I Don't Come Back to My Alpha Again novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Long Night

I watched Ansel's taillights go down the ridge road until the trees swallowed them.

Then I shut the door and locked it.

My hand was shaking so hard I missed the bolt twice.

Beck reached past me and slid it home.

"Alaska," I said. "He'd do it. He'd put him on a plane and I'd never..."

I couldn't finish.

Beck didn't tell me it would be fine.

He didn't tell me anything.

He just stood behind me and put his arms around me, and held on, while I shook in his flannel shirt in my father's kitchen.

It took a long time.

When I could breathe again, I turned around in his arms.

"Why did you stay on the gate?" I said.

He started to look away.

"No," I said. "Not the pay. Not the view. You owe me this one."

He was quiet for so long I thought he wasn't going to answer.

Then he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Nobody demoted me," he said.

I stared at him.

"Ansel thinks he did. He laughed for a week. I let him." His voice was very low. "I went to him the day after the hearing and asked for the night watch on the forbidden grounds."

"Why?"

"Because I watched you at that hearing, Jo." His hands tightened on my waist. "Everyone was screaming at you. Your own son was pointing at you. And you didn't cry. You stood there with your chin up and you didn't cry once."

"I cried later."

"I know. I heard you." He swallowed. "The first night. You thought nobody was out there. You cried for six hours and then you sang to yourself so you'd stop."

I remembered that night.

I remembered a voice in the dark, out of nowhere, telling me the worst knock-knock joke I had ever heard.

I had been so angry at him I stopped crying.

"I knew if nobody talked to you, you'd die in there," he said. "People do. The ferals, the cold, the quiet. So I talked to you."

"For five years."

"I'd have done fifty."

He said it plainly.

"I didn't love you when I took the job," he said. "I want you to know that. I just thought it was wrong." He looked down at me. "I loved you by the first spring. You told me about the snow wolf. About Tobin riding on your back around the lake. You laughed about it, and I sat on the other side of that gate with my back against the bars and thought, I'm done. That's it for me."

My eyes were burning.

"You never said."

"You were married. You were in a cave. I was a man with a flashlight who wasn't allowed to look at you." His mouth twisted. "Seemed like bad timing."

I put both my hands on his face.

"Look at me now," I said.

He did.

He'd been looking at me since the porch steps. I understood that now.

"You're allowed," I said. "You're allowed to look."

"Jo."

"I'm not married. I'm not in a cave." I pulled his face down to mine until our foreheads touched. "And I'm choosing. Do you hear me? Nobody tied a cord on my wrist for this. Nobody's fate. Just me. I want you."

He closed his eyes.

"Say it again," he said roughly.

"I want you, Beck Lassiter."

He kissed me.

Slower than in the kitchen chair. Deeper.

Like he finally had all the time in the world, and he meant to use every second of it.

I took his hand and walked him to the back bedroom.

My old room, with the narrow bed and the lamp with the yellow shade I'd had since I was twelve.

He stopped in the doorway and laughed softly at the shade.

← Chapter 9 · All chapters · Chapter 11 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend