Page 58 of Thaddeus

“She blamed everyone for what happened to her. Which I understood as her lashing out. She needed to purge it all from her soul, but she was so hateful to our parents.”

“Why don’t you want contact with them?”

Her body went stiff and she started to pull away.

“No, you don’t, agápi mou. No more hiding.”

“It doesn’t matter. None of it does, not anymore.”

“It does to me,” I admitted.

“It shouldn’t. Seriously, Thaddeus, the past isn’t something we should talk about.”

I waited for the burn of hearing her say my name to pass before I spoke again, and when I did, I decided a few things. I liked the feel of having Emerson back in my arms and Declan had been right.

I had my shot and if I didn’t take it, I’d regret letting her go.

“We very much should talk about the past. About us. About what happened to Autumn. About your parents.”

“Talking about it doesn’t change anything.”

“Just trust me, talking about it will help. It won’t change the past but it can—”

“Trust you? You want me to trust you even though you haven’t trusted me a single second since you picked me up out of the dirt? And you’ve made sure I know just how little you think of me,” she reminded me.

Shit, maybe talking wasn’t the best thing to do right now.

She quickly sat up and stared down at me. “You just want to beat a dead horse. It doesn’t matter how many times I say I’m sorry, you just want to keep pickin’ at the scab. I know I fucked up. I know what I did. Goddamn it, Thaddeus, can you just for one minute look at it from my point of view?”

“I’m not pickin’ the scab to make it bleed, Emmy, I’m pickin’ it so it can fucking heal. I understand why you left. Fuck!” My hands went to my hair and the pain of my yanking it barely registered. “I hate that you protected me!”

I froze as soon as the words came out. Ego and pride will be your downfall.

Goddamn it.

There it was.

My ego.

My pride.

Emerson had been the one to protect me and my sensitive ego couldn’t forgive her. And goddamn if Max wasn’t right, my alpha-pride was standing in the way of admitting she’d been right—I would’ve lost everything I’d worked hard to achieve if she’d told me about her sister.

Emerson Pierce may’ve crushed my heart but I’d spent the next eight years living my dream.

Pride and fucking ego.

Mother-effing-hell.

Emerson

Even if I hadn’t been staring down at Thaddeus, I would’ve known something had changed.

Something big.

The energy in the room crackled and his brown eyes went from angry to tortured. I watched it happen. I saw it. The change in him was so big, it scared the hell out of me.

“Agápi mou.” His words were strangled. “Fuck, baby, fuck.”