“Is that the peace sign?” I asked in confusion because he’d just made me come so hard, I’d seen fucking stars and now he was acting like a nineties baby at a Spice Girls concert.
“Yeah. I peace sign all of my BFF BJ buddies. Now you know.”
The door slammed behind him before I could question that, and I was left leaning against the wall with my whole body still trembling in the aftershocks of what he’d done to me and my heart thrashing with the bitter sting of rejection.
“Oh,” I breathed to no one at all because Seth had gotten what he wanted, flipped my entire world upside down and left me with a peace sign and my cock out all alone in my room. “Fuck.”
I wandered through the dark tunnels, dragging my heels as my heart sank like a stone into a cold, cold pool in my stomach. Caleb’s words spun around and around in my head like a washing machine set on a spin cycle of hell. “I just don’t think-”
I knew the end of that sentence, I knew it in my gut, my heart, my dick, my fucking soul. ‘I just don’t think we should have done that.’ That was where he’d been going with that sentence. I’d seen it in his eyes. I’d seen the change, the exact moment he’d realised he’d made one, giant irreversible mistake. And I was that mistake embodied.
Instead of telling him the truth like maybe I should have, I’d tried to cover my ass. I’d tried to lie as well as I could possibly lie, and told him I give the peace sign to all my BFF BJs. I’d said I might go offer one to Darius. Like that was an entirely fucking normal thing for me to do and wasn’t completely fucked up.
The peace sign? The fucking peace sign?? Now I was gonna have to commit and try to bring the peace sign back, offering it out to random guys whenever Caleb was around to keep up my lie, bind it in sun steel and never let it break. I had to go Rambo on this lie, gut every crumb of honesty and leave a trail of bloody truth in my wake until only the lie remained.
I had to commit so hard, because if Caleb ever questioned me, if he ever figured out the truth, I’d die. And not just in a dramatic metaphorical way, I would literally die. I’d walk straight out under the moon and ask her to end me, because I was not living in a world where I lost Caleb Altair.
Even if I was in agony for the rest of my life and had to bottle this secret up in my chest forever until it devoured my heart and left nothing but bitterness behind it. I’d have to stomach seeing Caleb marry some girl, attend his wedding with a smile on my face, watch him have children with her, all the while remembering how I once sucked his cock and offered him the peace sign, pretending it meant absolutely jack shit to me.
I’d grow mean-tempered, lonely and I’d never marry, too full of spite to do anything but just fester in my own feelings. And on the last day of my life, when I was old and grey, and living alone in a palace full of beautiful things I’d collected to try and fill the void in me, I’d take a knife, cut out my heart and leave it on Caleb’s doorstep. Then, and only then, would I let him know that I had loved him so deeply, so unrequitedly that it had destroyed me every day of my life since our moment together in his room.
Or maybe he’ll be done with me now and never want to speak to me again.
Oh stars, I’ve fucked up everything. I’ve lost Cal forever.
A mournful whimper left my lips and I shivered in the freezing air as I delved deeper into the dark, my body aching for the contact of a pack surrounding me. It was my nature to seek the comfort of Wolves but I didn’t have a pack down here, not ones I could turn to right now anyway. The Oscuras welcomed me in whenever I really needed the comfort of other Wolves, but they had their Alphas already and I just didn’t feel any desire to challenge for control of them. Besides, if I headed down to see them, I’d just be looking at Rosalie remembering the way Caleb had looked while we fucked her together. My soul burned to cinders as I thought of him and his love of vaginas and I realised I’d probably end up trying to rip her throat out if I went to her now.
I couldn’t talk to Max or Darius about this, and now Darcy was gone there was no one else to talk to. Orion was the only one in this whole place that even knew about my feelings for Caleb, but he didn’t want me. He’d turned away my affection time and again and I couldn’t handle any more rejection right now. So I found my way to the darkest, loneliest corner of the entire Burrows and dropped down to sit there and whimper, the mournful sound pouring out of me as I fisted my hands in my hair and buried my face in my knees.