51| What if Grimes wasn't the red-eyed man?

Leah's POV

Euphoria had come to my room, and I woke up to find her sitting on the bed, staring at me.
“You were so tired,” she said.
I was surprised to see her, but quickly adjusted, stretching out my arms, and cleaning up my eyes to fully open them.
“You snored loudly, and it called me here.”
I sat on the bed without speaking. Everything that happened the previous day was replaying in my head, and they gave me doubts. The strangest of all was Octavier telling me that she had a taste of my mate, my man! Could I call him that?
It was weird that I wasn't calling him that.
“Your tiredness is probably because of Alpha Grimes thrusting into you.” She laughed.
My jaws turned pink. The moment was still clear and concise in my head. Maybe I wouldn't have told her.
“Octavier told me something.” My voice brought everything to default.
“Tell me, what was it?”
I wasn't sure I should tell her, but was there a need to hide it? She knew many things about me, and had even to an extent offered me support.
“She said she'd met Grimes.”
“She had slept with him?”
My mouth went open in surprise. Was it just a guess?
“H-How did you know?”
“What else would you be talking about if not that?”
Was it something common? Maybe it was, and I was thinking it wasn't.
“If it was before you met Grimes as your mate, then nothing could be wrong.” She got close to my ears. “It might even be a shared experience.”
Her breath tickled my ears, and I moved my head away.
“Octavier could tell you her experience with him, and maybe you would learn to improve with him.”
She was such a bitch.
“I want to meet him today.” I made sure my voice was low.
Her countenance changed to portray fear mixed with concern. She was talking about my sex with Grimes, but she didn't mean for me to sneak out a second time.
“Why isn't everything resolved before you go out to meet him?”
“The only way I know how to resolve everything is by spending more time to know who he really is.”
“By taking so much risk?”
I went mute. It was crazy to her, and I had nothing I could use in convincing her. What if I said that I was beginning to have doubts about him being the man in my dream?
“Just this last time! You should come with me!”
My eagerness had suspended my logical thinking.
“But Maggie would start looking for you... She will soon be here to check on you.”
“No one understands me!”
I wasn't going to listen to what she was trying to explain to me, even if she showed me ways it was going to lead to my doom. And again, I was putting her in a tight corner, trying to make her agree to something that was out of a crazy desire.
A knock on the door kept me at bay.
Maggie walked in, and the way I was holding Euphoria's hand might have given her an idea that something was brewing. Euphoria greeted and left.
I laid back on the bed, facing the other side so I wasn't looking at her.
“Leah?”
I closed my eyes when I heard her call out my name, but then something else was going on in my mind. What if Grimes wasn't the red–eyed man in my dream? Why had I not thought of that?
“Wouldn't you speak to me?” She touched my back, and moved away towards the end of the bed.
I heard her sobbing afterwards, and I had to turn to look at her. Her tears were real, rolling slowly down her jaws and dropping on her thighs. When was the last time I saw her cry?
The last time was when she hugged my grandmother goodbye. It was when my grandmother had decided to leave alone, and it was something worth her tears. It wasn't a painful one, but for me, it was definitely out of the pain of everything.
“Are you crying?”
What a silly question from me. I wasn't blind not to see.
“Why are you crying?”
Yet another useless question from me, why would she be crying if not because of me?
I changed position to sit beside her, and she rested her head on my shoulders. I began to have feelings of guilt, guilt for not wanting to speak to her.
Her tears and concern could only be out of love, but it was obvious my selfishness took the most of me. I needed to check myself.
My hands started rubbing her back, and she cried even more.
“I... I am sorry for yes–terday.”
“What did you do?”
I wasn't sure of a reason why she should apologize.
“For the way I acted yesterday after finding out, and for forcing you to show me.”
Did I really deserve a “sorry"?
I had become offended because of the way she acted, but I felt that an apology was not really called for. We could always get into conversation as though nothing had happened.
She was taking it too far, and I could not wrap my head around it.
“Is an apology called for?”
She straightened her body as though nothing had happened, and wiped the tears off her eyes. “I do not have to say 'sorry'?”
Her voice had gone from a sobbing to a high pitch, how was that?
“Were you....?”
“Then we are okay after all. I came to talk to you.”
She was actually putting up an act! I couldn't believe she did that!
“Mom!”
“What? Is it something new?”
She wasn't remorsed or showed any sign to mean she was sorry. Maybe I actually needed an apology after all.
“It's something new, entirely new.”
“I have seen Celine do it to Octavier, even your grandmother had done it to me.”
I fell on my back on the bed.
“I came to have a good discussion with you.”
A good discussion? It could never be.
“Tell me about your experience with Grimes, I have a feeling he is not the villain we have taken him to be.”