When I opened my eyes, the light in the room greeted me with noxious clarity. I filtered it through my fingertips as I sat up and the whole room spun.

They weren’t kidding when they said not to mix those pills with alcohol. Shit.

And I was still in heat. Lovely.

Memories of the night before started coming back, but at least my awkward dreams served as a transition. Reece’s scent was still everywhere, on my clothes, my chair, my blanket, but my senses were heightened because of the heat, so hopefully he’d already left.

I discarded my clothes and realized they smelled like beer and crappy takeout, so I tossed them rather than dealing with the dry cleaner. As I stepped into the shower, as good as the water felt, it had me alert enough to remember how I’d come onto Reece with crystal clarity. And how he’d rejected me, as always.

Maybe I really did have a problem if I was that delusional. Just what I needed, a stint in rehab on top of everything else. That would really make me a desirable job candidate.

A week—a month, if Reece was to be believed—was all it had taken for me to unravel. I still had the next sixty years or so to get through, so this was not a promising start.

Reminding myself that I didn’t actually have to make it that long, just for as long as my mother was here, was far more comforting than it should have been. When it had first happened, knowing what it would do to my parents was the one thing that had kept me from hurting myself. I’d always felt like making it this long was a victory, but now I was starting to wonder. What would my mother think if she saw me this way? If she knew how out of control I’d let myself get?

I knew what my brothers would say. I knew how they’d look at me, the same way Reece had.

Maybe I didn’t need to go anywhere. I’d had a bad night, or thirty, but maybe it wasn’t that bad. I could get myself back on track. I’d done it once alone, why was now any different? All I had to do was stop taking the pills, get my psych to switch me to something longer-acting. Stop drinking. Find a job. Any job, really, just something to pass the time and keep my mind off of…everything.”

My bedroom door shut, which meant either Reece hadn’t left or there was more about the night before that I’d forgotten. I turned off the water and went into my walk-in to find some clean clothes to throw on. When I came out into the room, he was standing there with the gun I kept in a locked box under the bed with a deeply troubled look on his face.

“You’re still here.”

“You have a gun.”

“It’s northern California. It practically came with the condo.”

His expression remained humorless as he placed the gun back in the box. “Did you plan on using it?”

“Only on the next guy who showed up unannounced and let himself in,” I shot back, folding my arms. “Why are you still here?”

“I told you, I’m not leaving you like this. Especially not now,” he said, nodding toward the lockbox.

“Don’t be dramatic. I keep it for self-defense, not so I can off myself.”

“Sorry for not believing you, given the state you were in last night.”

“My state, last night or any other, is none of your concern.”

“It has to be someone’s,” he said, frowning. “I’ve seen some downward spirals in my time, Ellis, but this is a new record. You need help.”

“What I need is for you to get the fuck out of my house.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not until I know you’re okay.”

“Okay?” I laughed. “That’s cute, considering I was okay, until you showed up.”

“Denial is a coping mechanism, not a way of life. You need to talk to someone, Ellis. If you don’t want to talk to me, then —“

“Then what, a shrink? I’ve had four. There’s only so many times you can relive the worst day of your life while a stranger sits across from you nodding before you realize ‘talking to someone’ has its limits.”

“What about your family? Patrick and your mother, you don’t think they’d want the chance to be there for you?”

“Right. Because that’s what they need in the wake of my dad’s death, a heaping helping of my problems to go with their grief.”

“They love you. You shut yourself off from everyone who cares, but there are people who love you and care about what happens to you, Ellis. You’re not as alone as you think you are.”

“What do you know about being alone?” I demanded. “You lost your mate, and I’m sorry. That sucks, but it doesn’t give you the right to tell me how to live my life.”

“If you were living it, that would be a different story, but you’re not. You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like, but I do know how it feels to convince yourself that if you just shut everyone out, you can get a handle on the pain. The emptiness. You’re stronger than me,” he said, his voice softening as he reached for me. I didn’t pull away the way I wanted to, and I regretted it the moment his touch stirred the need inside. It wasn’t just my heat, it was a thirst that went much deeper than that. A thirst that could only be quenched by the one thing I knew this man would never give me. “If anyone could, it’s you, but why should you go through this alone when you don’t have to?”

I folded my arms to put some barrier between us as a reminder to myself of the invisible one that had always been there. “I’ll stop taking the pills, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“Fine. Then I’ll stay here until you get through it.”

“You have a kid, and about three dozen companies to run.”

“Four,” he corrected. “Wren and Jayce are watching Anika. Gray and my father are taking over my workload for a while.”

I could feel the heat rushing to my face. “They know you’re here?”

“I didn’t get into specifics, but they know I need to be with you right now.”

I squinted at him, shaking my head. “Why? Why is this so important to you?”

He stood there speechless for a few seconds, like he was arguing with himself. Finally, he said, “There’s something you need to know. Something I should have told you fourteen years ago. I don’t want you to think I’m telling you now because I think it gives me any rights or because I think it’ll change anything…”

“I’m too hungover for this kind of beating around the bush,” I muttered, walking past him and into the kitchen. “At least let me get some coffee while you work it out.”

“I don’t think coffee is going to help, but this might,” he said, handing me a glass full of what looked like a green smoothie sitting on my counter.

I took a sniff and swallowed a gag. “It smells like a lawn threw up.”

“It tastes even worse, but it’s a guaranteed cure for hangovers of all varieties.” When I cocked an eyebrow, he added, “College was pretty intense.”

“Of course. Everybody loves a jock,” I muttered, taking a sip. He wasn’t kidding about it tasting worse than it smelled.

“It’s easier if you just chug it.”

I tried, and he was right about that, too. It was easier, but I still felt like I was drinking motor oil.

“So back to what I was saying. I uh… Remember the first day of sophomore year?”

I took a break to breathe and realized I had way more of the noxious liquid left than I’d hoped. Maybe it was just the placebo effect, but it was helping my headache. “Yeah. Or as I like to call it, the first day of the hunt.”

He looked away guiltily, rubbing the back of his head. “When I saw you that day, something changed. I…I imprinted on you, Ellis.”

I choked on Cthulu’s revenge, barely managing to swallow the rest down even though it started to spray out through my nose. That was a smell I was never going to get out of my nasal passages.

Reece winced, offering me a dish towel. Once I managed to stop coughing, I cried, “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted to tell you, but I thought you deserved to know.”

“You imprinted on me? When we were kids?”

I should have told you then. I should have done a lot of things differently. Everything, really. It’s no excuse, but I was too insecure to come to terms with imprinting on another guy, and I just melted down. I thought pretending like it didn’t happen would give me time to figure things out, and when that didn’t work —“

“When that didn’t work, you took it out on me.”

Shame filled his eyes. “Yes.”

I shook my head, still trying to process it. In a way, it made sense. It explained the gawking, and the fact that I went from being invisible to his number-one target over night. Maybe I was still numb from the aftereffects of the drugs, or maybe I’d just finally succeeded in burning out that part of me that cared, but while I once would have given anything to hear those words from him, all I felt was blank. Maybe a little disappointment for what could have been, if we had both been two completely different people.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I admitted at last. “I mean, I get why you didn’t say anything then, but why now?”

“I meant what I said before, that I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you need from me, but I can’t keep living a lie. I can’t keep lying to you.”

“Well, I wish you would have,” I snapped. I could see the hurt on his face, and there was part of me that hated myself for causing it, but I hated him more. I’d tried to forgive him, I really had, but it was hard to get over pain when the one who caused it just by existing was always right in front of your face. If he’d just stay in the past, in my most bittersweet memories, it would be so much easier for the both of us. I gripped the counter and hung my head, trying to think. “There are worse things to live with than a lie.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough with remorse. If I never heard those words again, it would be too soon. “I thought you would want to know. Telling you was a mistake.”

“You’re good at that, aren’t you?” I snapped, looking up at him. “Making mistakes and then leaving me to deal with the fallout. What did you think was going to happen? That I was just going to fall into your arms and thank you for finally coming clean? That I was going to tell you I still love you after all these years, and we’d run off together like none of it ever happened?”

“No. Of course not. I — I don’t know what I thought,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead. “I just need you to know that whatever you need, whatever I can give you, it’s yours. No strings attached. I know you hate me, and I know you don’t feel that way anymore. I had my chance with you and I blew it so many times, and I don’t expect you to give me another just because I finally got my shit together. I’d be lying if I said that was even true. I just need to be there for you, any way you’ll let me, even if it is too little and too late.”

I listened to him speak, growing angrier with each word he said, because he was making it so hard to keep hating him the way I needed to. The worst part was how clueless he was to think that I didn’t still have feelings for him. That I hadn’t been torn between love and hate from the moment he’d walked into that restaurant looking like all the best and worst parts of my past and the future that still taunted me in my dreams.

“I can’t believe this,” I muttered, walking out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. I cleared out my medicine cabinet and started dumping the contents of every bottle down the toilet while I still had adrenaline and incredulity pumping through my veins. Might as well redirect it to something useful.

“What are you doing?” Reece asked, following me to the door as I flushed a year’s worth of the medication that had become my poison, keeping only the pills my doctor had wanted me to take in the first place.

I accidentally gotten rid of the heat suppressants, too, in my impulsivity, but it wasn’t like they worked anyway.

“My instinct to escape into another plane of consciousness just increased a hundred fold, so if I don’t do this now, I’m never going to be sober again,” I muttered, stalking back into the kitchen to clear out my stash of liquor and wine. As I started dumping the bottles down the sink, I could feel him watching me, probably wondering if I’d finally gone insane.

“Ellis —“

I held up a hand to stop him and let the bottle finish draining before I turned around to face him, propping my hands on the counter for support. “Here’s how it’s going to go,” I said, feeling myself slip back into crisis management mode for the first time since I’d left the company. It was strange. My life was unraveling more than it ever had, thanks to the bombshell he’d just dropped on me, but at least the chaos gave me something to manage other than my own existential crisis.

He stared at me in bewilderment, but he made no attempt to interrupt me, so I continued. “I’m going to get clean, and you’re going to stay here long enough to make sure I do. After that, you can consider us even under one condition.”

“Which is?” he asked, watching me like he still wasn’t sure if I’d lost my mind.

“You’re not going to tell anyone else about this. Once I’m out of the woods, you walk out of here and you never come back. You can move on guiltlessly, knowing you did your good deed to put everything right, and I can go back to putting the pieces of my life back together. You pretend like I don’t exist, and I know that’s something you’re good at doing when you want to. You said you’d give me whatever I needed? This is it.”

For a solid minute, he said nothing. I could see the shift in his emotions, from anger to hurt to acceptance. “There’s just one problem with that plan.”

“Of course there is.”

“My father and his mate already know who you are to me,” he murmured. “But they won’t tell the others if I ask them not to. Other than that, I agree to your terms.”

I stared at him in surprise, not expecting his acquiescence or the pain that came with it. “Good,” I said, reminding myself that this was what I wanted. I wouldn’t put myself in the position of needing anything else from him. I offered my hand. “Shake on it.”

“Seriously?”

I waited expectantly until he shook my hand. “You want to make me sign a contract, too?” he asked wryly.

“I thought about it, but I’ll take you at your word.”

He snorted a laugh. “Alright. But if I’m going to be here, we do this right, and that includes you letting me take care of you.”

I swallowed hard. The idea of letting anyone take care of me gave me that same uneasy feeling of vulnerability as being laid up in a hospital bed for three days to have my appendix out while there was work to be done. The idea of Reece taking care of me? That was even worse, but I had tacitly agreed to it and I didn’t have the energy to spend the rest of my withdrawal arguing with him.

“Fine.”

“Good. Go relax,” he said, shooing me out of my own kitchen. “I’ll make us something to eat.”

“I can help,” I protested. That would make me feel slightly less useless.

He gave me a look, turning on the TV and popping the recliner when I sat down. “If there’s one of my father’s lessons that managed to get through my thick skull, it’s that you never let an omega in heat raise a finger.”

My face grew hot as I surfed the channels for something to distract me. “Right. Lionel Roman’s rules for chivalry and the care and keeping of delicate omegas.”

Reece smirked. “Pretty much. Stay put.”

He disappeared into the kitchen and I curled up, trying to zone out with some ridiculous horror movie. I had to admit, as much as it pained me, it was kind of nice to relax instead of working through my heat like I usually did. For most omegas, it was a mild inconvenience with suppressants. The hot flashes, the mood swings, the carnal cravings that were easily managed with a mate or any Alpha willing to do the job, really. Some even enjoyed it. For me, it had always been a solid week of humiliation and pain, both physical and emotional, that I had to look forward to every three to four months. Without a full course of suppressants in my system, the worst was yet to come, so I tried to lose myself in the movie and not think about it too much.

“If you have time to wander around opening every door in the damn house, how do you not have time to put on pants?” I demanded of the woman onscreen.

Reece came into the room carrying two bowls of something that smelled like heaven. He eyed the screen and cocked an eyebrow as he set my stir fry in front of me. “I don’t think common sense is part of the eighties scream queen schtick.”

“Apparently not,” I muttered. “You didn’t have to make all this.”

He smiled, sitting next to me but far enough away that we didn’t touch. “That’s a given. Is it really that hard for you to just let someone do something for you?”

Yes. “No.”

He settled in and we finished watching the movie as we ate. The food was amazing, because the jerk just had to be good at everything he did. I hated myself for wondering if he was as gifted at other aspects of taking care of an omega in heat. Then I started wondering if this was the way he’d always pampered his wife and that shut down that train of thought real quick.

“Are you cold?” he asked, fixing the throw around my shoulders.

“The opposite, but the thermostat is broken,” I muttered.

He stood, walking over to it. “I’ll check it out.”

After a few moments of fiddling with the dials and taking off the panel to peek inside, he announced, “Looks fine to me.”

“Oh.” That just meant my temperature controls were busted.

He came back over, this time sitting close enough that his thigh brushed mine. I shifted awkwardly, hoping he didn’t notice the way that slight touch made my heart react. The worst part of a heat wasn’t the pain or the insatiable lust, but the way it made me respond to the very thing that usually made my skin crawl: an Alpha’s touch. It wasn’t just the sex I craved in spite of myself, it was the intimacy of being close to someone bigger, stronger. Someone who was everything I never would be, no matter how hard I’d tried or how close I’d come to the counterfeit version.

“Are you in pain?” he asked, studying me.

I rubbed the back of my neck, not quite able to reach the source of the ache. “It’s nothing. Just part of it for me. It’ll go away when the heat does.”

Understanding filled his eyes and I had to look away from the guilt in them. “Let me help,” he pleaded softly, putting his hand next to mine. I was about to say no when he kneaded into the source of my tension, his strong hands working my aching muscles in a way that hurt as good as it felt.

I bit my lip to stifle a moan and he shifted to use both hands. “You’re tense,” he murmured, working his way down my spine.

With every touch, my primal self kept chanting, Yes, good, more. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should make him stop. That if he didn’t, I was going to want this to go places he wasn’t interested in traveling, as he’d made abundantly clear when I’d come onto him the other night.

Because even if I was his mate, even if he was an Alpha and I was an omega in heat, it was still a joke that Reece Roman could ever want me.

His right hand moved to nestle in my hair, running down to stroke the length of it. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said in a strangely reverent whisper, like he hadn’t meant to say the words aloud.

When I turned to face him, I knew he hadn’t. He stared at me and I stared back at him, shaking my head. “What do you want from me, Reece?”

What was wrong with me that I wanted to give it to him?”

“I…” He swallowed whatever it was he’d been about to say. “I want to take care of you. For you to let me give or do whatever it is you need.”

“What I need?” The words came out with a broken laugh, and I pulled the throw around me even though I was already burning up. “What I need makes me feel even worse than the pain. Why do you think I take those suppressants?“

Sadness tinged his gaze as he reached for me, cupping my cheek. I should have pulled away. I should have known he was only teasing me, but I leaned into his touch anyway, hungry for more, even if it was a lie. “Let me take care of you,” he repeated, his voice rough with what I desperately wanted to believe was desire even though I knew better. “We’ll take it slow, and you call the shots. I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do to ease the heat, and if you want it all to stop, all you have to do is say the word.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. His words were stoking a fire he probably had no intention of putting out. I should have showed him the door. Instead, I took his hand and let him lead me into my room. He put his hands on my waist and kissed me softly, slowly, working his way up the buttons on my shirt. He peeled the fabric off my shoulders, but the air on my bare skin was only a partial relief. When his hands ran down my chest, coolness spread wherever he touched and I unwound in his arms.

His tongue found mine as he undressed me the rest of the way. I should have felt vulnerable as he guided me onto the bed naked while he was still fully clothed, but I was too in awe of everything his touch was doing to me to be aware of my own insecurity.

He lowered himself on top of me, his thigh pressed between mine. I moaned against his lips, arching my hips in need. “More,” I commanded in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. I’d never been with another Alpha during my heat, but if there’d been any doubt that getting through it with another omega was different, it was gone now.

Reece broke the kiss and found my neck, traveling down to explore a hardened nipple with his tongue. He drew it into his mouth, sucking tenderly, but that wasn’t where I wanted him and the gentle touch was torture, so I pushed his head further down.

He gave a husky laugh at my shameless petulance, but he stopped teasing and grabbed my hips, sliding me further down the mattress. He spread my legs and settled between them, taking my half-stiff cock in his palm. He stroked the length of it and I stiffened like a rod before he took me into his mouth.

I turned my head into the pillow, but it did little to muffle my gasp as he teased the slit of my dick with his tongue. In all the fantasies I’d foolishly indulged, I’d always imagined that the first time we made love would be full of tender exploration, but I was too deep in the madness of heat to bother with such things. My thoughts were simplistic and singularly focused on the pleasure his touch was bringing and how it was magnifying rather than soothing the ache of my lust. It was torture, and yet I needed more of it, breathing it in hungrily like oxygen.

For a guy who had always insisted he was straight, Reece sucked cock like he was starving for it. I was too enraptured to dwell on that, either. Soon, the pleasure became pure torture and I struggled to find the words to tell him. My feeble gasp must have gotten the point across, because he stopped and pushed two fingers against my slick entrance. I’d never gotten that aroused without some heavy prep work first, but I was more than ready to take his fingers. Even the ache as my body accommodated him felt good in its own way.

My arm stretched out behind me, gripping the underside of the headboard to brace myself against the blinding pleasure. “Fuck,” I cried as he angled his touch into my prostate, keeping the spot pinned with pressure as he took me back into his mouth. I came in waves, currents of energy pulsing through my body as he fucked me with his fingers and kept it up until I was hard again within minutes.

It wasn’t enough. Everything he was doing, everything that was overloading the circuits in my brain, it still wasn’t enough. I knew what I needed, what I wanted as desperately as ever, but I still had just enough shame not to ask for it.

He took me from his mouth and withdrew his fingers. When I looked down, still breathless from my orgasm, I realized he hadn’t stopped because he was done. The look on his face, the fire in his eyes, was the same one that felt like it was going to burn me up if it wasn’t quenched soon and I knew.

The knowledge that he wanted me, even if it was only because I was an omega in heat and even his apathy wasn’t enough to overcome the magnetic pull between us, filled me with a shameful amount of pride. He closed the space between us, bringing his weight down on me once again.

When had he taken off his shirt? My hands explored his muscular chest, moving on their own, seeking and touching and claiming greedily without permission. His gaze flared with approval as he kissed me and my hands drifted lower to unbutton his jeans. “Are you sure?” he asked, his breath cool on my neck as he positioned himself between my thighs.

I was, but I wasn’t sure of what the words were, so I kissed him again and draped a thigh over his to make it easier. I wanted him to climb into me, to fill the hole that was shaped like him. A single touch was usually all it took to make me go numb, but his was all it took to make me feel. Pain, pleasure, longing, want, all the things I’d thought myself too broken to experience. As he pierced me, my breath broke against his lips. He pushed in gently, slowly, but the girth of his shaft was as much of an issue as his length.

“Ellis,” he breathed, his voice full of the same wonder I felt with every beat of his heart inside of me. He gazed down at me with a look so soft it cut me, and I kissed him because it was far less intimate. Because I didn’t want him to look at me like that now, to imprint that image in my mind when it would never be the way he looked at me outside of this fantasy world created by lust and heat and delusion.

I knew what it was, even as he filled me and left no room for logical thought or common sense. I knew it was a lie, just part of him “taking care of me” to assuage his guilt, but I just wanted to live it a little longer.

He started thrusting and I went limp, electric heat surging through me every time he hit my spot. My shaft was pressed between my stomach and his, and the grinding alone made me orgasm while he’d yet to come once.

He moaned his approval into my mouth and drove deeper into me, one hand cradling the back of my head and digging into my hair as he propped the other against the headboard to keep it from slamming into the wall every time he thrust. Not that my neighbors would have and doubts as to how I’d spent my Tuesday morning with all the poorly muffled cries that sounded too much like his name for my comfort.

By the time his seed filled me, I no longer cared. He was still hard as his cock pulsed inside of me, and I could feel his knot pressing my entrance, stretching and teasing the hole he’d fucked so thoroughly. I needed it. I needed all of him, even if it was only for a night. Even if he wasn’t really mine to keep and never would be.

“Please,” I gasped, lifting my hips under his crushing weight. The man was all muscle under those pseudo-lumberjack hipster clothes, and I craved the pressure of him pushing me down into the mattress as much as I craved his knot.

He ground against me and his knot went in like he’d just been waiting for permission all this time. He growled with triumph and hunger as my body stretched to accommodate him, and I could feel his teeth scraping my neck like he intended to place his mark. For the first time, he was pushing a limit and I dug my fingers into his hair, pulling him back to look into his eyes. “Don’t,” I warned him. Knotting always had a way of triggering an Alpha’s more instinctive nature, and for some, the need to claim their destined mate with a mark during the act was overwhelming. I’d just assumed that his general lack of interest meant it wouldn’t be an issue, but when I saw the look in his eyes, I knew otherwise. Part of me was afraid he’d bite me anyway, but far more troubling was the part of me that wanted him to. “Don’t ruin this.”

Reason came back into his eyes and he gave a curt nod before kissing me instead. His hands closed around mine and he pushed up against me, since his knot was locked in too firmly to thrust. The fresh rush of pleasure and mating hormones that surged to my brain were a welcome distraction from how close we’d both come to another mistake that could never be undone. With his knot filling me up, satisfying the deep need that had plagued me since the start of my heat, I came as soon as I felt the next surge of his seed inside of me.

As I caught my breath and felt the tightly wound tension leaving my body, I succumbed to the dreamy sense of security and bliss that came with being held and knotted by my Alpha. I closed my eyes and let myself breathe in his strong, pleasant scent. He stroked my side and kissed my forehead, adjusting so we could both lay more comfortably while we waited for his knot to go down.

I was in no hurry, to my surprise. It was nice, even if I knew it wouldn’t last. Managing my expectations was the only way I was going to get through this heat and survive when he walked out of my life again for the last time.

As I drifted off, I told myself it was for the best. Some things just weren’t meant to last, and I knew we were one of them.