Page 27 of Knot Just A Fan

My heart lurches forward, as if to reach out. If it had hands, it probably would.

But I stand at the door, and don’t knock. Again.

I just listen. No shouts, no yells, no sounds of someone in heat. And that’s what Cami was intimating—that now was not the time to see her.

So why are you here, dickhead?

Maybe that’s not what she meant? Because I hear nothing from inside. She must be resting, and Cami is quietly letting her. I’ve never once seen an Omega in the throes of heat. Not even Willow—after all these years, and all the times we’d had sex. She’d never been in heat.

I shudder but not from the cold. WhyamI here? Was I hoping to hear her tearing her bedroom apart, wishing for me, screaming my name? Was I hoping she’d be sitting on the front step with a cup of tea and a welcome smile?

A few birds chase each other in the lone tree outside the row of houses. A door slams a few houses down. I hurry back toward the road, away from this door, not wanting to look like a skulking weirdo. I look up at that window once more, but those beige vertical blinds don’t move.

Finally, I get my shit together and press the buzzer. A minute passes. No sound, no answer.

I guess I’m glad she wasn’t outside, or looking longingly out the window. I guess that saves me. Because I’m committed to Willow—or at least to the guilt I deserve for promising her things I knew nothing about at the time.

No one tells you what it really feels like to scent-match, until you sniff out a scent that pushes your pulse into overdrive. Then youknow. You know what you didn’t know before, what you couldn’t.

Childhood crushes. That’s all Willow and I had been, and when you grow up believing you know it all, you have one fucking rude awakening in adulthood awaiting you.

My fantasy of what love really is has been shattered—but that doesn’t change what adulthood is: duty. And God, how irate would the fans be if I came out and told them that the rock star life is nothing more than another duty to a promise I made as a kid? That it’s all a fantasy, and not one you can live out.

More like a rainbow. There’s no real end to it. Nothing solid. Wave your hand through it, and it’s just air.

That’s the rock star fantasy. The glamour, the lights, the high-rise hotels, the posh cars. It’s a beautiful fantasy because at the end of the day, if the love you bring to it isn’t real, it’s just a nicer place to jerk off than the house you grew up in.

Dad did the same. Waited till it was too late to tell Mum he couldn’t pretend anymore. He forced her to move from one city to another, then to another country, then another country. And back again. Leaving her friends and family behind, always chasing his dreams, never hers. By then, I was old enough to see what a bastard looked like with my own eyes. And then he was gone.

I won’t do that to Willow. If she wants to be our Omega, I can’t go back on that promise. I will wait until she’s ready to be with us. That’s what being a partner is all about. Never forcing. Always patient.

I won’t be that typical shithead musician who can’t keep a promise, who can’t keep a partner. Who looks to all the media and the world like someone who’s ditched the person who believed in him from the start to take up with some younger fan or status-seeking industry worker bee.

And be real. As lovely as Briella is, as heavenly as she smells, as much as I want to touch her lips with my fingertips—that’s what she is.

I twist my mind this way until it’s the only direction I can see.

I’m halfway home when Willow answers the phone.

“How’s Edinburgh?” I say in lieu of hello. We’ve never said hello, because, as idiotic romantic teens, we once promised we’d never say goodbye. Immediately after I’ve said it, though, I wish I’d broken that long-standing habit, and said hi instead. I bite my cheek.

“Oh, you know, cold and grey as fuck.” I hear the smirk in her voice, and I realize that everything between us is a habit. Not to say habits can’t be positives.

But there is something new in this call: me worrying whether she’s read social media.

I have never been caught with my pants around my ankles. Because I’ve never cheated on Willow. There have been fans in bars, girls’ numbers on napkins, all that kind of thing, but I’ve never looked for anything more from anyone other than Willow. Flirting, sure, but never crossing the line.

But this time—this is the first time I’ve done anything to get the fan theories swarming. I haven’t read it, but I know it’ll be there. I can’t read that shit, any of it, or I’ll go mad. Enzo likes to scroll through comments because he finds it funny how off the public’s assumptions about us are. Sometimes he’ll read them to us over breakfast and I’ll tell him to stop and Enzo carries on until Ronan breaks out a, “GET FUCKED, ENZO!” then storms off.

I listen for it. Something in her voice.

“When does tour start again?” Willow asks, stifling a yawn.

“Technically, last night. That was just a one-off, though. Shows every weekend from February through to the festivals and then to Christmas.”

“I see.” I hear her glug something, probably her fancy pro-biotic water she basically lives off. “Are you coming up here?”

I keep walking, aware that if Cami or Briella are out, I could run into them at any moment. “We will be, yes. Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen, then down to Edinburgh before York and Leeds. I’ll send you the schedule.”

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