But it was a lie.
Because we can’t keep doing this to her forever. Again, Katy deserves better than traveling non-stop, managing our lives. She deserves more than alphas who use her body like a rag doll, head limp with exhaustion after we’re done. She deserves a real life.
So we did the worst thing possible. We made her love us, saving her from the douchebag, and then ditched the sweet brunette without a trace.
How is this possible? Easy. We’ve done it a million times.
But doing it to Katy was like daggers to the heart because I knew she loved us. Our brunette has never been able to hide her emotions, and the adoration shone in those big brown eyes and the way her lips trembled. The way she breathed our names at night as she slept.
“Nick. Trent. Mason,” she’d sigh, twisting slightly while crossing one leg over the other. And it was almost our undoing. Seeing her spread on the hotel bed, the sheet wound around her waist with the smell of our loving still thick in the air.
Leaving Katy had killed us all. It had extinguished the energy that drove us forward. We’d left a piece of our hearts with the curvy girl, ready for the grave now.
Suddenly, Mason jumped up.
“Fuck this!” he growled, eyes wild and showing their whites. “We should go back.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “After we dumped her like that, do you think Katy will just open her heart and take us back like nothing happened?”
“So what are we going to do?” he snarled. “Act like we just didn't make the worst mistake of our lives?” Mason was so angry that he looked sick, turning ugly shades of green and yellow.
“Hell no, she wouldn't take us back,” Nick grunted morosely. “We don't have a choice. We gotta move on. We were assholes, leaving her like that, and there’s no way to undo the damage.”
“She'll never forgive us,” I added savagely. “I mean, would you? Katy’s sweet but she’s not dumb. The girl’s human and we left her in the worst of ways.”
Nick stalked from the back of the airplane, looking both miserable and pissed off at once. “Shit, I don't forgive us. What were we thinking? Kill me now.”
He held his guitar like a weapon, strangling the neck of the instrument he was so proud to buy with his first real money from playing gigs as Alpha Prime. And I could tell what he was going to say next. Sure enough, the words came.
“We're never going to find another girl like her.”
The sentence rang like a death knell in the otherwise silent cabin. Unable to stomach the pain, I jumped in his face. “So? What are you saying? You want to hire a different flight attendant now?” the sarcasm dripped from my voice. “Ring up another girl like she’s a Big Mac at the closest Mickey D’s?”
“That's not what I mean and you goddamn well know it,” Nick snarled right back.
But Mason wanted his say as well.
“This is your fucking fault!” he roared. “We could still have her if you didn’t give us the guilt trip!”
“And then what?” I demanded. “We treat her like some fuck toy and keep her trapped on this plane while we run all over the world living out rock star lives?”
Clearly, we were off the reservation now. The three of us were hopelessly lost, screaming at each other in the small confines of the plane, tearing out our hair and getting nothing productive done. For what? I fell back into my chair limply, the anger draining from me.
Nick was right. This was over. Katy was gone.
We would suffer like we deserved to suffer. And then what? The answer was clear. There was no next step. The playbook hadn’t worked this time. Our usual MO of loving and leaving had backfired, and now we were the ones high and dry, angry and unhappy as hell.
So what next? All the money in the world couldn’t fix our problems because what’s done is done. We’d left Katy alone in the hotel room, cleared out like she meant nothing to us. No goodbye, no note, no noth
ing despite the months together, intimate and sensitive. We’d made the brunette feel like trash for sure. And what girl wouldn’t be angry after that?
So reality stared me in the face, glaring with an angry red eye. Yet I had no comeback. All I could do was slump lifelessly into the white leather seat … with no hope for the future.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Katy
Six months later …