I ignored him.
“Gordo.”
I glared at him. “What.”
He had no sense of self-preservation. “Did Dale put some kind of mind-control whammy on Mark to make him sexually subservient?”
I ordered Jessie to control her brother.
She cocked her head at me. “Why? I want to know too. Now that you and Mark are going to be—”
“We’re not going to be anything,” I growled at her.
They all turned slowly to stare at me.
“Gordo,” Jessie said. “You do realize that you’re a liar, right?” She looked at her brother. “He knows that, right?”
Chris sighed. “Gordo doesn’t know how to deal with all his feelings. He needs to pretend to be a prick, but really he’s thinking about Mark’s thighs wrapped around his neck.”
Tanner grimaced. “Now I’m thinking of Mark’s thighs wrapped around his neck. Ugh.”
“Heart of gold,” Rico said solemnly.
“I hate all of you,” I mumbled, raising the binoculars again, hoping that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Chris said softly. He put his hand on my arm. “You know that, right? You’re allowed to be happy. He’s going to be fine. So is Carter. We’re going to beat this.”
And that was it, wasn’t it? I hated how well they could read me, even if they didn’t necessarily know about that almost-kiss in Mark’s room. Part of me wished I’d been stronger, that I’d turned around and walked away, leaving him standing there. But even that was nothing compared to the long-ago memory of the way his mouth felt against mine. The way he’d felt against me. The feeling of his hands on my skin. I’d kept it locked away for so long, put into a box and strapped with chains, shoved into a dark corner to gather dust.
But the chains had broken now, the box cracked right down the middle.
For the longest time, Mark had been nothing but a ghost. Even when he stood in front of me, even as we’d fought side by side, I had rarely let myself think of what we’d once been. What we could have had if it wasn’t for pack and wolves and fucking human stubbornness.
Of course it would take until the world was crashing down around us.
He was acting strong. And brave. But I was as much an expert in Mark Bennett as I’d been the first time we’d kissed.
He was scared.
It went beyond the idea of becoming an Omega, beyond the idea of losing his tether.
I had lost my pack. Again and again and again.
But so had he.
I’d forgotten that.
In my anger. In my grief.
Here he was, faced with losing it again.
And I still didn’t know how to stop it.
Jessie’s hand pressed against mine, and it was only then that I realized I was shaking.
I took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I’m fine,” I said gruffly. “Don’t worry about me. There are other things—”