Phantom of the fucking Opera.
I want to throw up.
"You eat yet?" Phoenix asks.
"No."
He sets a shake in front of me without comment. The dragonfruit one. My preferred flavor, which he knows because he commented on it once as if it was a surprise I would like a "cute fruit" and I got pissed, and he remembered.
Now the psychotic pink color reminds me of Bells, and I hate that the similarity makes me like it more.
"Thanks," I mutter, because knotting Bells broke my brain and I haven't been able to muster up half the usual bitterness and anger since.
Every ounce of rage has been redirected to the shithead that dropped roses off at the studio. There hasn't been anything since, and none of us has brought it up around Bells because she obviously doesn't want to talk about it, or she would.
Raf drops into the other folding chair, kicks his feet up on the table, and starts rolling a pick across his knuckles. He's already in stage clothes with his black button-down open at the collar, sleeves rolled past his forearms to display the kraken tattoo writhing on his bronze skin.
He and Phoenix kick off their usual lovers' quarrel as they get dressed and I get up to grab my garment bag. I slip behind a curtain and take extra time putting on my stage clothes to give myself a few extra minutes of silence.
I'm fuckingstressed.
Then I come out and Bells is there and nothing fucking matters anymore.
I've lost my goddamn mind.
She's in stage clothes already. Tight white jeans, white t-shirt under an unzipped even whiter leather jacket, blood red combat boots. The rabbit mask is pushed up on her forehead like sunglasses, her white hair swept back from it. She trimmed it for the show.
She looks at me.
I look at her.
Phoenix and Raf might as well be furniture.
She crosses the room like she owns it. Which she does, basically. Owns the room, owns the stage, owns the three alphas in it whether we signed up for that or not.
"Scoot," she says.
I don't scoot. There's nowhere to scootto. I'm in a folding chair in a concrete box.
She drops into my lap anyway, swings her legs over the arm of the chair, hooks one arm around my neck, and settles her weight against my chest like this is a thing we do.
Like this isnormal.
My entire body goes rigid.
"Bells—"
"Shh." She presses her face into the curve of my neck, her forehead warm against the edge of my jaw below the mask. "Recharging."
"You're not a fuckingphone."
"Boop." She taps my chest with one finger. "Plugged in. Charging. Do not disturb."
Phoenix is grinning so wide I can count his teeth.
I shoot him a look that should flay the skin off his bones.
He keeps grinning.