Page 35 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
“You were funny,” she relented. “And kind. I saw you be kind, even when you hid it away behind this… roughness. And I had this idea… this dumb idea that you were just like me. In hiding.”
He was quiet. Too quiet.
“Maybe I was,” he said. “I don’t know. I wish I’d given you a chance. Then maybe I could’ve found out if I was.”
She suppressed the smile that wanted to spread across her mouth. He wasn’t getting off that easily. She hadn’t simply waited for an apology for six years, even though his acknowledgment mattered to her. His understanding of how what he’d done had been so fucking shitty and unnecessary.
“Yeah?” she said, glancing at him. “Why did you say ‘someone like you’?”
“What?”
“When you told me to take a hike, you said that I was incredibly naïve if I thought that anyone would ever want to do anything with ‘someone like me’. What did you mean by that?”
“Oh,” he said slowly. “Honestly? I didn’t mean anything. It was just words. I wanted you to go away.”
“But those words were so specific,” she remarked.
“Is this the best place for this conversation?”
“You know what, I think it is,” she said. “At any second guards might come through those doors and drag us away. They’ll put us in cages where no one will—”
“Ever find us,” he filled in, effectively interrupting her. “Is that your biggest fear or something? You keep bringing it up.”
“Who would want to be in a cage forever with no one knowing where they are?” she retorted. “Of course, it’s my biggest fear.”
“Or perhaps you’re good at putting yourself in a box and others along with you, and you’re terrified that others are constantly doing the same to you?” he remarked.
She stared at him.
What the fuck?
“No,” she denied the statement, but his words had struck a chord she didn’t even know could be struck. “Or… holy shit,” she murmured. “I guess maybe… yeah.”
“You guess? Maybe? Or yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I always manage to rely on first impressions, and I forget that they’re completely unreliable and I…”
“Overanalyze?” he asked.
“Okay, enough, thanks, is this your wolf in my head or something? Rummaging around to try and make sense of the mystery wrapped in another mystery that is me?”
He smirked, making her furrow her brows at him. “I noticed you, you know,” he said. “That first year in college. Your dark green sweater? The one with the gold buttons?”
She stared at him. “I loved that sweater.”
He nodded. “I noticed. You wore it at least once every week that year. Sometimes twice. I liked it when you wore a belt with it.”
“Wait,” she held up a hand. “What’re you talking about?”
“I don’t know what your impression of me was that year, but I think it might’ve been the right one,” he confessed. “I was thinking about asking you out, but honestly… I know this is going to sound like sad man-pain bullshit, but I didn’t think I’d be good enough for you.”
She was absolutely gobsmacked.
“What the hell are you saying?”
“It had nothing to do with you. I think… This running wild thing with the wolf… it’s starting to make me see that I’ve never really done that. I’ve always worked hard to get where I wanted to be and so I overcompensated to not seem too…”
“Nerdy?”
