Page 73 of Packed Up In Vegas

I ground my teeth together, already drained after a minute of her. “Why are you assuming I’m the one who failed here?”

“Are you the one married out of the two of you?”

“I don’t think his marriage really counts when he got drunk and dragged the first woman he found to the chapel.”

“So argumentative. Men don’t like that, darling. Of course it counts. The documents were filed, right? Unless he gets divorced, it counts. Should I assume you’re coming back home then? You’ll have to sleep on the couch. I turned your old bedroom into my craft room.”

“I’m not coming home.”

“Don’t be silly. What are you going to do in LA without him? He’s the only reason you moved there.”

God forbid she assume I have a job and friends and other roots tying me to the city. I didn’t, but that wasn’t the point.

“It’s all right to admit defeat and come home to Mama.”

“I’m not doing that. I’m going to stay in Las Vegas with friends.”

Mom tutted. “Well, don’t stay too long. You know what a burden you are on people.”

“That’s really unfair to say. Just because you think I’m a burden doesn’t mean I am to everyone. They’re really excited to have me stay. I don’t expect you to understand, but things ending with Jerry was not my fault, and I’m not going to come back to Seattle. I’m sorry that your first instinct was to blame me for how everything went down, but I think it would be best if we didn’t speak anymore.”

“What on earth do you mean? You can’t just stop speaking to me.”

“Actually, I can. And I’ve kind of been wanting to for a while. I put up with how you speak to me because I didn’t see that it was out of the ordinary before. I do now. I’m not gonna force myself through that anymore. I don’t expect you to understand, but I hope you’ll at least let me have peace, though we both know that’s not your strong suit.”

“Callie…”

“I really did love you. I’m sorry you could never love me the same way you did Tanya. Have a nice life.”

“Cal—”

I ended the call and blocked the number before she could call back, though I wasn’t even confident she would.

Numbness settled over me. I had thought about cutting that tie for years; I’d known I wouldn’t feel good doing it, and I didn’t, but it felt right. I might not have had much experience with being treated well, but now that I’d tasted it, submitting to casual cruelty was so much harder than it used to be. Maybe one day we would talk again, but her response to my split showed me that I would never be good enough for her and that she would never put aside her own feelings to be there for me when I was in crisis.

I deserved better than that even if I had never been good at grabbing it before.

I avoided the pack the rest of the night, too close to the edge to let myself get comfortable. I had cried all over them too much already.

While Diego was in the shower, I slipped upstairs and extracted a few blankets from the nest to take downstairs. It made me a little queasy to dismantle my nest at all, but I just needed a bit of space to cry in peace.

Ihad expected Callie to be curled up in the nest with Kai when I emerged from the shower, but the room was empty, and the nest looked a little sparser than usual. I pulled on a pair of lounge pants and went to check Kai’s room, hearing his shower running, but saw no sign of Callie. Checking with Miles and Amir as well, I found both of their rooms also devoid of our omega.

I paused outside her room on the main level, finding the door closed and the soft sounds of her crying coming through it. The door was locked, so I knocked and waited.

“Go away.”

“Precious, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer, and I wasn’t about to pick the lock if she didn’t want to see me, as much as that would’ve been my preference. Since I couldn’t comfort Callie, I backtracked toward Kai’s room. He looked absolutely miserable when we crossed paths at the top of the stairs.

“She’s so upset,” he said quietly.

“Her door’s locked. She doesn’t want to see anybody.”

“What happened?”

“I have no idea. She was totally fine the last time I saw her.”

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