“And I was worried you wouldn’t act professional,” Clay sardonically interrupts.
I laugh lightly against Brazen’s lips as he pulls back with a bashful smirk. Clay rolls his eyes, his exasperation growing.
“The other regions aren’t here yet, and that’s when you said I had to act professional,” I giggle out.
He rolls his eyes again and then crosses his arms over his chest very disapprovingly before saying, “I need you to interrogate your top three threats, and then I need you in the lab for a little while.
“Okay,” I grouse, and then I turn back to Brazen to offer him a sweet kiss rather than a steamy one. “I love you.”
“I love you, babe. Call me if you can do lunch,” he murmurs before kissing my forehead, and then he disappears out the front doors.
“You’re incorrigible you know,” Clay huffs.
“It just feels good to have someone be in love with me. I’m sorry if that aggravates you, Mr. Grumpy Pants,” I giggle out.
He rolls his eyes while stifling a grin of his own, and then he shakes his head.
“I swear,” he mumbles. “I hate it when you make me smile while I’m trying to scold you. It steals my thunder.”
I loop my arm through his while snickering, and we make our way down the hall until an argument stops us in our tracks. My moment of lightheartedness ends abruptly as I stare at the hybrid who always stops my heart.
“You can’t fucking leave. She is going to need you, damn it,” Hale blares, and I look around to see Grayson with a large bag thrown over his shoulder.
“This isn’t my style. I don’t stay in one place for too long, and I don’t like feeling as if I’m owned by the United. Besides, you’re wrong. She doesn’t need me at all. She won’t look at me, touch me, or even acknowledge I’m here. It’s not exactly the most endearing feeling. I’ve felt rejection enough in my life to know what it is,” Grayson barks while walking away.
“You can’t leave the United. You’re gifted.”
“I can join the unaligned fleet. I hear they’re accepting gifted hybrids nowadays,” he mumbles while continuing to walk away.
Hale grabs Grayson’s bag, and jerks it free from his shoulder before slamming him into the wall. He presses his arm against the young one’s throat, and Grayson struggles against Hale’s force.
“She has just fucking changed. She’s scared, and she’s going to need you just like you’re going to need her. Don’t be a selfish ass right now. You’re not the only fucking hybrid to ever suffer rejection or feel insecure. We’ve all fucking faced it.”
“She hasn’t, Hale. She hasn’t,” Grayson almost whimpers, and Hale’s eyes soften as he loosens his grip to drop him to the ground before Grayson continues. “She had a father, a home, a bedroom with a window view… everything. She doesn’t need me to taint her perfect world. She doesn’t want it to be me, and I fucking feel it. I’ll be here when she needs me, but I can’t stick around feeling like I do when she won’t even look at me. Do you understand that?” Grayson almost cries.
My heart aches for the pain he feels right now, and I have no idea why Angelica is acting this way. I don’t even know how she’s shutting him out. I was never able to do it to Hale until he broke me. I still struggle with it.
“Do you love her?” Hale strains out while empathizing with his pain.
“That’s just it… I love her too much. It’s a completely new emotion, and I never thought it possible for our kind to feel an emotion we never received until I saw her. But she doesn’t love me. She doesn’t want me to be here,” Grayson says, his voice going in and out, and I see the tears in his eyes finally fall free.
“She does love you. She does want you here. The two of you were meant to be together, and you can’t deny that draw no matter how hard you try,” Hale sighs out.
“What?” Grayson scoffs sardonically. “You mean like you and Araya? It seems like the two of you do well without each other.”
Hale’s eyes blaze over, and he throws Grayson back against the wall before blaring, “You don’t know a fucking thing about Araya and me. Don’t act like you do just because you’ve known us for a minute. There’s absolutely nothing I wouldn’t fucking do for her. Do you understand that?”
My heart slaps my stomach, and Clay becomes my crutch as he steadies me above my trembling knees.
“You’re willing to let her be with someone else because you want her happy?” Grayson asks with a condescending air. “That’s what I want for Angelica too. She shouldn’t be with me just because we’re bound, and it’s obvious she doesn’t have any other feelings for me.”
Hale drops him again, and then he shakes his head as if he’s disgusted.
“It’ll kill you to see her with someone else. It’ll be all you can do to stay upright everyday. You’ll be doing good to get an ounce of sleep, and you’ll hurt more than you ever thought possible. The moment she tells someone else she loves them, you’ll pray for death. You can’t do what I’m doing because you don’t have to,” Hale strains out, and I can feel the pain oozing from his voice as he slumps down against the wall across from Grayson.
What the fuck? Why is he telling Grayson all this when he’s the one who keeps pushing me away? He’s acting as though this was my decision when he blatantly told me he didn’t love me. He fucking cheated on me, so why do I feel guilty?
Because it’s Hale.
