Page 50 of Thorns That Bloom (Venusverse #3)

Theo

The sight of Sam in the morning light is a glorious one. The sun shines bright, and he sits on the park bench, looking around with that serious gaze of his. When his face lights up, a smile appearing the moment he notices me approaching, I can’t help but feel incredibly blessed.

He tries to stand up, except he’s a little too slow. I hop in before he can. I smile, squeezing his shoulder briefly while I sit down next to him. “Hey.”

“Hi…”

Sam looks much better than I would’ve expected after the few days he’s had. Though there’s some sadness in his eyes and a faint darkness beneath them, he’s as glorious and glowing and perfect as ever.

“How’d it go?” I ask, hesitantly brushing my hand over his knee. Sam glances down at it, and just when I think he might push me away, he puts his hand on top of mine.

“Good, I think. Your sister, she… She’s very, um…”

“Passionate?” I fill in with a chuckle.

“Yeah. That’s definitely one word for it.”

I hum, glancing around us. The peaceful sound of the massive oak tree above us moving in the wind should be calming, but it doesn’t stop melancholy from taking hold of me. “I’m sure she is. She was the same the last time I properly spoke to her, discounting yesterday, some…four years ago.”

Sam’s eyebrows draw together in concern. His fingers glide over the top of my hand before he entwines them with mine. His touch, the softness of him that is uniquely Sam, gives me the same sense of belonging it always does.

“What happened with the two of you? Or rather…her and alphas? It seems like she hates the whole lot, no exceptions, and I… That isn’t right,” he mutters, glancing down with that cute frown that makes a dent between his brows.

I don’t like thinking about it. I don’t like how it reminds me there’s a Gail-sized hole in my life, and my parents’, but Sam deserves to know. I especially don’t want him to think there was something I did specifically that made her pull away.

Though, maybe I did. Maybe I… I don’t even know anymore.

Squeezing his hand tightly, I lean back against the wooden backrest of the bench and look up into the sky.

“We used to be close. As close as twins could be, really. It wasn’t until a few years back, when Gail was attending college with her friends, and…

something horrible happened. She’s a beta, you’ve obviously noticed.

” Sam nods attentively. “She attended with her best friend, June, an omega. Beginning of their second year, at some party, June got…taken into the room of an alpha she liked by him and his friend, another alpha.”

I feel Sam tense through our touch and notice the darkness cloud his eyes.

As if it were yesterday, I see Gail’s tearful face and hear the desperation in her voice when she told me and our parents about it.

“Gail was on the other side of a locked door. She…heard it. June’s pleas, her cries, everything.

She banged so hard she bruised her knuckles.

She was there the whole time, unable to do anything. ”

When I look into Sam’s eyes again, they’re glazed over and glossy. His nostrils flare with slow breaths and his lips are held in a firm line.

“I’m sorry,” I breathe out, shaking my head. “I shouldn't have talked about this—”

“No,” he interrupts me, blinking the tears away. “No, just tell me. I want to know. What does that have to do with hating you?”

I gulp. “June wasn’t the same after, and neither was Gail.

The two alphas were…from good families. They claimed all sorts of things, anything they could to get out of it, and June wasn’t doing well.

She tried to hurt herself, and then dropped out, while Gail kept pushing and fighting for her to get justice.

Which…she didn’t, in the end. Not really.

That’s when Gail left her economics studies and switched to law.

She started on this warpath for justice for omegas.

Which I supported,” I clarify quickly, widening my eyes at Sam.

Almost as if he can read my mind, he smiles softly and squeezes my hand.

“I really did. It just…became everything to her, I guess. She began actively protesting, lobbying, she helped found Spyrax—”

“She did?” Sam interrupts me with a surprised expression.

I smile proudly. “Yeah. She and two of the law students from years above her got it going in the beginning, before bringing on more people and making it what it is. Anyway, Gail fell hard into learning about every injustice that befalls omegas in our society. Don’t get me wrong; I thought it was great.

What she did and what she stood for, the people she was fighting to help, I supported it, we all did, our whole family.

Especially my parents, having…” Shit. I didn’t even bring this up yet.

Or that my parents know about what happened to Sam.

“My dad experienced something similar in college, too. I know, it’s…

it’s awful and life-changing. That’s why we got this huge talk about safety and stuff before we went ourselves.

And it’s how Gail was able to pick up on what was happening to her friend, even if she was too late to stop it.

Dad never got any justice, either. So they were proud of her, obviously.

But…Gail is like that. She goes into things one thousand and five percent.

She lives, eats, and breathes what she’s passionate about.

And this time, it just… It went a little too far. ”

“Too far, how?” Sam asks quietly, though I have a feeling that he’s already sensing where this is going.

“She started believing that all alphas are like that. Innately. I guess I can’t blame her. All she saw around herself were the atrocities committed by alphas. Them getting away with it. And all she surrounded herself with were others who experienced the same.”

My heart clenches with a familiar, dull pain. One I’ve learned to live with and ignore, for the most part, but that never lost its intensity.

“It began with her pulling away from me, which…was fine. We weren’t kids anymore.

I couldn’t expect her to be my best friend forever.

We hung out less. Talked less… In the end, the only place we would actually meet was at our parents’ house.

But even then, the conversation would always shift to how alphas are innately cruel and violent.

And while I never felt some persecution complex because of Gail’s opinions, it became pretty obvious she wanted my omega parents to agree with those views, and…

my presence wasn’t entirely welcome at those family lunches. ”

“My god,” Sam mutters. “That…isn’t fair, Theo. I’m sorry.”

I chuckle, unsure why. With a helpless shrug, I continue, staring at the moving branches above us, the sun’s rays dancing between them.

“Still, I was fine with stepping away for the sake of peace. It hurt me. It hurt me a lot,” I clarify, voice trembling, “but I wasn’t going to argue with her.

Unfortunately, my parents, they…they weren’t so willing.

I tried to convince them to get them to look past it so that at least they could have a relationship with her.

It didn’t really work. There was this huge fight where it all boiled over.

“They said they couldn’t stand by and listen to her implying their son was a monster and that she had to stop insinuating as such.

My dad even said she had no right to use what happened to him as a justification for hurting me, and…

There was a lot of screaming and shouting that day.

Ugly words were exchanged. At the end, my parents said she wasn’t welcome around the family if she was going to be so cruel and punish me for something I haven’t done, and so she… hasn’t been back since.”

My throat hurts with how tight it gets when I finally get it out. So does my chest. And my heart. I breathe slowly, trying to blink away the burning tears in my eyes and the even more painful guilt digging into me with full force now.

When I feel Sam’s hand on my cheek, I jerk, turning to him in surprise.

“Oh, Theo…”

“I’m alright,” I say, instantly putting on a smile, but there’s something about Sam’s somber gaze that makes it impossible for me to keep that mask of carelessness on, and my expression quickly falls.

Sniffling, I relish his soft touch before releasing a trembling breath.

“It’s my fault, see? That Gail isn’t in my parents’ lives.

It’s true that maybe I didn’t show as much interest in her cause in the beginning.

I was young and had other things to think about.

Maybe if I had shown more willingness to learn, or maybe there was something I said that—”

“You can’t blame yourself. Your parents made that choice. They set a boundary.”

“But why did they decide I was the child to keep in their lives and not her? Because I’m an alpha?

Sometimes I wonder. I feel like Gail must have wondered, too.

If it was because I was an alpha and she was a beta.

I imagine that hasn’t made her too keen to reconnect, either.

” My stomach twists and cramps, so I lean into Sam, resting my shoulder against his and moving closer.

He looks at me with tender eyes, so tender I have to fight the urge to sink into his embrace.

“She’s misguided, that’s why. It’s one thing to feel passionately about something righteous, and another to put blame on someone innocent.”

“What if I’m not innocent?” I ask. I shouldn’t be saying this in front of him.

Not after trying so hard to make him feel secure around me.

But being around Sam also has the unpleasant effect of opening me up, laying myself bare to him, maybe a little more than I should.

I lower my voice. “What if she’s right about the nature of alphas? ”