Page 103 of Generation Omega: Claimed
My voice is rough with pure, horrific, possibly fatal regret. “You didn’t make me angry—that’s not it at all.”
“Then why?”
“When I could hear your thoughts—when I knew exactly how you felt about everything I did, how I looked, what we were doing—I felt safe… like I belonged. When you shut me out, I thought it was because you regretted bonding such a vain, vapid, narcissistic troll. I went from having answers and certainty to spiraling and drowning in doubts.”
I brush away some of her tears, knowing if I don’t find my words now, I don’t deserve to be her alpha. “I’m so fucking sorry I let you down. That is the last thing I would ever want to do. It hurts like hell, Tillie, to care again… but I do. I care about you. I…loveyou, and it fucking sucks.”
Her eyes widen at thelovepart, and then she cackles at thesuckspart. “Jameson!”
“Well, it does. Caring sucks. Loving sucks. Consciences are wholly overrated, which is why nobody uses them anymore. It’s not likedecencyis ever trending—am I right?”
Tillie’s smiling with her tears still falling, though maybe not for the same reason. “Say it again, even if it sucks.”
I brush the pad of my thumb over her gorgeous heart-shaped lips. “I love you, Tillie.” I grimace, recognizing just how long my road back to humanity will be. “You need to know something beforeyoudecide whether I can stay.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to be that man, the one my mother raised me to be. I barely remember anything about her or who I was while she still lived. As soon as we bonded, you started thinking about my mom and me, and it brought it all back—everything Ithought I’d destroyed, all the memories that hurt too much to remember.”
“I knew it bothered you.”
“But it didn’t. I cherished hearing her voice again in your mind.”
Jamie. Tillie is thinking it—my nickname spoken by my mother—and opening her thoughts to me once more.Jamie, you’re going to camp, and you’re going to be an archer, a climber, a hiker, a white-water rafter. You’re going to be everything you wish for a whole month, and I’ll be here when you get back.
Alone with Tillie in the back of a box truck, it all breaks free, the levees I’ve been constantly tending since that day. Because my mother wasn’t there when I got back. She didn’t even tell me she was sick, and she died while I was gone. The next time I saw my mother was in her coffin, and I wanted to crawl inside and be buried with her. But I didn’t, because I was too afraid of small, dark spaces with no exits. Only now can I see that I’ve been judging myself for living ever since.
Tillie grips me as tightly as I grip her, as we let the tsunami take us out to sea—together. I don’t know how long reality waits for us to return, but the emptiness I always feared isn’t what I find. I’m full, overflowing even, with love for my woman, my Tillie.
“Please, I’ll do better, but I need your help. Can you handle a dysfunctional alpha?”
Tillie’s chuckles echo around us, sounding like a chorus. “Just one? I could’ve sworn I had a few damaged alphas.” Then she moves her hands over my cheeks, brushing away my tears. “We’re all broken, Jameson—all of us—but that’s the point. Together, we’ll be better.”
“Jamie… please, will you call me Jamie?”
Her smile takes my breath away. “I love you, Jamie.”
“And I love you, Tillie.” I’m suddenly wearing an authentically depraved grin, and the spark in her eyes confirms she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“You know,” she muses, “I’ve never been screwed silly in the back of a moving truck.”
“Really?” I waggle my eyebrows at her. “You know whatI’venever done?”
“What?”
“Missionary.”
Tillie loses control of stunningly perfect laughter. When she finally can speak, it’s still through hiccupy giggles. “Are you suggesting we cross a couple things off our bucket lists by having conventional sex in the back of a truck?”
“I sure am. What do you say, darling? Are you ready to be lassoed again?”
“Only if it’s forever this time.”
“That’s a promise, little lady.”
CHAPTER 47
TILLIE
