Page 75 of Fated to the Alpha

He couldn’t judge if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He groveled in each one, trying to make up for his massive mistake.

“How are you?” he asked. “How are holding up with your parents?”

“Good, actually. Dad has … He’s really turned around. It makes being here weird, but tolerable. He’s not like he was.”

Shane blinked and began pacing an ambling, slow path up and down the creaky hall with his free hand in his pocket. “Wow … A good change?”

“I think so. He’s much more laid back. Not so hard ass. More sympathetic. Like I said, it’s weird, but I think it is good.”

“That’s good … So, I guess you’ll be staying a few more days?”

“I’m actually coming back tomorrow. That’s why I wanted to call you.”

Shane let out a breath. “Okay.” He tried not to assume they were back on good terms, or that they could go back to the way things were when they were in Oakfield before the monster in him took over.

“Maybe we can meet for ice cream. Not starting over, but … starting slow, like you suggested in your message … You really hurt me, Shane.”

“I know I did and I’m—”

“I’m talking.”

Shane clicked his teeth together.

“You hurt me,” she said. “You knocked me back to square one, like all the work I’ve been doing in my head to get myself back on track was thrown out the window, like it never happened. You gutted me, Shane, because I lost all the will to fight the lies you said, the lies I’ve heard for most of my life. But I realized that’s what it had been all along … Lies.”

Kimberly then went on to explain what her dad had confessed. Shane could have clocked the bastard for what he did to her, but it sounded as if he got his own portion of punishment for it.

“Then I remembered that you never really supported that lie,” Kimberly said, her voice stronger now. “Even when everyone else did, you never did. You made me feel normal, like I wasn’t weak or broken, and that meant so much to me.” He heard her suck in a breath. “All of that, plus your messages, and stepping away to get some perspective on the situation, made me realize that you likely didn’t mean it. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less, but it takes the sting out a little … What hurts the most is that, even if we can go back to where we were, we’re on borrowed time.”

Shane glanced at Paul’s apartment door and heard the laughter and voices on the other side. “About that … I’ve come to some of my own revelations while you’ve been away.”

It was his turn to talk and hers to listen. He told her about Cody leaving with his family, and how both Paul and Dominic echoed her own philosophy on what it meant to be an alpha. He figured she would like being told she had been right all along. He caught her up to just moments before her call, letting her know that he would go to the next alpha meeting with his proposal for the pack to move to Oakfield.

“I think, if all goes well, we may be out of Tolstone in a couple of weeks … and ultimately, I want you with me. I always want you with me. I don’t care what it takes. I want you to come with us, to be in my pack … You still there?”

“Yeah … yeah, I’m here. I just…” Kimberly’s voice cracked and he hated the sound. “This is big, Shane.”

Shane stopped his pacing and squared his shoulders as if he were facing down the ugly gremlin of doubt right there in the hall. “I know it is, Kim. But please … come with me?”

When she still hadn’t given him an answer, Shane decided to dig his grave even further. “I know I don’t deserve you, but I … Every day you’ve been away has been a fucking nightmare. I don’t think I could go through this again. I can’t go through losing you again like I did ten years ago. I was a dumb kid and didn’t chase you, but I want to make up for it now. I want more time with you. I need more time to prove that I’m the son who won’t become like his father. Can you give that to me?”

He let the words flow from his beaten, bruised, and humbled heart that craved her acceptance. Right about now, he would have heard his father’s voice over his shoulder, scolding him for stooping so low to beg for a woman’s attention. But he heard nothing except the ringing silence over the line and the thrumming of his heartbeat.

“Shane … I don’t know what to say.”

“Say anything.” Shane waited for the other shoe to drop, staving off the full force of disappointment until rejection was absolute.

A thoughtful, pregnant silence settled, followed by a groan of indecision, then some indistinguishable muttering. Hope sputtered, looking for kindling to catch fire.

“I want to go with you, Shane. If I were honest with myself, I have for a while, but … I didn’t want to think it was possible, in light of everything … I’ll talk to Gage.”

“Is that a yes?”

“That’s as close to a yes as I can give before I talk to Gage.”

Shane pumped a victorious fist. Hope fanned into a flame and burst into a bonfire.

“And don’t you dare go talk to Gage before I come back.”