“You don’t owe me that. You didn’t owe me anything.” I swallow, but the bitterness still slips through. “You were just the next person in a seat he’d already decided to fill.”
She flinches, and guilt snaps through me almost instantly. The words came out too sharp, and she isn’t my enemy.
“Sorry,” I say. “That was?—”
“Honest.” Maggie shakes her head, her mouth trembling before she presses it flat. “A friend once told me a cheating man will always cheat. Louis and I got together while he was still with you, and I chose to ignore what that meant because I wanted to believe I was different.” She picks up a sugar packet and starts folding one corner over and over until the paper creases white. “I guess it’s karma to learn that he hasn’t been honest with me.”
I lean in a little, keeping my voice low because the table beside us is close and Mistberry Cove has no mercy when it comes to gossip. “I believe in shitty Alphas doing shitty things because nobody stops them.”
That earns the smallest break in her expression, almost a smile, but it vanishes quickly. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go for it.”
“At the rugby match, he told me to wait while he went to talk to you. Said you’d probably be a bitch about it. He was lying about that too, wasn’t he?”
I nod. “Yeah. He came over to taunt me, basically.” I keep going because she’s being direct and she deserves the same. “He’s been harassing me since we broke up. He showed up at the game to say things designed to hurt me, and a couple of weeks ago, he broke into my house at two a.m.”
Maggie goes completely still.
The sugar packet slips from her fingers and lands on the table, forgotten. Her mouth parts. “Did he hurt you?”
“One of my new Alphas was sleeping over, so he handled it.”
“Oh, shit.” She breathes out slowly, one hand rising to cover her mouth before dropping again. “That explains the black eye. He told me he got into a scrap at a bar with some guy, and I believed him because…” Her eyes glisten, furious and humiliated at once. “Because I wanted to.”
“I’m not trying to make your life harder,” I say, leaning forward. “Maybe he’s different with you. Maybe he’s changed.”
Maggie stares at me then, and whatever hope she’d been clinging to seems to fold in on itself. Her hands have started shaking, so she hides them in her lap. “Men who break into their ex’s house at two a.m. haven’t changed,” she says. “They’ve just gotten better at hiding.”
Trudy arrives with a plate of cookies, sets it down, and reads the table in a second. “What’d I miss?”
“Realizing how many asshole Alphas exist,” I explain with a smirk.
“Girl, I could fill a stadium.” She drops into her chair.
Maggie laughs. We’re all reaching for a cookie when Nina’s assistant arrives with our drinks, and somehow, after that, we actually talk.
Not about Louis for a while, but about normal things. Life. Work. How Trudy wants to open up a flower shop. Maggie revealing how she met Louis at a dance, and me admitting that I managed to score three Alphas and still spend half my time terrified they’ll leave me too.
By the time we exchange numbers, my chest feels lighter, even if another part of me is already second-guessing every word I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Maggie so much. Maybe dragging Louis’s worst behavior into the open will only make everything messier.
But if I were her, I’d want to know.
And maybe there’s a small, petty part of me that can’t help smiling at the thought that Louis’s day is about to get a lot worse.
I only hope that when the fallout comes, I’m far enough away not to get buried under it.
27
CLAIRE
“Brody, if your fork comes anywhere near my plate again, I’m stabbing you with it.” Corey is pointing his own utensil at him across my kitchen table, a half-eaten ricotta pancake speared on the end, syrup dripping onto the plate. He’s in shorts and a tank top, his dark hair a mess, his glasses slightly crooked from sleep.
Brody reaches across and takes a pancake from the serving stack between them with zero shame. “These are communal. Claire made them for the table.”
“I made them for everyone equally,” I say from the stove, spatula in hand, flipping the last batch. “Not for Brody to inhale six while the rest of us fight over three.”
“Five.” Brody tears the pancake in half and shoves one piece into his mouth. “Don’t exaggerate. And they’re incredible, by the way. The ricotta ratio is perfect.”