Page 22 of Faking It with the Omega

I wake up to the morning sun slanting through the thin hotel curtains, the warm glow that settled in my chest last night still there.

Beside me, Aiden stirs, his dark eyes fluttering open. He looks at me with this raw, soft vulnerability that makes my chest physically ache.

“Morning,” he murmurs, his voice raspy from sleep as he stretches, a faint, hopeful smile touching his lips.

“Morning, Aid,” I say softly, resting my hand on his hip.

“How’re you feeling?” he yawns, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Like I’ve been run over by a freight train,” I say with a small grin, flexing my muscles and wincing at the lingering ache in my lower half. “In a good way.”

Aiden smiles, and god, I’m a goner.

I swallow hard, trying to push through the knot in my throat. “Listen... now that the wedding's over... I guess our fake-dating contract officially expires today, huh?”

I mean it as a gentle opening—a clumsy attempt to ask what comes next without having to be the one to say the terrifying thing out loud.

But the warmth drains from his face so quickly it makes my stomach drop. Whatever I thought I saw there a second ago, I clearly imagined it.

“Right,” Aiden says, his voice suddenly going completely flat. It’s jarring. He sits up, pulling the sheets up to his chest. “Of course. Mission accomplished. You got your free food, I got my family off my back. That’s what we agreed to, isn’t it?”

Panic, sharp and suffocating, threatens to choke me as it occurs to me that I might have misread last night. I got so wrapped up in my own stupid fucking feelings that I didn’t realize he was just letting off steam, riding the high of the adrenaline of knocking his father down a peg. Of course he doesn't want me. Not for more than a weekend. Why would he?

“Yeah,” I force out, my defensive instincts kicking into overdrive as I swing my legs over the side of the bed so he can’t see the devastation on my face. “Five-star Yelp review for the fake-boyfriend service. And I’m adding 'exceptionally versatile' to my résumé.”

It's defensive, petty bullshit, but I can't stop it.

“Glad I could help you add to your portfolio,” Aiden bites back, his voice thick with a bitter, defensive edge I haven't heard since the day we met. He drags his hand over his face. “I'll get showered so you can get back to the city. I know you've got a life to get back to.”

“Right,” I say quietly, staring at the floorboards. “I'm sorry, Aiden.”

“Don't be. You fulfilled your end of the deal,” he says, throwing off the covers and stepping toward the bathroom without looking at me. “I’ll pack my things.”

The car ride back to the city is quiet. Aiden spends most of it staring out the window, his jaw clenched and his scent sour. A couple of times, he turns toward me like he’s about to snap or say something, but he just shakes his head and looks away. I keep my hands glued to the wheel, nursing the hollow ache in my chest, both of us trapped behind the walls we built to protect ourselves.

—

“Jed. Jed. Jed!”

I look up from the table I’d been boring a hole into with my eyes and find Dylan waving a hand in my face.

“You want another drink?” he says, raising his deep voice over the music.

“I’m good,” I say, gesturing to the half-drunk beer I’ve been nursing for the last forty-five minutes.

Dylan gives me a thumbs up, and Levi frowns at me over his shoulder. He whispers something against Dylan’s ear that makes him laugh and shake his head, his arm winding tightly around his waist, and I feel a sick pang of something uncomfortable in the pit of my stomach.

Jealousy. It’s not a familiar feeling.

“Jed,” Max says loudly next to me. “The pink Power Ranger is hot, right?”

“What?” I frown.

“The pink Power Ranger is not hot,” Kyle half-shouts from across the table. “None of them are—you can’t even see their faces most of the time.”

“But those suits, man—”

“Look, if any of the Power Rangers is hot, it’s yellow. But that’s a moot point, because they’re not fuckable entities, dude, they’re fictional fucking characters and they have no place in your fucked up little fantasies—”