AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“When is she coming back?” Rueben asks, in the tone of a demanding teenager.
Scout sighs. “There’s no clock on this, Rueben. She said she needed time. I told her we’d be here waiting whenever she was ready.”
“So, you screwed everything up,” Rueben growls.
“Nothing is screwed up,” I tell him. “If she needs time, we’ll give her time. This is no different than if she asked us for that time herself, Rueben.”
“But she didn’t,” he argues. “He scared her off asking her to explain why she was mean to us before. I thought we all agreed that didn’t matter? People change!”
“We need to be able to trust her,” Scout says, calmly. “She’s changed a lot since she last blew us off, and that wasn’t that long ago, if you remember. Even that night at the cop bar, she was making snide comments and acting like she was too good for us. I need to know why. We all do.”
“Who cares about some dumb comments or whatever?” Rueben mutters, kicking at the ground.
“You would,” Scout tells him. “Maybe not now, or in the near future, but eventually, you’d want to know why she had so much venom and indifference toward us while we did nothing whatsoever to justify any of it.”
Rueben frowns at him. He might not want to admit it, but he knows Scout is right. We both do.
“It would have come up sooner or later,” I remind him.
He turns his frown on me, but he doesn’t say another word.
I shrug at Scout, and he nods at Rueben.
“Come and beat me on the court. It’ll make you feel better.”
They both have some energy to burn off now, I guess.
Rueben pulls a face as Scout heads for the door to the back yard, but he lets out a sigh once Scout’s out there.
“I have to, don’t I?” he grumbles at me as he heads to the door.
“You’d rather re-wash the dishes?” I ask.
“No way,” he scoffs as he disappears into the yard.
My own disappointment slips in once he’s outside.
It finally felt like we were starting to get somewhere, and now?
Now, it feels like we’re back to square one.
Let’s just hope Scarlett isn’t going to make us wait around forever.
I don’t think I can handle another three weeks of that, never mind anything longer.
Chapter fifty-three
Sapphire
I go back to Scarlett’s bedroom in her shared house, limbs heavy and getting heavier still with every step, as I succumb to the numb aftermath of my emotional release. I need to get out of Silver Valley, to put as much distance between me and those Alphas as possible, but I’m way too drained to make the drive this afternoon. Exhaustion is setting in, and I know I need rest to recover.
It’s been a long time since I felt this awful.
I’d almost forgotten how much being an Omega can hurt.
I chose the life of a Beta so I wouldn’t have to feel this kind of pain.
It doesn’t matter that I’m no longer sure about that life.
