Page 124 of False Catch

"I need to think," Gray says.

“Same,” Tyler agrees, his eyes already back on his screen.

Zane's just standing there, looking sick. Bo hasn't said anything since his suggestion about refusing to compete.

One by one, they peel off, leaving me and Beckett standing in the wreckage of the conversation. I catch the look that passes between Gray and Tyler before they go upstairs—family pressure carved into their spines, the kind of weight that crushes loyalty flat. The choice that Kinsley has forced us to make before any of us were ready to.

Tomorrow morning at 8 AM, the committee will be waiting.

And we’ll be there together or not at all.

And I can’t tell, standing in the quiet aftermath, which way we’ll break.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Gray

The desk lamp throws a pool of light across my economics textbook. Outside, the campus is settling into nighttime quiet. I've been sitting here for the past hour, staring at the same paragraph without reading a single word. My phone sits dark beside me. Three missed calls from my father. Two from my mother. I haven't listened to the voicemails.

The knock at my door is soft. I know it's her before she speaks.

"Gray?"

I get up and open the door. Reese stands there, her face unreadable. She's wearing one of Bo's hoodies, the sleeves hanging past her fingertips. Her hair is damp from a shower.

"Can I come in?"

I step aside. She moves past me, and her scent hits me hard. Honeysuckle and something darker now, something that calls to the Alpha in me. The door clicks shut behind her.

She stops in the middle of my room, arms wrapped around herself. "We need to talk."

"I know."

"Your parents." She turns to face me. "They want you to claim someone else."

She states it like the fact it is. I lean against my desk, gripping the edge hard enough that the wood creaks. "They have expectations."

"Expectations." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "That's one way to put it."

"Reese."

"No, I get it." She moves to the window, looking out at the dark campus below. "Legacy families. Bloodlines. All that matters to people like them."

"You don't understand."

She whirls on me. "Don't I? My parents are the same, Gray. The only difference is they'd rather I wasn't an Omega at all."

The truth of it hangs between us. We're both trapped by families who see us as extensions of their ambitions rather than people with our own desires.

"What do you want?" she asks, and her voice breaks just slightly on the last word.

I push off from the desk and move to her. My hands frame her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. "You know what I want."

"Do I?"

"You're in my head every second. In my blood. I can't think straight when you're not near me, and I can't breathe right when you are." My forehead drops to rest against hers. "You've ruined me for anyone else."

Her hands come up to grip my wrists. "Then why are we having this conversation?"