Page 115 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

“No!” she explodes. “Ipanicked! Everything happened so fast, and I didn’t have a plan anymore, and I didn’t think I’d actually—”

“Feel something?” Wes barks. “Bullshit.”

“Yeah?” she fires back. “Then why the hell do I feel like I’m beingripped in halfright now, Wes?”

A breathless silence.

Jace shakes his head. “If you feltanything, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she spits, rounding on him. “Don’t act like you were some wide-eyed innocent in this. None of you were! You all made assumptions andnever onceasked what I was thinking. You just wanted to believe the pretty omega fell into your laps and magically belonged to you.”

“No one forced you tolie,” Jace sighs.

“And none of you ever gave me the space totell the truth,” she shouts. “You think I’m the villain?Fine. But don’t pretend this wasn’t convenient for you, too. I made you feel wanted, needed; and what, now I’m the monster for not being perfect while I drowned in it?”

“You made them think it was real.” Wes steps forward, fury radiating off him. “You mademethink it was real.”

“Maybe I wanted it to be!” she screams, voice cracking. “You think I wanted to be this confused? That it was fun watching you glare at me like I’d already failed before I even started?”

“Youdidfail,” Wes growls.

Aimee’s chest heaves. Her voice drops, raw and cold.

“Yeah. I did.”

She turns away, grabbing her denim jacket off the floor. Her hands are shaking as she yanks it on over her tank, her movements stiff and fast as she begins to storm away.

“I hope the article’s a hit,” Wes mutters. “Maybe next time, you’ll get a better ending.”

She stops halfway to the door, then turns, just a little.

“No,” she says, voice hoarse. “You’llget the ending you always wanted. One where I’m the problem, and you get to stay angry.”

Her scent is chaos—grief, heartbreak, and fury all mixed into one. I want to reach for her and stop her, but I don’t. There’s too much going round in my mind, too much happening in front of me to process. She looks at all of us like she’s memorizing something, and then she walks.

She slams the door behind her. The weight of it crushes me immediately, and I feel the shift inside me: the absence, theloss.

None of us move. None of us speak.

And for the first time since she showed up…

The house feels empty.

Chapter Thirty-One

Aimee

Idon’t cry anymore. I think I used all of my tears up the last three days. Now, I just sit at my desk like a ghost; silent, hollow, and quietly unraveling one cell at a time.

I haven’t eaten properly in days. Every bite I attempt just sits in my throat like cement. Lex and Zara have been hovering: texting, dropping snacks off, threatening to drag me outside, but I keep telling them I’m busy, that the article needs finishing, that I’mfine.

Which is a lie.

I am anythingbutfine.

The buzzing in my head won’t stop no matter how many pills I take to try and ease it. My vision blurs if I move too fast, and my body feels too hot and too cold all at once. I’m clammy, but my hands shake when I type. I’m sweating through my shirt even though the air-con’s on full blast, and the scent of the guy two desks over is making my skin crawl.

“Jesus,” Rachel mutters, standing over me. I didn’t even register her approach. “You look like you’ve just been dragged backward through a heatwave.”

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