Page 42 of Glitterati Omega

Eight

R

upert sent winston one last text beforetakeoff, and that was it for the rest of the flight. Oh, they had service in the air, but he was too out of it after that; Charli had taken the liberty of giving him a knock-out drug on the pretense of controlling his anxiety.

The only thing he was anxious about was telling Winston he’d left. He hadn’t wanted to leave, nor did he want to go back to Cape Town to see this bloody doctor. He probably could have seen a doctor somewhere in Houston. It wasn’t like he couldn’t pay.

He didn’t remember anything after that except waking up in his own bed on a cloudy morning. He laid there for a moment as he slowly remembered what had happened. Then he started to cry, that was how angry he was about the whole situation.

Finally, he checked his mobile. He had a voicemail from Morgan and directions from Winston to call as soon as he read the message.

He glanced at the clock, then tried to figure out what time it was in Houston. When he couldn’t, he simply hit the call button. He’d deal with however angry Winston was for waking him up.

“I’ve been kidnapped,” he whined when the alpha picked up.

“Rupert?” Winston sounded half-asleep.

“Yes. That wretch Charli has stolen me away to Cape Town.”

“Mm. But you’re all right?”

Rupert huffed. “As all right as I can be,” he muttered, glowering at his feet. “For having been kidnapped.”

Winston sighed. “But you haven’t actually been kidnapped.”

“I might as well have been! If I’d had my way, I’d be in Houston with you.”

“And perhaps asleep,” Winston muttered. “You haven’t been hurt, have you?”

“No.” He was groggy and upset, but aside from that, he was fine.

“We don’t need to call the police, do we?”

“No,” Rupert agreed with a sigh. “She just … wants me to see that bloody doctor.”

“Mm.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and Rupert suspected that, now that he wasn’t around to put out, Winston didn’t care as much as he thought he had.

“Well,” the alpha said at length, “it is important for you to take care of this.”

Rupert plucked at a thread on his sheets. “It could have waited.”

Winston made a negative noise in the back of his throat. “One way or another,” he said, “those organs will kill you, so perhaps it’s best to get rid of them.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“So it’s best to look after it sooner,” the alpha concluded.

“I suppose,” Rupert murmured, glancing at the wall.

The conversation seemed to drag after that, so they hung up after what seemed like only a few minutes. Rupert tried not to worry—Winston had told him it was two or three in the morning, so perhaps the alpha was just tired.

Or maybe Rupert was boring, and all Winston had wanted was Rupert in his bed. Now that the opportunity had passed, Rupert was nothing, a mere thing to be tossed aside.

When he felt well enough, he wrote to one of the trust managers and asked them to make a donation to the cancer center at Texas Children’s, partly to make himself feel less like a horrible person. He’d been ornery and rude, even if Pearl hadn’t been particularly nice to him either, and he mustn’t have been much of a person if all Winston had wanted was to fuck him.

After that, he went to breakfast, where Charli prattled on about how it was so wonderful that he was seeing Dr. Arendse and they could put this all behind them. No more worry, no more care. Rupert glared at his pills, all lined up alongside a glass of water and a yogurt parfait he merely picked at, too upset to really be hungry.