One Last Chance (Venusverse #1)

16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Rowland

One of these days I’m bound to drop dead from a heart attack. I’m starting to think there’s no escaping it.

First, there was the tense morning handing over of the kids to Hope. I’ve been anxious and tense ever since, constantly wondering about what things Mac will see or hear there.

Then the stupid financial committee, which…I overloaded myself with, I suppose, so I have no one else to blame. And now the cryptic, out of nowhere message from Mina urging me to come home without an explanation.

She’s supposed to be with Hope, goddammit!

My stomach cramps as I turn into our street. Hard to tell if it’s from not eating anything all day or worrying about what kind of mess Mina got herself into. How did she get home? Why wouldn’t she tell me anything? Where is Hope and why wouldn’t she call me? Is everyone fucking okay?! The thoughts race inside my head and crash into each other, causing more mayhem and stress.

I almost hit the stone pillar of our fence before parking crookedly on the driveway. Like a racehorse with blinders on, I rush through the front door.

“What—”

All the energy and air leave me. Huffing in shock, I freeze in the middle of the entrance hall, staring at Mina sitting on the couch and…Dayton standing by it, arms folded over his chest.

Dayton. My chest swells and my cheeks fire up.

What is he doing here? How…?

Mina shoots up from the couch but doesn’t come to me. She shares a quick glance with him. When he nods, she faces me with the most horrifying expression of pure fear and desperation. Her eyes are watery and her lips pressed together as she makes one unsteady step toward me.

“What is…going on? Mina?” My mind feels like it’s going to shatter, not knowing what to panic about first. My heart pounds against my chest like a wrecking ball.

She seems so upset, so damn upset, so I walk toward her with my hands out.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she whimpers.

Seeing her makes me want to throw up so I quickly step closer and bend down on my knee, cradling her shoulders. “Mina, what’s this about?”

With a sob, she falls into my arms, startling me. While she cries into my shoulder, I tightly hug her, glancing up at Dayton with a confused frown. Even with my little girl crying in my arms, I can’t help but feel…joy. Pure, unadulterated joy from seeing him again.

He doesn’t say anything. With those plump lips pressed into a straight line, he just lowers his brows and gives an expression that almost says it’s not his place to speak.

“Pl-please don’t hate me, Daddy. Please! I’m so sorry, I am!” Mina sniffs into my ear.

I sharply turn my attention back to her. “Hey, hey, calm down.” Pulling her away from me, I push the hair glued to her face with tears behind her ear and smile. What is the last time I’ve seen her like this? Or the last time she was even this close to me? “Sweetpea, I could never hate you. What are you…”

I drift off as a strange sensation passes through me. It’s like a weird sense of déjà vu, only not like that at all. A familiarity, an innate feeling from somewhere deep within recognizing something. There’s a warm, incredibly weak scent, like it’s always been there, so I can barely notice it. Like the smell of home one doesn’t really notice anymore.

Sucking in her lip, Mina tilts her head down. I frown, feeling utterly confused. “I read online that if you t-take these supplements before the blood test, they’ll…m-mess up the results, and you’ll come up as a beta,” she mutters, the words barely leaving her lips like she’s fighting them.

I widen my eyes. With a click, the puzzle piece slots in place.

“I’m so sorry for lying, I’m sorry!” she blurts, followed by more desperate sobs.

“She called me,” Dayton says, his voice causing me to both jerk in surprise and melt internally. He confirms to me that this isn’t a dream, or just some crazy scenario inside my head. “She got her heat and was terrified, so I picked her up and took her to my parents. I thought it would be good to give her some time before letting you know. My Mom had the talk with her, calmed her down and gave her some suppressants. The low dose ones. You don’t have to worry,” he assures me.

How is he so calm? How is he back in my life, bringing nothing but the good once again, and how am I going to let him go this time?

“My god,” I mutter before pulling Mina in for another hug. I run my fingers through the back of her hair and hold her close, smelling a faint scent of jasmine. “Why wouldn’t you have told me? Mina, you could’ve…”

I know why she hasn’t told me— Hope . White-hot anger rushes through me like a tornado. I hold my eyes closed tight, doing my best to push it down and focus on Mina again.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she goes on, her hot breath and tears soaking into my shoulder. “I didn’t wan-want it t-to be true. I knew Mom wouldn’t…wouldn’t love me anymore.” Her voice breaks, thin limbs holding onto me trembling so much I begin to worry. She hyperventilates so I rub my hand over her back, whispering a soft ‘shhh’ until she calms down a little.

My eyes burn, too. I feel and want to do so much at once. All of it is overwhelming.

“And I couldn’t tell y-you because I made you so m-miserable and was so horrible to you.”

“Oh, Sweetpea…”

She suddenly pulls away, brows drawn together. Her eyes briefly dart toward Dayton, who still stands back. “He n-never hurt me, Dad. Never . I…I made it all up. I don’t know why, I was just so… I was so… Please, please forgive me,” she begs me with such urgency, such pain behind her voice that I can’t help myself from crying anymore.

“I know, baby. I know,” I whisper, petting her soaked, burning cheek. Oh, how I missed doing that. How I missed being someone she comes to for comfort and safety.

“There’s nothing you could ever do to make me hate you. Ever.”

Mina sniffs. “I’ve b-been so horrible to you. I ruined everything, how can you—”

I can’t help but smile, clearly confusing her. “I knew you’d come back to your real self, eventually. I know who you are, Mina. You’re my sweetpea. No matter what. You see what you did now, and I’ll do what we can to help you and…fix this, okay?”

Nodding rapidly, Mina comes in to hug me again.

The moment feels like an amalgamation of more than a year of this corroding, dull pain constantly residing inside my heart. All that time of worry, of being burdened by not knowing how to reach her, how to understand her…

It’s finally all lifting off of my shoulders.

We stay like that for a while, surrounded by blissful silence. When the time is right, I pull away, quickly wiping off my tears, and Mina does too, a faint smile finally passing over her lips. I help her dry her cheeks with the back of my hand and then finally stand up.

“Alright, umm…” Putting my hands on my hips, I glance at Dayton and then back down at her. “How about you go into your room for a bit while I speak with Dayton? You can tell me why you aren’t at your mom’s and explain all the details when I come up, yeah?”

The way Mina looks at me, then darts her eyes to Dayton and smiles, makes me feel all warm. There’s this mischievous expression poking from behind that mask she’s worn for so long that reminds me of the old her, and I love seeing it more than anything.

“Okay,” she mutters, heading to the stairs. I feel her stop on the top, and when I turn to her, she’s mouthing ‘thank you’ to Dayton.

The quiet click of her door closing passes through the open room and it’s just the two of us and a painful, torturous, gut-wrenching silence.

Dayton stands there leaning against the back of the couch, hands in his lap. He blinks nervously, barely meeting my eyes. He looks as anxious and freaked out about everything as I am, which makes me feel slightly better.

“You have no idea how grateful I am to you for taking care of her.” I step toward him, drawing in the scent of his pheromones. My body reacts as if it’s been deprived of something essential to survival for too long. The closer I get, the more I want to take. I want to touch his hand and wrap my own around him.

He smiles, even if his face is still cautiously neutral. “You don’t need to thank me.”

“I do. And…I need to apologize.” I’m a single step away from him. As much as I long to breach that gap, it feels like I don’t have the right, so I lean against the couch too, setting my hands firmly over my knees.

Oh, he smells heavenly. He smells like comfort. Like a lazy lounging in bed on Sunday, the sheets warmed up by the morning sun. He smells like the equilibrium I’ve desperately been chasing these past months.

“I’m so sorry for not believing you, Dayton,” I whisper, eyeing his hand. It is so damn tempting. I just want to reach out and hold him.

He tilts his head slightly. “I know you believed me. I’m not…”

“Yes, but I didn’t…I didn’t stand up for you. Everything inside me wanted to tell you to stay. I knew you never would’ve hurt her, and I thought I would do anything not to lose you, but right at that moment—”

Dayton turns his torso toward me and places his hand on top of mine. Heat sharply rises into my cheeks, and tears suddenly threaten to break through again.

“You didn’t, because it has to be your priority to protect your children before anything else. I knew that. I figured it…it would have been best to leave without making it harder for you, but I think that deep down, I…” He pauses, blankly staring somewhere next to me.

After a moment, he closes his mouth, exhaling through his nose, before meeting my eyes.

“I think a part of me just wanted to run and self-sabotage like I always do. My whole life, I’ve felt inadequate and unworthy in this one way, and I let it consume me at times,” he says. I don’t understand what he means, so I frown in confusion. Anything about him has never been inadequate in the slightest. “You’re the first person who’s ever been attracted to my pheromones, Rowland,” he admits, his voice shrinking in the end.

I nearly laugh in disbelief. “What? Your scent is unusual, but—”

“No one else has ever enjoyed it,” he says firmly. “In fact, people ran away from it, from me, because of it. People I’ve loved, people I thought were going to be something meaningful and long term, couldn’t stand this thing that is ingrained in me. My entire life. Relationship after relationship. Some were nice enough about it. Some made me disgusted with myself—othered, broken, unlovable."

He scoffs.

"All those times I ran away from us, or pulled back, even under the guise of being an adult or doing the right thing … subconsciously, I’ve always used it as a justification to myself that…it was what I deserved. It ended like that because that’s how things should be.”

“But that isn’t true, Dayton,” I say, finally mustering the courage to hold him back. Wrapping our fingers together, I squeeze his hand tightly. He seems appreciative, smiling faintly. His pheromones, the very thing he hates so much, sets my entire stress-strung body at ease the closer I get.

“I’ve always wanted a family,” he admits, sounding somber. He brushes his thumb against my skin slowly, probably to soothe himself. It does more for me than him, I think. “I almost started to believe that this thing would make it impossible and then…then you came around.” Something in him lights up. Smile tugs at his lips. “After getting closer to you, I thought maybe I could get over it, but with everything going on, I kept wondering if I could ever be as good of a parent as you.”

I snort, shaking my head. Oh, Dayton.

He widens his eyes in surprise when I cup his cheek. When he closes his eyes and leans into my touch, I can't keep myself from not kissing him.

“Mac adores you. You’re so good with him. And Mina… She sought you out for help. Out of everyone, when she was in this terrifying situation, she called you. She never hated you, she just…hated herself. You have some things in common, looking at it,” I say with a chuckle, and Dayton opens his eyes. He can’t disagree with me. “Which is why you kept her safe. And why you would be a wonderful parent to them. Or any future children.”

Dayton looks at me with eyes full of emotion. I can almost taste it on my lips—the vulnerability and longing translating through his pheromones.

“Partner, too,” I say meekly. I’m ready to get on my knees and beg if that’s what I have to do to get him back. Alpha pride aside. All the bullshit expectations and societal crap that’s been holding us back aside. Fuck it all.

“I don’t want to lose you, Day. These past few months without you have been hell. I’ve been…walking around the world like a body without a soul. Please, tell me we can work this out. Tell me that is what you want, too.” My heart threatens to burst out of my chest. This somehow feels like the most important moment of my entire life.

He faces down with a smile, nearly giving me a heart attack, before he looks back at me and presses his lips against mine.

My entire being melts into an incoherent mess of bliss, relief, desire and joy—all emotions so strong I don’t know what to do with them. We lean into each other, pressing our faces and bodies as close as we possibly can without morphing into a singular entity.

I’ve never tasted anything sweeter, and I want to smell nothing but the scent of citrus peel and olives for the rest of my days.

As we part, desperately reaching for air, Dayton chuckles against my face.

“I love you, too, Rowe.”