Page 92 of Use Me Up

I still have not broached the topic of Hannah coming over. I need to say something.

17

hannah

Gatlin and I did not set a time for me to come over. I could have texted him or texted Ellis or something, but I don’t do that. I come over around nine in the morning, and as I’m walking out of my apartment, I look at the Plan B sitting on the counter, the one that I have not taken.

And then I walk out the door.

I don’t knock when I get there. I’m used to simply walking in, so that’s what I do.

They’re all three in the living room. There are breakfast plates sitting out, though it looks like they’re in the middle of being cleared.

Ellis gets up and comes running over to me. “Hannah.” His voice is rough. He reaches for me.

I evade him. “Your heat broke awfully fast.”

“I took an extra dose of my suppressants, which sometimes can shorten a heat,” he says.

“Oh,” I say.

We simply stare at each other.

He swallows. “I’m sorry. Obviously. About Callie.”

“Yeah, well, that was a big fucking mess,” I say to him. “She did not get home. She was in heat in a furniture store, presenting in the middle of the afternoon on some bed until my mom found her, and near as I know she is still in heat with Andrew.”

“Shit, seriously?” He moans. “I didn’t even follow up with her. Of course she wouldn’t have been able to drive. Fuck. What the hell is wrong with me, anyway?”

“You and Callie can keep fucking each other over,” I say. But you can leave me out of it from now on.

But I don’t say it.

Why not?

I don’t know.

He still has some stupid effect on me, like a magic spell or something.

“No,” he says. “No, we really can’t.”

I sigh. I look around Ellis at Gatlin, who’s hovering over the coffee table with dirty silverware in one hand and an empty glass that looks like it had orange juice in it in the other. Gatlin shakes his head meaningfully at me, trying to send me some message, but I have no idea what it is. I turn back to Ellis. “I’m sorry I fucked someone who wasn’t you.”

“Oh,” says Ellis. “Oh, fuck.” He rubs his forehead. He looks at the carpet. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did it because I wanted to hurt your feelings,” I say. “I didn’t actually understand that’s why I was doing it at the time. At the time, I thought that I just wanted to come. So, I’m sorry, because that’s not a nice thing to do to someone. I guess it wasn’t nice to Gatlin either—”

“I’m fine,” breaks in Gatlin.

Ellis looks at the alpha.

The other one, Kane, seems to have pointedly disappeared into the kitchen.

Ellis clears his throat. “I have so many things I need to apologize to you about, Hannah. I shouldn’t have told you to leave. I shouldn’t have been jealous, because I have no leg to stand on, not with the Callie stuff, and I should have remembered condoms.”

“She took a Plan B,” says Gatlin.

“Actually, I haven’t taken it,” I say.