Page 26 of Knot Their Starlet

Why do I always have to be the one people direct their anger at instead of the one being protected? When will I get to stop feeling so alone?

CHAPTER 6

Beckham

“Walk me through exactly what happened,” Everett Vaughn, the owner of my record label, sighs, massaging his temples with one hand. “After you left the girl’s hospital room.”

“I told her crazy mom, ‘maybe’,” I mumble, crossing my arms over my chest.

The dark shades I’m wearing, despite being indoors, hide the dark circles underneath my eyes. The result of a night of drinking myself into a stupor, alone in the master suite of my new penthouse apartment.

Eli wanted to talk, but I wasn’t in the goddamn fucking mood. Not after he lost his shit in Andi’s hospital room.

Leo wanted to talk too, and I was more tempted, but I don’t think I could’ve handled it.

Ever since I presented as an omega, I’ve had all these emotions swirling inside of me, fucking eating me up inside, with no real framework to deal with them. Back when I thought I was a beta, I never had to deal with my emotions this much.

And what sucks the most? Everyone can fucking tell how I’m feeling because of my goddamn perfume. Eli—and even Leo, with his beta nose—have gotten so good at distinguishing what subtle changes in my scent mean that sometimes they can tell how I’m feeling before I even realize it.

But there’s no need to wonder why I’m feeling so crappy right now. This whole situation with Andi has been eating me alive.

I can’t get her expression—the pure, unadulterated terror written plainly across her delicate face—out of my head.

We put that look there. With my naïve stupidity, Leo’s unpreparedness, and most importantly, Eli’s inability to keep his head on straight when he perceives something as a threat.

I’ll never understand how he could’ve perceived that omega, lying broken in her hospital bed, as a threat.

“Which was a stupid fucking thing to do,” Eli snaps from his chair.

Everett has the three of us seated across from him like naughty schoolboys in the principal’s office. He probably feels that way, too, considering he has a decade and a half on us age-wise.

“You should shut up,” I snap, clenching my jaw as I stare at him. “Maybe if you’d kept your mouth shut, she wouldn’t have felt the need to push back. I know if I’d just gotten assaulted and was alone in a fucking hospital room with three meatheads I didn’t know, I’d be freaking the hell out too.”

“That’s enough bickering,” Everett snaps at the two of us, his whiskey scent swirling in the air.

Everett Vaughn is the kind of person who needs to be in control. It was obvious from the first video call we had after he reached out to me when a cover of mine went viral. And right now, I’m sure we’re annoying the hell out of him.

Which is bad, because if I actually did want to help Andi, I’d need his approval.

I’m lucky that Everett’s record label got to me first. The more time I’ve spent here in Hollywood, the more I’ve started to understand its dangerous underbelly.

Like having an alpha boyfriend who assaults you in the bathroom at the Grammys with no one to protect you.

I have a good circle of people around me.

Hell, Eli and Leo moved with me to LA to make sure I had people at my back that I could trust when dealing with all this shit.

Seeing Andi all alone in a room full of people after one of the worst nights of her life is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

“Why, exactly, did you say maybe, Beck?” Everett asks, taking a swig of his black coffee like he’s wishing it were something harder, despite it only being eleven thirty in the morning.

“Because Andi has no one,” I mumble, my eyes darting around Everett’s fancy corner office. The floor-to-ceiling windows have a view of downtown LA, the city that I thought would only really live in my dreams before we moved down here. “And she said if this whole fake relationship plan her mom wants to happen doesn’t, that she’d be forced to get back with her ex. Isn’t that insane?”

“Do you think she was lying?” Everett’s expression is unreadable as he strokes his salt and pepper beard.

It’s not necessarily accusatory, like the question may have been from Eli, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

“Why would she lie?”