Page 13 of Knot So Fast
The color that used to be my favorite thing in the world.
I dare secretly admit it still is.
"Don't be jealous," she says, and there's something almost sad in her voice. "I won't be jealous when you find your Omega."
The words hit me like a punch to the gut, and I frown at the casual way she delivers what feels like a death sentence.
She looks away quickly, like she can't bear to see my reaction.
"I'm off," she says with forced brightness. "See you around?"
I stop her before she can fully leave, my hand reaching out almost of its own accord.
She looks confused as she turns back to me, and I lean down to lay a soft kiss on her forehead—the kind of gentle affection that we used to share so freely.
She pouts and looks up at me with those innocently confused eyes, and I want to tell her everything. Want to say that she's ours, always has been, always will be. That there is no other Omega for me because she's it, she's everything, she's the reason I keep breathing even when it hurts.
But that confused gaze reminds me too much of that day in the hospital when the doctors tried to explain that I used to be her boyfriend, and she looked at them like they were speaking a foreign language.
Like the idea of the bad boy with the bad girl—two people who had nothing in common but destruction and mayhem—was so impossible that it couldn't be real.
"Be safe," I whisper instead, the words barely audible.
She smirks and gives me a saucy wink that makes my heart skip.
"I'll follow the speed limit. Just got this driver's license back, and that's clearly the only thing I'm getting back since Omegas don't belong in racing bullshit."
She says the last part with exaggerated drama, but I can hear the real pain underneath.
The reminder that her dreams were taken from her just as brutally as her memories were.
"See ya!" she calls out cheerfully, walking toward the private elevator like she doesn't have a care in the world.
I watch her go, memorizing the way her hips sway in those shorts, the way my shirt hangs off her shoulder to reveal a glimpse of collarbone.
She waves back at me just before the elevator doors close, and then she's gone with a soft "ding" that sounds like finality.
I don't know how long I stand there staring at the closed elevator doors, but eventually the truth settles over me like a heavy blanket.
We're destined to fail.
Again and again and again.
Because you can't build something real on a foundation of lies, and every day I don't tell her the truth is another day that foundation cracks a little more. Eventually, it's all going to come crashing down, and when it does, I'll lose her for good this time.
But until then, I'll take whatever scraps of her attention I can get.
Even if it's slowly killing me.
Even if pretending is all I'll ever have.
HAUNTING PAST IN THE PIT OF FLAMES
~AUREN~
The simulator Vheadset feels weightless on my head as I grip the steering wheel, my body automatically adjusting to the familiar sensation of speed and precision that comes with racing.
The virtual track stretches out before me in stunning detail—every bump, every curve, every potential hazard rendered so realistically that I can almost smell the burning rubber and feel the heat radiating from the engine.
