with that. But if any part of what happened was real for you the way it was real for me, I'll be at the coffee shop on Meridian every morning this week. Your call.
I stare at the text for a long time. The audacity of it. The restraint of it. The fact that he's not begging or explaining or showing up at my door with some grand gesture. He's just telling me where he'll be and letting me decide.
I hate that it's exactly the right move. I hate that he knows me well enough to know that pressure would make me run and space would make me think and thinking is more dangerous than running because when I think, I end up where I am right now, which is sitting in a lecture hall not hearing a single word about molecular orbital theory because I'm too busy remembering the sound of his voice sayingyou're perfectand trying to figure out if the ache under my sternum is the scent-bond or something older.
I don't text back. I put my phone away and I sit through the rest of the review. I go home and I eat dinner and I wash my sheets for the third time and I lie in bed and smell him on the pillow that's been through three wash cycles. I think about the coffee shop on Meridian and I don't sleep.
***
Wednesday morning. Meridian Street. I'm standing outside the coffee shop with my hands in my jacket pockets, which is how I was standing when I walked onto the floor at Knot Club six days ago. The parallel is not lost on me.
I can smell him through the window. That's not phantom scent. That's real, warm, present, and my body responds immediately, a flush of heat across my skin and a pull low behind my ribs that I breathe through carefully. This is not a heat response. This is just me. Just recognizing his scent and reaching for it, and for the first time I'm letting myself reach without fighting.
I go in.
He's at a corner table with a coffee he doesn't seem to be drinking. He looks up when I walk in and the expression on his face cycles through about five things in two seconds before it settles on something careful and still. He doesn't stand up. Doesn't come toward me. Just watches me cross the room the way he watched me cross the floor, except this time he looks terrified.
Good. He should be.
I sit down across from him. I don't say anything for a minute. I let him sit with it. I let myself sit with it, too. His scent up closeis pulling at something in my chest that I'm not going to think about right now.
"You're an asshole," I say.
"Yeah."
"What you did was wrong."
"I know."
"I'm not forgiving you. I want to be clear about that. What happened at the club, the fact that you knew and I didn't, that's not something I'm going to get over because you found the right coffee shop and waited."
"Okay."