"I eat pickles with peanut butter," I say.
"I'm sorry?" He asks, blinking.
"On the same fork." I hold up the imaginary fork for emphasis.
He gives me a long, searching stare, like he's reevaluating every interaction we've ever had through the new lens of this information. "That's gross."
"Hey," I say. "Don't knock it."
"I'm just—" He blinks twice, fast. "Processing." A pause. "What else?"
"I can't parallel park. Genuinely cannot. I've accepted this about myself." I pick at a splinter on the bench. "I still sleep with a nightlight after watching a horror movie, though I love them, and I'll fight anyone who has an opinion about that. And I—"
I hesitate. Let the splinter go. The pond is so still that every branch of the tree line is doubled, and looking at it gives me the strange sensation of being suspended between two worlds. Maybe that's why the next thing comes out.
"I used to lie awake and picture what it would be like to be married and bonded," I say quietly. "Either in a pack or just a normal, monogamous relationship, in a not-so-distant past."
He shifts toward me. His thigh presses against mine now, and neither of us moves away.
"I mostly stopped," I continue. "Maybe because I've had a glimpse of that life with all of you. You know, with Mason declaring war on his closet door every morning at seven." I try for light. It comes out medium at best.
"I've come to believe he isangryat the closet," Knox says, his voice perfectly deadpan. "I think it might have wronged him in a past life."
I go for a laugh, but something inside me has shifted, hitting me with a painful throwback.
Jake. Sophomore year. Wanted to "take things slow" and was living in Portland with a girl from his econ class by spring. Then Caleb, who let me hang around for four months after graduation before sitting me down, very gently, to explain he'd never actually seen me as girlfriend material. Then Grant, of course.
You can't force someone to stay. But you'd think after the zillionth time, I'd stop being surprised when they don't.
"Are you okay?" Knox asks, his voice quiet, careful.
I blink. "Yeah. Sorry. That just reminded me of—Nevermind."
"Hey." He tilts his head, his gaze anchoring mine. "Tell me."
"I just—I have this pattern," I say. "Where I follow alphas around and it never seems to stick. So the happily-married-slash-pack-life fantasy kind of got dismantled along the way."
A kingfisher dives into the pond. The splash is startlingly loud in the quiet, and we both watch the ripples spread in concentric circles until they reach the edge and dissolve.
"I get that," Knox says.
"Yeah?"
"You know how I said my parents spent their whole lives proving they didn't need a pack? They proved it so well I believed them." He stretches his fingers out, curls them back. "Relationships were a distraction. Finding an omega was something that would 'happen when it happened,' and it did, but—well. You know how that turned out."
He's quiet for a beat. Then another.
"When Jessica left, I was wrecked. Genuinely. I didn't get out of bed for four weekends, and I'm not—I'm not that guy." He exhales. "But I've been thinking about it a lot since then, and I think—maybe she was never the right one. For me, specifically."
I stay completely silent, my gaze locked on his profile.
"Mason and Arthur were crazy about her. And I thought I was too. I really did. But if I'm being honest with myself—" He stops. Starts again. "I think I just went along with it because they wanted it so much. And it was easier to believe I felt the same way than to sit with the idea that I didn't want the same thing as my pack brothers."
He looks out at the water. "Something was always a little off. I just didn't want to be the one to say it."
The weight of that sentence lands between us and sits there, and my hand instinctively covers his.
He doesn't pull away. Instead, he turns his hand over, tangling our fingers together until our palms press flat and warm against each other.
