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“Cory. I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant...”
“You meant what you said, Evie. It’s not like I never wondered if it was me that made you stop hanging out with us. Mind you, I thought maybe I’d been too pushy. Too overprotective. I thought I had annoyed you until you left everyone just to get away from me. I never realized it was simply existing that was causing you to feel this way.”
“It wasn’t like that, it was just...”
“I’m tired, Evie. Whatever it was, I apologize. I will do my best not to burden you with my friendship again,” he said, and that pissed me off.
“That’s not fair, Cory. I’m your friend. I was always your friend. It’s just...” How could I say this right? “I was thirteen. I couldn’t deal with all the whispers and the comments. I let them get to me. I was too young and stupid.”
“What whispers? What comments? I never heard anything,” he demanded.
“Because they weren’t about you!” I yelled, frustrated. “No one was going to talk about the future alpha, or the future beta. No one was that stupid. No. Little Evie was fair game, though. The geek, the nerd. The weird oddball, always under the protection of the alpha’s kids because their parents made them hang out with her. It hurt, Cory. I was thirteen when they started getting bold with the rumors. You were my only friends, and there was always this tiny little fucking voice in my head saying that maybe they were right,” I said, poking my temple with my finger angrily. “What else made sense? Why else would you all hang out with me when no one else saw me?” I asked, tears stinging my eyes as I remembered all the feelings I had back then.
Cory stood and walked to me. He looked so mad, and even still, I couldn’t help taking a step back while my eyes wandered down his sculpted body. He stopped a few feet from me.
“Because we saw you,” he said. “I saw you, Evie. Everything about you, I saw. Everyone always wanted something from us, but you didn’t. You never once cared whose kids we were. You never tried to use any of us, and we saw that.” His jaw ticked, and his voice took a bitter tone.
“You think you’re the one that wasn’t seen? Do you know what people saw when they looked at me? They saw an alpha’s kid. They saw their future leader and they judged everything I did based on their expectations of that. I couldn’t just be myself when I was around people. I had to be the alpha’s heir. You want to know why we loved hanging out with you? Because you were just our Evie, hanging out with Cory, Bells, James and Jo. That’s it. We weren’t gamma, beta, alpha kids. We were just kids to you.” My eyes widened. I had never looked at it that way.
“You think no one saw you?” he whispered, coming closer. “But I saw you. I saw the way your nose scrunched up when you came across something you were determined to crack. I saw the way you walked with your nose in a tablet, working on a new way to get something fun for us to do. The way your eyes twinkled when you laughed.” His hand came up to my face, but stopped before he touched me. His eyes turned hard again and he dropped it. “But you ran away. You left me behind to find other people who saw you.” He scoffed. “You took away the only person that saw us.”
“Cory, I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be. You wanted to leave, and you did. I had no right to try to hold on to you.”
“I just wanted to be seen. I came home because I know that I was stupid for letting them get to me. Please understand. I was just desperate for someone to love me,” I begged him.
“I’M THE ONE WHO ALWAYS LOVED YOU,” he roared, making my heart beat so fast I thought it might leave my chest.
Cory was breathing hard, and a tear left his eye. I reached out my hand, but he took a step back. His eyes were wild and afraid.
“I have to go,” he said and tried to move around me. I grabbed his arm to stop him, but he was moving so fast that he sent me flying into him. He caught me, and before I could say anything else, he crashed his lips on mine. I gasped when I felt my back hit the back of the open door, and Cory plunged his tongue into my mouth when I did. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he moved his hands behind my thighs, lifting me up. I wrapped my legs around him, feeling his body heat searing into mine. I moaned and pressed against him, wanting to feel more of him.
Cory suddenly froze and pulled back. He put me back down on my feet before he took a few steps back.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, and before I could say anything in response, he ran out of the room.
Run after him. What are you doing? Tozi demanded when I didn’t move from the spot Cory left me. I was too stunned to do anything. He told me he loved me. He said he always loved me. I felt my legs give beneath me, and I fell on my ass to the floor
Why did I never see that? I always thought he just saw me as Bell’s annoying little friend.
I’m never going to catch him now. What do I do now? I asked Tozi after I wrapped my head around his words.
Wait for him here, Tozi suggested.
I looked around the room. Should I really wait for him here? I didn’t think I’d ever been in his room.
I’m not sure I should be here while he’s not here, I said, feeling like an intruder.
He loves us. He won’t be mad, she assured me.
I’ll wait for a little while... I answered, unsure.
I waited for hours, but at one in the morning, I gave up and went home, determined to talk to him again the next day.
I didn’t get much sleep, but this time it wasn’t the nightmares that kept me up. At five in the morning, my phone rang and woke me.
“Hello,” I answered groggily.
