Page 37 of Begrudgingly Yours
I haven’t told her about what happened yet, but I still apologized to her for lashing out. Opal is a very forgiving person and doesn’t like to hold a grudge, but I know she’ll need to know the whole story soon. Maybe she can get something out of it, too. Maybe it’ll help her understand what she’s going through a bit more, push her to make a decision.
Although, the two situations aren’t totally parallel. Sam already has a scent matched omega. Jett only has me, as far as I know.
The doorbell rings sometime after eight, and I scrunch my brows, wondering who it could be. Opal went out with Cindy (barf) and Stacia should be at her house with most of our friends again. Unless she canceled and came here instead?
It’s that single thought that has me getting up from my makeshift nest to walk swiftly across the house. But when I open the door, it’s not Stacia standing there waiting for me.
It’s my scent match.
“Hey,” he says, and the look in his eye causes me to pause before I can slam the door in his face. There’s physical guilt there, swollen bags underneath his eyes, and his lips look chapped from being bit into submission.
“I told you that I didn’t want to talk yet,” I say, although it isn’t completely true. He did text me the night it happened, wondering if we could talk, and I responded. Up until right now, he has given me space to figure things out.
“I know,” he answers softly, not using my own rebuttal against me. “I just needed to see that you were okay.”
No apologies, no defensive statements, just a declarationthat’s all aboutmeand whether or notI’mokay. Despite his bruised eyes and his shallow breathing, he’s focused onme.
And that’s why I open the door a little bit more and invite him inside.
Jett looks shocked but doesn’t question it. He just quietly follows behind me as we travel through the living room where we normally rehearse and then a little further as we inch towards my room.
“Wait, but you don’t like alphas in your room,” he says, pausing in his tracks.
I shrug. “Well, you’re my scent match so that rule doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“But it does,” he responds, not taking another step. “It does matter. Just because I’m your scent match doesn’t mean I get to veto your rule or cross your boundaries.”
My heart hurts when I look back at him.
Why did he do this to us?He’s saying everything that I thought my match would say, and now I can’t appreciate them because it’s tainted by a lie.
“Fine. We can speak out here then,” I say, but instead of sitting down I linger in front of the couch. Jett stands there awkwardly, keeping a decent distance from me so I don’t feel crowded.
The tension is thick, and I’m just hoping he doesn’t notice the sexual nature of it simmering beneath the surface.
“I just,” Jett starts, and then he rubs his eyes before continuing. “I just wanted to see if you were okay. I feel like shit.”
“Yeah, you should,” I bite out.
“Ido,” he responds without any fight. I almost wish he would fight with me. It would be better than the distraught nature I can see clearly all over his face. “Two years ago, when we met in our first film class together, I was captivated by you. And that was before I even scented you. Your hair, yourdemeanor… the way I could see that you were going to be astar.”
My omega whines inside of me. I look away from him, not wanting to see the sincerity in those words, not wanting to let the beast in me convince me to forgive and forget.
He continues, “And when I realized we were scent matches… I lost everything cool about me because I immediately knew I could never measure up. I said something stupid, you instantly hated me, and then what was I supposed to do?”
I grit my teeth with anger and hiss, “Tell me that I have a goddamn scent match?!”
“But you couldn’t smell me!” he yells, and some excitement drums in my veins. If he gets angry, this will be easier. “You couldn’t smell me and I wasn’t willing to go off my blockers, I had barely been on them! And you hated me. Do you really think you would have believed me if I just told you we were scent matches? You’re not the type of person to just take someone at their word, much less someone who had already lost your respect.”
When he puts it like that, there’s not much argument to be had. It’s true that I thought lowly of him. I would have assumed he was trying to find some kind of weakness in me by pretending to be my scent match. Still, my insecurities rear an ugly head.
“Even so, you had an entire semester to make it better. Why didn’t you at least try to show me who you really were?” I ask.
I’ve been curious about it for a few weeks now. The Jett I’ve been rehearsing with is not the same Jett I remember from our early college days. He’s a different breed of alpha than before, and I’m starting to suspect he’s always been that way.
He’s robbed us of years of moments and memories that we’ll never get back. But if I’m honest, I don’t know if the truthwould have made it a smoother path. Not with my past, not when my anxiety fills to the brim when any strange alpha walks by.
“I thought it was better if you hated me,” he admits, and I swallow down the whimper it tries to pull from me. “I wanted you to feel strongly for me, even if it wasn’t lust or love. Hate was achievable. I wanted anything but indifference.”
