Page 62 of Glass Omega

Because apparently the sick little romantic inside of me had gotten ahead of herself the night of our wedding and I needed to pull her ass back down to earth.

That had been the conclusion I’d come to the day of my appointment when it had been just Rhodes going with me—Rhodes who I was pretty sure didn’t even like me very much.

“Then why won’t you look me in the eye, pet?”

“I’m not your pet.” The words slipped out of me before I could stop them.

There was a heavy pause and I could hear Edison shifting in the massive leather desk chair he’d been sitting in since I was summoned into his office while I was taking pictures in the garden.

“I see…” Edison almost sounded hurt, but I pushed that thought away. Edison Keane would never be hurt by silly words like that. “Is this really about me not calling you while I was away?”

The way he said it made it sound so juvenile and I very nearly denied it, not wanting to look any younger than I already was in my husband’s eyes. But then I thought about hearing Rhodes finishing up their nightly phone calls after dinner, or asking Oona every morning if she thought he would be home only to have the elderly housekeeper shake her head.

Marrying Edison wasn’t my first choice, but I’d been under the silly, overly-romantic notion that I could make it work. That we could make it work.

And that he would come back in and sweep me off to my room and finish what he’d started. What I’d been dreaming so vividly about nearly every night.

But when Edisondidcome back he swept into the dining room like no time had passed at all. Jovially joking with Rhodes and as I sat there I felt, for the first time since they’d brought me to the Keane estate, like I was on the outside looking in.

Boy did that fuck me up.

So I made the decision that night to pack any and all emotions about Edison into a tiny little box in my mind and do what I came here to do: live a relatively comfortable life, go to school, and eventually birth a dark-haired, golden-eyed little boy that would be just as detached and aloof as his father.

I made it through five days of that before Edison lost our game of mental chicken and finally had Rhodes bring me to his study.

“So what if it is? Would that make you feel sorry?” It wasn’t just about the phone calls, but how was I supposed to verbalize my growing discontent now that I’d gotten almost everything I wanted.

I was going to school, and while I loved the classes, Kailey was still the only person who approached me and I didn’t have the social skills, nor the ability to seek out new friends.

Rhodes had calmed down a bit as we settled into a routine, but people still avoided him like he was the plague and I was his first infected. He was a predator by every sense of the word and I knew that the regular people that went to classes every day could sense it, even if it didn’t bother me so much anymore.

I was an outsider there, and at dinner the night I returned I realized that I was one here too and it hurt like a bitch.

It shouldn’t have. I was used to it. Even growing up I’d been my parent’s disappointment, the accessory, the bargaining chip, but never their daughter the way that Romey was their son.

“Yes it would,” Edison said, surprising me enough to make me look up and meet his golden gaze.

A dry huff left me. “You’re lying. You’ve never been sorry a day in your life.”

His lips pulled up into a wry grin and I realized that he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his dark stubble filled with bits of gray, was growing along his jaw. Not only that, hissuit was more disheveled than I’d ever seen it before. Even on the night he returned not a hair had been out of place.

“Why do you look like that?” I blurted and watched as his eyes widened.

Then he was standing and rounding the desk and the motion brought a wave of vanilla scent into my nose, the scent that I’d been forcing myself to ignore in the halls whenever I caught it in the air.

“Well, my wife is angry with me, so it’s a bit hard to focus on personal grooming when I’m trying to figure out how to get back into her good graces.”

Edison reached for my hands and I had half a mind to yank them out of his reach, but the inner omega that wassupposedto sit in the back of my mind and behave was hopping up and down like a puppy dog at the thought of being touched by the alpha in front of me.

My alpha, my brain purred with pleasure as he took my hands into his and the warmth of his skin began to seep into mine.

“I am sorry, Perrie, I didn’t think you’d care about me being gone so long with your classes and everything going on. Most people wouldn’t.”

I frowned as I read between the lines of his words. They were almost self-deprecating, which was surprising considering Edison Keane had never stricken me as the kind of man to have any insecurities at all.

“Why wouldn’t I care? I’m your wife,” I told him, giving his hands what I hoped was a comforting squeeze. “For better or for worse, right? It might be a contract, but I take my promises very seriously.”

Not to mention the sheer level of craving I felt for him at night when I had nothing else to do but to obsess over our interrupted wedding night.

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