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I picked up a crystal button that had fallen from my favorite leather jacket a couple of years ago. “I wondered where this had gone. I searched for it. I wanted to sew it back on.”
“I saw it on the library’s floor right after you left,” he said. “Sorry.”
I put the button back in the box. “You know this makes you look like a bigger creep, right?”
He nodded. “But it was the only way for me to have something of you. To feel closer to you.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because …” He sat on the bed on the other side of the open box. “You ensnared me in your web the first moment I saw you. I don’t know, it might have been the bond already pulling me toward you, but I like to think it wasn’t. That I was a goner because you were you.” He gestured toward all of me.
My heart squeezed. “But … you were mean to me.”
“Give me examples.”
I thought for a second. “Once after math class, I forgot my jacket in the classroom. You picked it up and came after me. You snapped at me in the corridor when you shoved it to me, saying I shouldn’t leave my filthy stuff behind.”
He shook his head. “When you left your jacket there, I saw that as an opportunity to get close to you, to look into your pretty blue eyes without anyone’s judgment. I snapped at you, yes, because everyone was watching. But I didn’t say filthy. I believe that was Lucille. Or Mace.”
“There was once when I was leaving the library and someone walked fast by me. I don’t remember who. He bumped hard into my shoulder and I fell on my butt. There were plenty of people around and they all laughed at me, saying I was clumsy and ridiculous, just what they expected from the omega. You were there. You stomped to me and stood over me, yelling at me to watch out where I was going so I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“I didn’t yell, but I said it firmly. And then I helped you up.”
“What?” I blinked. “No, you—” I swallowed my words as I remembered more of that day. Yes, he helped me up. “You did.”
“I snapped at you because everyone was watching, but I helped you up and made sure you weren’t hurt. Besides, it was a way for me to hold your hand.”
“My first day of school,” I continued, remembering another one. “I was alone at a table in the cafeteria and everyone was bullying me. You came to me and ordered me to leave. Lucille said something about being too disgusting to eat in the same room as me.”
“I sent you away to protect you. I thought it would be better for you to eat in a classroom than to have the bullies harass you. I wanted to do more but couldn’t.”
This was crazy.
“Then what about the time you picked up Minsi from the library, saw us together, and snapped at me that I was too old to be her friend.” In a way that was true. I was nine years older than her, but Minsi had always been shy and reserved. She didn’t get along with any other children. She found solace in books, and as a bookworm, we had bonded over them.
“That was when I took this picture.” He pointed to the picture in the box. “I did that when Dom and Mace weren’t looking. I snapped at you because they were with me. I had to maintain appearances.”
Damn it, he was twisting my memories. “And why did you have to maintain appearances? Because you couldn’t be seen fraternizing with the omega?”
“In a way, yes.” Shane ran a hand through his hair. “You know my father demoted your family. I didn’t know the reason yet, but he hated your family so much, no one could utter any of your names in his presence. How could I tell him that I liked you, that I wished he would give you a chance to prove yourselves? You know as well as I do, he wasn’t a nice man. He led the pack well, he was almost always fair, he cared about the well-being of the pack as a whole, but he was a jerk and lost his temper too often.”
I wondered … “Was he a jerk to you too?”
Shane nodded. “I think he expected too much of me because I was his heir. He was nicer to Tyren and Minsi. And he was great with my mother. Whenever she was around, it was like he flipped a switch and became pure mush for his mate.”
“Your mother was nice,” I said. “I didn’t have much contact with her, but when I was with Minsi at the library, she always treated me with respect and kindness.”
“I think she noticed how I felt about you,” he said, and his words still caught me by surprise. Here he was confessing his long-standing feelings for me, but I was still having a hard time swallowing the truth. “Once, when she saw I was having trouble accepting the way my father wanted me to be, she told me to hang in there. She said I could pretend to be like him for a while, and then once I became alpha, I could change everything. I could be a kinder alpha; I could undo what had been done to your family. You have to understand, I was young. I was so afraid of disappointing my father. Besides, every time I did, I had to face the consequences.”
“He hit you?” I posed it as a question, but I already knew the truth.
“Sometimes, when I veered too far away from his vision. But I kept in mind what my mother said. One day, I would be alpha and I could be better than he was. A lot better. But for the moment, I had to endure it.”
My heart squeezed. “I never knew,” I whispered, lost.
I stared at Shane as if seeing him for the first time. He had liked me since we first met in school. He had protected me in the way he could, even when it seemed he was being mean to me. He had talked to his mother about being a better alpha and changing everything, changing things for me.
Shane never hated me.
