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So slowly, I dragged on some clothes, listlessly tying my hair up in a ponytail. Even though my curls are usually springy and voluminous, today they looked limp and lifeless, exactly how I felt.
It was time to go to work at the magazine again, the dead-end job with nothing to offer.
My life was passing away like the sands in an hourglass, totally meaningless.
And yet there was nothing to be done.
Picking up my lunch bag, I dragged myself over to the front door, squinting as a ray of sun squeezed in through the crack.
And then bam! Something hard hit me on the forehead. What the?
It was Tyler’s chest. I’d literally walked into a wall of man, the billionaire as dark, dangerous and ominous before.
“Hey,” came my weak cry. “What are you doing here?”
They were silent for a moment.
“May we?” asked Tyler. “May we come in?”
I stepped aside, nodding wordlessly. Might as well. It didn’t matter if I was late to work. The truth is, I didn’t care anymore, my soul a piece of lead.
The alphas filed in, and suddenly my living room was too small, the air hot. But they were calm and collected, lowering those massive frames onto the sofa.
“We know what you said last night Katie, but there’s more,” began Mason.
Hesitantly, I sat.
“Okay,” came my slow word. “So what did you have in mind?”
My nerves were getting the best of me. Had they come back to tell me they’d changed their minds? Because they could have saved themselves the trip instead of letting me see what I’d be missing one last time. Cruel, just cruel.
But taking a deep breath, Mason spoke first. Was I imagining things or was he actually a little nervous? Imagine that! Usually nothing got under their skin, but there was definitely something edgy in the air today.
“We were wrong last night,” he began. “I get it. We get it. It was painful and we regret that.”
I raised an eyebrow at them.
“It was painful,” I said slowly. “But I can’t expect you to understand. Your life is so different from mine,” I managed to choke out. “You live in the big city with billions of people. There are bright lights everywhere, a Starbucks on every street corner. Here in Knox,” I managed, “we don’t even have Starbucks. We have Old Joe’s Coffee Shop.”
The alphas shook their heads.
“Honey, who cares about Starbucks? Why are you even talking about that?
I took a deep breath.
“I guess I’m just trying to get across that I understand. Knox is nothing like New York City, so it makes sense. We have different values. We have different ideas of what the good life is, and what it should be. I forgive you,” I said softly. “I forgive you just the same.”
The billionaires looked thunderstruck then, paralyzed almost. Taking a deep breath, I continued.
“I forgive you,” came my words again. “I can’t expect you to understand my wants and need when you have no basis to understand. Your backgrounds are different. Your needs and wants are different, heck, the way people treat you is different. But I’m a certain way, and what we want doesn’t match.”
Mason stared at me coolly. Oh shit, my speech hadn’t gone down well. They were going to grind me into the dust and make me feel like the dumbest person on the planet.
But men who love you don’t do that. They don’t treat you like crap. Because he nodded slowly.
“Everything you said is true, baby girl, except one thing. And that’s that you love us, and we love you. So you’re missing a big part of the puzzle.”
I gulped heavily then, blood rushing hotly through my veins. My head dropped as my hands wrung themselves in my lap.
