Page 25 of Cueball & Double-Z (Alpha’s Rejects #5)

Zero and Zilch needed to go. I couldn’t call them by their first names. It was too personal. Too familiar. And I needed to distance myself from them.

I leaned against my closed door, with my eyes shut, breathing heavily, and trying to calm my raging heart before moving to my bed and lying down.

He’d found the picture.

Cole found the picture. I wanted to be fucking sick as my stomach roiled. What I’d done to that image was disturbing. I knew that, but I’d done it anyway in a fit of anger at myself one night while I’d been drinking heavily.

When I woke up the next morning with sledgehammers slamming into my head and nausea to boot, I saw what I’d done.

Fuck! Why had I even kept the damn thing?

A reminder. A reminder of a time when I’d completely lost control.

I’d quit drinking after that night. I’d also kept Shane’s radio.

That fucking radio. He’d had it since college…

Stolen moments in his dorm room. Kisses. Handies. Fucking. That damn radio, always playing in the background .

Shane loved music. That thing was on when he studied, showered…

No. Zero and Zilch had to go.

I’d been so close to inviting them to stay.

Hell, my feelings had been growing for both of them, and more than as roommates.

Whatever small hope I had about finding love again exploded into nothingness.

I couldn’t do this. How was it after all this time?

Two people were tearing down my fortifications with so little fucking effort.

From my profound understanding of and connection to Gio and what he was going through, to the self-loathing and feeling like everything was falling out of your control.

The anger directed at oneself. Then Cole, who saw right fucking through me without any sort of training, which I assumed had a lot to do with his communication style and deep wells of empathy.

He could calm you down with a touch or obliterate your soul with a hand gesture that said he understood you.

I could feel my psyche crumbling. I could see it slipping away, piece by piece.

And I wasn’t ready to face it. It had been seven years now, and I may never be able to face it.

Face what I’d done. Face my absolute failure despite all my education and experience.

Despite all my fucking training. I didn’t want to.

I knew deep down that the only way to heal was to face it head-on, then adapt and grow, but I couldn’t. I didn’t fucking want to.

If I saw a therapist, they’d tell me it wasn’t my fault. That it was impossible to see every single nuance of a person. But it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter. I should’ve seen it. I should’ve done more.

Cole went through something similar, and his guilt caused him to lose his voice, while my guilt sent me spiraling to the point I didn’t even recognize my old self.

Every single thing I’d done up to this point was to keep from facing it.

My protective mechanisms were in overdrive.

And I wasn’t ready to face what a complete and utter failure I was.

And I couldn’t face my family, seeing their pity and understanding despite my abandonment of them.

Their unconditional love was too much, and I didn’t deserve it .

The other part of my mind and heart, way down deep, was telling me Gio and Cole were meant for me.

I was meant to take care of them, and they were meant to heal me.

We had too much in common. Gio and Cole were two sides of one coin.

They were heads and tails. I was the coin.

Gio represented my pain and self-hatred. Cole represented my guilt.

I’d often wondered if Shane had sent them to me.

I wasn’t a religious man, but I refused to believe someone like Shane stopped existing, even in death.

Regardless, I wasn’t ready. Never ready.

The blood tried to overtake my mind, so I forced my brain to shift into a more pleasant memory, no matter how painful, which was better than the death and blood.

We’ve only been dating for a year, but I feel like I’ve known Shane for my entire life. When we aren’t taking classes or working, we spend every other minute together. Shane and I are inseparable.

He’s my first love. He will be my only love. I hope.

We finally found an apartment together off campus, so we can fool around whenever we want without worrying about our dormmates. It’s a tiny, cheap one-bedroom, but it works for us.

Shane rolls over in bed, the moonlight spilling through the mini blinds, a pale blue light casting stripes over his face. His eyes are closed, but a small smile plays on his lips as he stretches before he winces. “Ugh, I’m going to feel your cock in my ass for a week.”

I chuckle as I push back his sweaty bangs from his forehead. “Every time you’re in class, sitting and squirming, you’ll think about said cock in said ass.”

He laughed. “How do you talk so naughtily but still sound like a damn grandpa? Who says, ‘ said cock ’ and ‘ said ass ?’”

“It comes quite naturally.”

Shane tosses a leg over mine and opens his eyes to look at me. “And I love your old-soul ways. I love everything about you. Fucking everything , Marc.”

I press my lips to his forehead. “I love everything about you, too. You’re perfect.”

And he is, even with his mental health issues. The mild depression flares up once in a while, but he’s always good after. Shane trusts me to be vulnerable and break. That trust is everything to me. I know we’ll always be together and work out our shit together. We communicate about everything.

My fingers trail along his face, the scruff coming in, but he’d shave it in the morning.

I lift his chin and press a short kiss to his delicious lips.

“I’m going to marry you one day,” I tell him.

“We’re going to jump-start our careers, then we’ll have a huge wedding or a small wedding.

It doesn’t matter as long as we’re together.

We’ll have kids. Maybe a dog. Or a cat. We’ll have coffee in the morning before work as the kids scramble to make the bus on time for school.

Then we’ll kiss each other goodbye. Tell each other to have a good day at work.

When we come home, we’ll fuss over homework and get dinner going. You know. The basics.”

His smile stretches across his face as he runs his hand through my hair. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

“I do. And if you don’t want those things. I don’t care. You being in my life is all that matters.”

“Hmm, I like your plans. So, how many kids are we talking?”

I shrug playfully. “I don’t know… ten?”

His eyes pop open wide as he quickly sits up and straddles me. We’re still naked, and I love looking at his beautiful body.

“Ten?” he squeaks.

“What? Too few?”

He snorts a laugh and gently smacks my chest. “Be real. How many really?”

I smile softly and run my hands across his arms. “As many as you want, baby. One, two… none. If you just want to be a fur daddy, that’s fine, too. I don’t care. You’re all that matters to me.”

Shane lies down on top of me. He doesn’t weigh nearly as much as I do, so his body is warm and comforting. He nuzzles his face in my throat, his breath puffing against the skin as my fingers dance across his smooth back.

I close my eyes, loving to hold him against me. He makes me feel loved and alive. I never want this feeling to go away, and I’ll do anything to keep it. To keep him.

I opened my eyes, my face wet from the tears trailing down my cheeks, neck, and onto my pillow.

Happy memories. Horrid memories. They were all fucking painful.

As someone who had trained in helping those who grieved, I knew what I needed to do to move on.

The problem was how could I move on if I didn’t want to?

At the same time, I struggled to come to terms with it.

To face him. It wasn’t just that Shane had died.

It was how he died. I could’ve stopped it.

I could’ve saved him. But I failed. He was lost to me forever because of my absolute failure of him.

A soft knock on the door had me sitting up and wiping my face. No one was allowed to see me break, and already I’d been showing too much to Gio and Cole. Especially to Cole.

Life had been relatively stable for me until those damn chaos gremlins moved in.

I wiped my face again on my bed sheet, stood, and glanced in my mirror above my worn dresser. My eyes were red-rimmed, but there was little I could do about it.

Another knock. More incessant this time.

With a sigh, I walked over to my door, opened it, and before Cole could see me, I turned away from him and sat on the edge of my bed. Even if I didn’t show my face, I was certain Cole knew anyway.

There was some shuffling and the sound of a plate being set down on my dresser behind me.

He grunted at me, but I didn’t turn around.

“Leave me, Cole.”

The noise coming from him was insistent and keening. Still, I wouldn’t budge.

My bed moved, and he came to sit behind me. More tears spilled, and my lip quivered when Cole rested his head on my back, his fingers playing with the hem of my Henley. He was telling me he was there, and I wasn’t alone.

But I had to be. I needed to be. Desperate to be.

The chaos brothers were going to break me. They were breaking me.

Gio was easier to handle. Anger, I could handle. The grief and guilt… I couldn’t. I didn’t want to, dammit.

Even though Cole was in my space, at least he didn’t face me, as if he knew I couldn’t have him looking at me.

And then the most unexpected thing happened. Cole stood from the bed and kissed the top of my head before leaving. God, he was the sweetest fucking thing .

I’d been surrounded by the good people of the Rejects, but really, I wouldn’t have called any of them sweet. Maybe Pippin and Nacho, but their sweetness wasn’t focused on me. I was still an outsider looking in. Intentionally.

Did I love my life? Fuck no. Was I happy? Doubly fuck no.

Like Alpha, I always spouted the need for therapy, but I myself never got it. Despite knowing that I needed it, it was too triggering. It hit too fucking close to home.

The door clicked shut behind me, and I dropped my head, staring at my lap. With a big sigh, I closed my eyes, coming to a decision.

They had to go.

I turned to look and saw what Cole had dropped off.

Dinner. On a plate sat three tacos. Next to it was a bowl of salad.

Jesus. I felt like such a dick telling them they needed to go, but this had always been temporary. They were never meant to stay. Gio and Cole needed to stand on their own. They were smart enough.

I ignored my dinner and stepped outside into the living room, where I found Gio sitting next to Cole on the couch, watching him play his game. Cole was leaning against him much like he often did with me.

“I’m really sorry, but it’s time you two moved on,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat along with my guilt. I was fucking good at that. “The weather looks good for a while.”

Cole dropped the controller and frantically signed so fast that even I couldn’t understand all of it. He clearly didn’t want to go. But it was Gio who stopped Cole from signing before looking hard at me. His jaw was clenched and his eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, we’re fuckin’ outta here.”