The invitation is a relief, and more than he knows he deserves. It’s scary, really wanting to be a better person for someone else.
He’s not here to beg to be part of the pack, to be welcomed by everything he left behind. He doesn’t need that, he doesn’t think he even wants it anymore. All he knows is he spent weeks thinking about how wrong he’d done by her.
“There’s always something bigger and badder, huh,” he says, taking the offered seat and leaning forward on his elbows. “How big? Too much for your True Alpha?” He says it with almost a neutral tone, but he doesn’t quite manage the bitterness that turns the title to a sneer.
Her brow wings up, her own voice icing over in response. Jackson could take pot shots at her all he wanted. Yes, she wasn’t the best girlfriend. Yes, they didn’t handle things well. But the last thing she was going to do was let him talk about Scott like that.
“How would you know? You weren’t here for any of the times that Scott saved us all.”
Her fingers tighten on the book, and Lydia glances down at them, forcing them to release.
Fingers come up to scratch at the short hairs on his nape, because alright, so he left. She’s not wrong. It wasn’t like anyone wanted him to stay. Hearing about the McCall pack all the way in London had built up a quiet resentment, but back then his pack had been more than enough to smother the simmering frustration.
“You’re right.” The words are sour on his tongue, sound stilted from disuse, but they’re genuine. “I wasn’t. I think we can all agree that me leaving worked out best for everyone. No one here to mes everything up. I couldn’t even take the bite right.”
This was not how this was supposed to go. “I didn’t come here to talk about me,” he says quickly, hands clenching on the tables. “I wanted to talk about you.”
