Page 79 of Bitter Truths

The hell with dinner. He looks good enough to eat.

“Brought you something,” I manage, walking over and holding out the gift bag.

His eyebrows rise as he reaches inside, pulling out a white ceramic mug with the Emerald Hills Hospital logo printed in green. He turns it in his hands, examining it like it’s much more interesting than it is.

“So you can always remember the time you stalked me while my brother lay in a coma,” I say sweetly, while looking up at him.

Freddie throws his head back and laughs, the sound rich and genuine and so familiar it takes my breath away. “It’s perfect. My new favorite mug.”

The way he’s looking at me like I hung the moon is dangerous and doing things to my insides.

“Seriously?” Owen grunts. “She gets you a gift and I get assaulted?”

He’s jealous over… a mug?

I roll my eyes. “Maybe don’t kidnap people next time.”

“Noted,” Tristan says, pushing away from the windows and moving toward me like a lion tracking dinner. He’s the best at hiding it—his mask is nearly perfect, but I can see the tension he carries in the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his movements are just a fraction too controlled, not nearly as nonchalant as before. What did they do to him that he’s learned to bury it so deep? “Though you did seem to enjoy the violence.”

I feel myself blushing because he’s not wrong. I did enjoy it. I also enjoyed the shock in their eyes when I fought back, the way they both looked at me like I’d just become infinitely more enticing.

They like that I can fight back.

“Dinner?” Weller suggests.

I practically launch myself toward the dining table when I spot the familiar red and white checkered boxes. Gigi’s. My heart does this annoying little flutter because they remembered. They still remember my favorite pizza in the entire world.

I claim a seat and immediately grab a slice, not bothering to wait for plates or napkins or any notion of civilized bullshit. The cheese burns my tongue, but I don’t care—it tastes like home, like lazy Saturday afternoons at the waterhole when we were kids and everything was simple.

Freddie chooses the chair beside me with an amused grin.

They settle themselves around me like it’s a competition of who can get closest—Freddie to my right, his shoulder occasionally brushing mine, Owen to my left, close enough that the heat from his body warms my skin. Tristan sits across from me, stretching his long legs until his foot brushes mine under the wooden table.

Weller is at the head of the table, positioned so he can see all of us. So he can watch me. And I feel his eyes all over me.

God, they look good.

All grown up… and so manly-looking now. The softness of boyhood is gone.

It’s obnoxious. I’m sick in the head. They are bonded to another omega. They can’t escape because they all have supervillain fathers, and their father-in-law is a mad scientist, apparently. Yet, we are sitting here pretending like everything is normal…

I feel myself about to spiral.

They aren’t mine. They can’t be mine.

She’s coming home soon.

And she’s going to take them away from me again.

Think about something else.

Think about anything fucking else.

“I can’t afford to replace the rest of your stuff, sorry,” I say, waving at the pristine penthouse that you can’t even tell was destroyed yesterday. “But I can hit up some thrift stores when I have time. Find you some really special pieces.”

Freddie chokes on his pizza. “Oh god, yes. Please terrorize Weller’s aesthetic sensibilities.”

“I’d love nothing more,” I laugh, warming to the idea.