Page 42 of Alpha Ruined
She’s about to have a panic attack at the table. He really had no reason to be there except that he scented her.
That’s not normal.
It’s…borderline stalking.
“And you can’t trespass on private property just because you want to, but you did anyway,” he says, his voice gentle. She can’t stand the way he looks at her, his eyes soft and his expression open. She hates that one genuine smile from him makes her heart flutter and has her reconsidering her lifechoices. “You’re lucky I found you, and not someone else. You came herealone.Anything could have happened to you.”
“You happened to me,” she whispers.
He nods. “I did.”
She nibbles at her bread, but even the savory, creamy taste of the butter can’t distract her from the anxiety that churns in her gut.
“But don’t think it’s one sided, Breana,” Cole continues. “Youhappened to me as well. I didn’t ask for this.”
She stares at him, dumbfounded. “Ask forwhat?”
“For you to come and turn my world upset down.”
He’s delusional. He’s completely out of his mind, and it’s time for her to leave.
The hostess can have him.
She’s nobody. She doesn’t have the power to alter anyone’s world, especially not the Alpha in front of her, looking at her like she lights up the night sky.
“You don’t evenknowme,” she tries. “We’ve barely talked, you know alittleabout what I do for work?—”
“I know you’re stubborn enough to do what you want, even if other people think you shouldn’t. I know you’re passionate enough to get to the bottom of stories you think are important. I know you’re smart, resourceful, and clever. And that for some reason, you want other people to not know how lonely you are.”
The last sentence is like a punch to her gut.
Sheislonely. She’s so lonely it makes her blood run cold and turns her heart to ice. Her life consists of the work and sleeping.
Her friends from college are long gone, and her relationship with her mother is non-existent.
Her father, her best friend, died when she was fourteen.
She’s devastatingly lonely.
But Cole can’t know that.
She swallows. “I’m not lonely.”
He narrows his eyes. “And I also know you’re a terrible liar.”
She shakes her head and tosses the piece of bread on her plate, tears filling her eyes. “Please, stop this?—”
“I know what it’s like to be that lonely Breana, because I’m the exact same fucking way.” His admission is barely above a whisper, but it terrifies her.
She won’t go down this road with him.
Whatever issues he has, whatever problems plague him—sheis not the solution to them.
She can’t even solve her own problems, and she’s not about to open her heart to a man that she’s never going to see after this week.
“Don’t do that,” he murmurs.
“Don’t do what?”