Only You Read online

  “You won’t ever, will you?” Alexander asked after too long and raw a pause. “You won’t love me. You won’t let me love you. Not now. Not ever. You didn’t mean anything but ‘fuck me’ when you said ‘yes.’ I meant forever. All you meant was ‘tonight.’ Again.”

  So pieces of a shattered heart could break into even more fragile shards. Zach felt them crack. His and Alexander’s.

  He slid himself backward, naked and dripping but away, his body protesting at the emptiness inside and cold, so cold, all over again. “I…”

  That wasn’t what I meant at all, he would have said, but he didn’t get the chance. Alexander shoved himself bodily up and away, turning his back and burying his head in his hands.

  Zach couldn’t sit there and wait for him to say it. Not again. He staggered to his feet, unsteady as a colt, wet to his ankles and up to his navel, reeking of sex and frustrated lust. “I told you,” he said before Alexander could open his mouth. “I told you, Alexander, and now look where we are. Right back at the beginning, and I can’t --”

  No. He couldn’t do this anymore. That was what he couldn’t do.

  He could damn himself for a coward, and he could hate himself for it later, but right now all Zach could do was pick up enough clothing to cover himself with and run.

  Chapter Five

  He had to -- he didn’t know. Get out of there. Before he did something he’d regret, regret even more, whatever that might be. A pile of clothes in his hands, throwing on whatever he could manage on the move, Zach ran for the front door on bare feet because he’d forgotten his shoes.

  When he wrenched the heavy door open, he jerked back. Rain with temper and teeth lashed through at him, drops as sharp as needles on his oversensitive skin. He couldn’t even see the sidewalk through all of that, and he had to slam the door shut before it drove him to his knees.

  He leaned against it for a second, panting, cold and wet but hot and hard as well. Wrapping his arms around himself, he rocked on his heels and stifled a moan against the rain-swollen wood. His body still wanted what it’d almost gotten, and it wasn’t happy with him. Muscles clenched and cramped in his legs, his arms, all through his insides. He was still leaking, humiliating himself, but he smelled bitter now, so bitter he almost gagged.

  Zach made himself get to his feet. If he couldn’t run he could hide. God knew this house was big enough. There had to be somewhere.

  Something furry bumped against his bare ankle and made him jump away with a yelp. “What the hell?”

  When Zach looked down, the giant black and white cat glowered up at him. “What do you want? Go find Alexander. He’s the one who owns you.”

  The big cat’s tiny, sandy-furred friend popped out from behind its buddy and hissed.

  Zach shook his head. “Don’t think I don’t get the irony. Either of you.”

  The giant cat sneered at him, turned with an imperious flick of the tail, and strode away. When Zach didn’t follow, it turned its head and yowled. The little one bit his big toe -- for emphasis, he supposed. They either wanted him to follow them, or feed them, and… why the hell not? Stranger things had happened.

  The cats walked well ahead of him, measured now that they knew they had Zach’s attention, and they didn’t go far. Down a short flight of steps, across old-old-old flagstones, and to what he guessed must have been a butler’s pantry once upon a time. When Zach peeked inside, he saw two empty pet food bowls sitting against the far wall.

  Big Cat yowled again, lashing its tail. Feed them it was.

  Zach snorted quietly, a little wetly, but there was no reason not to make something glad he was there before his body got over the surprise of being herded by cats and turned on him again. He had to get control over himself somehow.

  If he could. Maybe he couldn’t.

  His legs were shaking again, and he had just enough strength left to fill the bowls before he stumbled to the far wall and used it to slide down so he didn’t fall. The second wave was worse than the first; he did gag this time, acid flooding his throat. Nothing else came up. His body had already sent those few bites of Thai on their way down his guts, too hungry to let them go to a second’s waste. He wished it hadn’t. The acid made his nose run and his mouth burn, and when he swallowed it back down without thinking, it lit a sour flame in his belly that made him gag all over again. He was on his hands and knees before he’d finished and his stomach still hadn’t stopped cramping in long, sick waves.

  Zach pressed his hot face against the wall and let the tears go. He wept for everything he could have had, and all the things he never could have had, either.

  He wasn’t sure how long it lasted before he heard footsteps, Alpha-heavy, treading a slow path down the steps. Figured.

  “I might have known,” Zach said, tired. “Alphas always follow their trails to the bitter end.”

  “Did you really expect anything different?” Alexander asked. Shuffling noises sounded like him sitting down outside, but not opening the door any farther.

  “Expect, no. Hope -- maybe, yes. But I never knew anyone so bent on banging his head against a brick wall as you.”

  “Haven’t met yourself, then, have you?”

  Zach aimed a narrow look at the crack in the door. “More often than I’ve liked. Look, I have to stay until it stops raining, but then I’ll get out of your hair, Alexander. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Don’t have to --” Alexander stopped. “Zach, you --” He made a noise more like a roar than a groan, sheer frustration let out of its bottle like a furious djinn. “How do you not get it, not even now? I want to -- I --”

  He stopped mid-sentence. Small sounds followed, the quiet noises of a man struggling to get himself under control and mostly failing at it.

  “God, I could tear you limb from limb sometimes,” he said, starting off so abruptly that Zach flinched. “You keep saying I don’t get it, but you know what? There are things you don’t get. Like how I never knew what anger really was, before you. I never, never understood how you could walk away like you did.”

  Zach pressed the heels of his hands -- cold -- to his sore eyes -- hot from tears. “It hurt me as much as it hurt you, Alexander. Don’t you ever think differently.”

  He heard Alexander exhale and drop back with a dull thud against the corridor wall. “I always wondered.”

  “Now you know. So please -- go away, until I can go away too.”

  Silence. Zach angled a bit to the right and realized he could see a few inches outside the cracked door, enough of a patch of wall for Alexander’s shadow to fall against. He could identify his movements now and there was no one to see him drinking them in. The way Alexander rubbed at his face, and how he turned his head when he spoke. “Do you want to know something true?”

  Zach flinched back again. “No.”

  The stubborn man heard him, Zach knew he did, but he kept on talking. “If I’d known what you just told me, I’d have gone after you.”

  “I know. That’s why I made sure you didn’t.” Zach’s chest ached so that he rubbed over his breastbone to try and ease it. “If I’d let you, if I’d let me… It would have happened exactly the way you wanted. We’d have fucked until night fell and the sun rose and we’d have walked out of there with me pregnant, both of us on our way to the courthouse. And you’d have smiled like the sun every step of the way, not knowing any better. We were so young, Alexander.”

  “I know.” Alexander sounded thoughtful. Zach could picture him so easily, lost in the images his mind conjured up for him as they spoke. “If we’d stayed together, do you think we’d have more than one kid by now?”

  It wasn’t funny, but Zach still almost laughed. It was laugh or howl, and his hormones were doing the picking and choosing. “Probably? We never stopped going at it back then, and we’ve barely stopped tonight. Every chance we get, we’re on each other.”

  “In each other,” Alexander murmured. “I’d have liked to see what it felt like if you fucked me
, for once.” He laughed when Zach hissed, half shocked and half jolted by a new wave of lust. “Thought you’d like that idea. But the way it was when I fucked you -- no, we wouldn’t have stopped. We’d have a litter by now. A whole ball team’s worth of babies.”

  Zach’s breath hitched. He pressed his thighs together to stop the surge of yearning that provoked. A sharp tongue was the only defense he had left, but somehow it came out sounding rueful instead. “If you were an Omega and had to go through a pregnancy and give birth, I don’t think you’d sound so thrilled about the idea.”

  “This is thrilled?” Alexander asked.

  “You know it isn’t.” Zach looked up at the blank wall across him. Even the cats had run away. Smart cats. “Stop. Please? All this is doing is hurting us. Please stop.”

  He heard the soft scrape-scrape-scrape of Alexander’s palm rubbing over the stubble on his cheeks and chin. “Yeah. About that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to hear you say ‘stop’ again without flinching. I didn’t do it on purpose. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Yes, you were. With the wrong head, but that’s neither here nor there.” Zach let out a long sigh and dropped his hands between his knees. The shudders were easing, finally, ebbing down to the occasional shock and quake, but he’d leaked -- was still leaking -- so much that it puddled beneath him, and his face went hot with shame. “So was I. Or so wasn’t I. I don’t know which is right. I let my hormones call the shots. Too many of them.”

  Alexander’s shadow tilted its head a little more to the left. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Zach raised one shoulder. “You can ask. I can’t promise I’ll answer.”

  “Is it scary to think about? The general concept of it, I mean. I never got to ask an Omega before.”

  “What, pregnancy, birth?” Zach’s hand drifted down to rest over the concave dip of his belly. “No. I want children. Babies. I always did.” He ached for them, and not only because he was an Omega. He yearned for someone he could love without reservation, who’d love him without bias. Who the world hadn’t ruined and he could keep safe, teach how to be tough but -- he hoped -- how not to wall himself away. Someone who was half him, and half… “I don’t know if I’m past that now, though. I might be.”

  “You’re not even thirty. That’s not old.”

  “I’m not talking about chronological age.” Zach’s fingers flexed. He could feel the gnawing emptiness inside that happened whenever he let his mind go to places like these, and that hurt too. “I’ve been fighting what my body wants, needs, for so long that I could have done myself some damage. You don’t hear a lot about it, but it does happen. The spirit is willing and eager but am I even capable anymore? You leave anything too long and it withers. Seeds don’t grow in scorched earth. Fuck.” He rubbed his face against his knee. “Please stop listening to me and go away.”

  “Oh, Zach,” Alexander said. Only that, but with all his heart in his voice for once instead of on his sleeve. “Zach. No.”

  “Don’t pity me,” Zach snapped. “Don’t you dare do that. It’s done, and what’s done is just -- done.”

  He saw Alexander’s shadow’s shoulders go tense. “You know, I hate it when people say that.”

  “Why? Because it’s true?”

  “No. Because it’s bullshit.”

  Zach lifted his head and blinked at the door. “What?”

  “I told you there were things you didn’t get, but I didn’t say them all,” Alexander said, speaking slowly, thinking each word through as it came out. “When you left me that day --”

  “Alexander, no.” Zach pushed himself away from the comfortingly cool plastered wall, his heart pounding too hard and too fast again. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “That’s too bad, because you’re going to. When you left me, I hated you. I hated you so much that it almost choked me. You’re a cat, and you turned me into this -- this junkyard dog with more teeth than tail, taking bites out of everyone.”

  Bad enough to have imagined it every day, since. Worst of all to hear it out loud, even now. Zach wrapped his arms around his knees and pressed his face against them. “Alexander. Please.”

  Alexander’s shadow shook its head. “I don’t remember when I stopped hating you. A year, maybe. Two. A few boyfriends who didn’t want strings, and one who was ready to tie me down with all the strings he could get his hands on.”

  He stopped there.

  Zach couldn’t constrain his curiosity. “What happened?”

  “I thought about saying yes. I almost did say it. He was right for me in every way. Wanted a home, a huge family, a big noisy gorgeous life, and he had a smile that could stop traffic. I still couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he wasn’t you.” The door opened, and the small amount of light from a candle Alexander carried cast up long shadows as he dropped to a kneel in front of Zach, gazing steadily at him. “Here’s something else true: I knew who you were the second I set foot on the train.”

  Zach pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. “No.”

  “Yes. Long before you realized I was there. I had almost an hour to look over my shoulder and think about what I was going to do. When I could. When I wasn’t caught up in watching you, feeling like I was drowning, feeling all of that come rushing back while I was trying to keep my head above water. What you look like -- you look like the only happiness I’ll ever know, and you look like you’re one missed meal away from being six feet under -- and that junkyard dog inside me lay down and went to sleep. It curled up next to you so it could keep you safe, and I wanted that too. I wanted it. I wanted you like I’d never stopped.”

  Zach ground his hand against the edges of his teeth. He wanted to bite down to distract himself from how much pain he could sense coming from Alexander. How had he been so blind to it before? Selfishness? But now that his senses were open he could feel the deep-down thrumming of loneliness radiating from Alexander.

  “I couldn’t let you go. I had to at least try. I thought you wanted that too, but -- I still don’t get it, Zach. Help me understand why I’m --” He stopped, then visibly made himself go on. “Rip the bandage off. Tell me why I’m not good enough for you.”

  What?

  Zach’s lips parted. “That’s what you think?”

  “What else should I think?” Alexander spread his hands in frustrated hurt. “You couldn’t make it any plainer if you tried. You don’t want me, and you don’t want me so much that you spent years running as fast as you could. So just -- tell me why you don’t love me, even if you still want my cock enough to make me crazy. Let me put that to rest, at least.”

  “But that’s not it. That’s not it at all.”

  He’d finally caught Alexander off guard. “What?”

  “Idiot, yourself. God!” Zach lifted himself, balancing unsteadily but on his own two feet. He caught Alexander’s wrist as he stumbled and went back down to his knees; the shock of hitting the stones hurt but he didn’t care. He needed Alexander to listen and hear. “I always loved you.”

  “But --”

  “How did you not know? I loved you so much it broke me to leave you. There wasn’t a night I didn’t wish it could be different.”

  “Then why?”

  “It was the only way you’d ever have something better for you than me!”

  He’d stunned Alexander into silence with that. It wasn’t anywhere near satisfying. Zach gestured broadly, frustrated into nearly babbling to get it all out. “You deserved so much more. The world. Everything in it. And you got it, don’t you see? You got out there and you took it all by the balls and you got what you wanted, and I am so fucking proud of you for that I’m almost not mad at you for whole seconds at a time.”

  Zach bent his head; his neck ached so, as if his skull were nearly too heavy for it to support.

  “And there’s the other side of the coin,” he said after a minute, when Alexander didn’t say anything at all. He couldn’t stop. “My God, Alex
ander. We never stopped fucking, but we never stopped butting heads, either. And here, now? Look what’s happened in one night. An explosion, a train wreck, a storm -- what’s it going to take to convince you fate doesn’t want us together? A lightning strike right down the middle of your head?”

  Alexander regarded him for a long, unreadable moment. “Maybe,” he said at last. “Stranger things have happened. And you know what? I don’t care. All those things you say you wanted for me, Zach. Did you think I couldn’t have done them with you?”

  Zach’s mouth opened and closed, stunned silent.

  “Think about it,” Alexander said quietly. He stood. “What we could have done -- both of us -- if we’d had each other’s backs instead of always stopping to look over our own shoulders. Maybe making a choice that big, when we were that young, would have slowed us down. But it wouldn’t have stopped us.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because you changed everything with nothing but a few words.”

  Zach closed his eyes.

  “I love you. And I know you love me too.”

  “I’m sorry. No. That’s not what I want.”

  Alexander nodded as if he’d heard those words running through Zach’s mind. “Two little sentences, and you ended the world for me. That world. So do you really think you couldn’t have kept us going with a few others, different ones? No. I know you. You’d have kept us moving, if you’d chosen that. If you’d trusted me.”

  “I loved you too much to trust myself to do that.”

  “Ahh.”

  “Ahh, what?”

  “Now I understand,” Alexander said. So simply. So surely. “Now, I know what to do.”