Chapter 9
nine
JULIA
I lasted until the house went quiet.
I’d held it together all day. Through the conversation in the living room where they’d each taken turns cracking themselves open for me—Stetson’s jaw tight as he explained how he’d dated a Beta before the pack had officially formed, and how she’d walked out on them shortly after Wyatt was born.
His voice had stripped down to something raw and almost uncertain, like the admission alone might be enough to send me packing too.
The twins had traded off sentences about a one-night stand and a car seat left on their porch nine months later by a woman who hadn’t even bothered to knock.
Through the confession, Ransom’s voice had cracked once, and River’s hand had landed on the back of his brother’s neck and squeezed in silent solidarity.
The aftermath was quiet and heavy as I’d sat with my coffee mug in both hands trying to rearrange the picture of this pack in my head to include two small faces I hadn’t expected.
The guys had given me space after our conversation—real space, not the hovering, anxious kind where everyone pretends to be busy while stealing glances to make sure you’re not crying into the throw pillows.
They’d actually scattered. Stetson took Wyatt out to check on a horse in the south paddock.
The twins disappeared toward the barn with a six-pack and the look of two men who needed to process all of this between themselves before they could process it with anyone else.
August baked cookies with Sunny before putting her down for nap and cleaning the kitchen, which I was beginning to understand was his version of meditation.
Gideon settled quietly into the armchair by the hearth with a thick novel, close enough to find if I needed him but far enough away to not feel like a sentry.
I hadn’t needed him. What I needed was air.
The back door clicked shut behind me, and I stood on the stone patio for a long moment, pulling the cool evening into my lungs.
The sky over the mountains had gone a beautiful wash of dusky purple.
Out here, I didn’t have to fight to see the horizon through a maze of tall buildings, just one of the many differences that I found oddly refreshing.
I could smell the horses and the dry grass, and hear the faint burbling sound of the creek somewhere beyond the tree line.
It was peaceful, which was a huge contrast to the grenade the men had dropped in my lap this morning.
Kids.
They had kids.
My boots found the path without me telling them to.
I walked past the covered pool, past the empty garden beds I’d noticed on the tour with Gideon, past the last fence post where the manicured property gave way to the wilder edges of the ranch.
The cottonwood grove came into view next, its wide branches throwing long, tangled shadows across the overgrown brush.
The bench was right where I remembered it, half-swallowed by vines, its silvered wood almost glowing in the dusk.
I brushed a knot of dead leaves off the seat, lowered myself onto it, and let out a breath that felt like it had been lodged somewhere behind my sternum since Sunny’s little boots had slapped across that kitchen floor.
The quiet was enormous. Not in an empty kind of way, but in its fullness.
It was full of crickets and wind and the distant stamp of a horse shifting in a stall.
Full of the kind of silence that wrapped around you and leeched the tension from your shoulders.
The kind of silence you could just exist in.
I pulled out my phone.
Addy’s thread stared back at me, a list of nothing but my own blue bubbles. My texts remained unanswered, and I reread the three at the bottom of the chain, each one a little more desperate than the last.
Hey, thinking about you. Call me when you can.
Then later:
Addy, please. I just need to know you’re okay.
And the most recent:
I was attacked by a chicken today. I wish you were here to make fun of me for it.
Nothing. No read receipts. No typing bubbles. Just silence from the one person whose opinion mattered most.
I opened the text field and watched the cursor blink.
They have kids, Addy.
God, how I needed to talk to her.
I stared at the words. Then I deleted them, letter by letter, watching each character vanish like I was pulling a knife back out of a wound.
I couldn’t send that. I couldn’t tell the woman who’d spent three years praying her body would cooperate long enough to carry a child that I’d accidentally stumbled into a pack with two of them already built in.
A wild, adorable little girl who called me “Jules” within ten minutes of meeting me, and a seven-year-old boy with his father’s eyes and his serious questions that nearly put me on the floor.
Are you going to leave like my mom?
God. He was seven years old, and the only thing he knew about mothers was the sight of their backs as they walked away. First his own, and then Sunny’s. How was I supposed to win the trust of a boy conditioned to expect abandonment, especially when I hadn’t even committed to staying?
Except... was leaving actually an option anymore? I couldn’t even picture packing my bags and walking out that door. The mere thought felt physically impossible.
A heavy, hollow ache opened up in my chest. This. This terrifying, overwhelming pull toward a ready-made family was exactly why I desperately needed to talk to my best friend.
But that also wasn’t an option.
I typed something else instead.
I miss you, Addy. I hope you’re okay.
I hit send before I could overthink it, then locked the screen and set the phone face-down on the bench beside me.
The message would sit in her inbox alongside all the others, unread.
Another blue bubble in a sea of silence.
But I sent it anyway, because the alternative was pretending the distance between us wasn’t slowly killing me.
I thought about calling Demi. She had a kid.
She’d understand the vertigo of suddenly having small humans attached to your life.
Of course, she’d wanted her little bundle while these two had never been a part of my original plan.
I sighed. Demi would be practical and funny and would probably tell me to stop spiraling and go buy a minivan.
But I didn’t reach for the phone again.
Much as I loved her, this wasn’t a Demi conversation. This was something I needed to sit with by myself. I needed to figure out what it was I wanted.
So, I sat.
“Okay,” I breathed, just a whisper in the wind. “Okay,” I said again, steadier this time. “So, there are kids.”
The crickets didn’t seem to care.
“Two of them. A three-year-old who is... objectively adorable and already has me wrapped around her sticky little finger. And a seven-year-old who—” My throat tightened.
I swallowed past it. “Who asked me if I was going to leave. Like it was a normal thing to ask. Like he’s been rehearsing that question for the day another woman who could hurt them walked through their door. ”
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. The overgrown garden around the bench caught my eye in the last of the light—the choked-out perennials, the vine-strangled border stones, the skeletal remains of something that had once been intentional and beautiful.
“And the thing is,” I continued, because apparently I was talking to the air now and it was too late to pretend I wasn’t, “I’m not upset about the kids.
That’s what’s messing with my head. I should be upset.
I should be furious that they didn’t mention they came as a package deal and let me find out…
like that. I was totally blindsided. But after spending some time with them today I feel...
” I searched for the word, “…settled. Like something clicked into place. Filled a spot I didn’t know was empty. ”
I sat back against the bench, tipping my head up toward the sky. The first stars were just starting to show, more vibrant than anything I’d ever seen in New York. They were impossibly bright. I hadn’t known that many stars existed.
“Addy should be here.” The words came out raw. “She should be the one with the kids and the pack full of men who look at her like she invented the sunrise. She wanted this. No, more than that. She dreamed about this. She made vision boards about this, for God’s sake.”
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. I would not cry. Cristenellos clenched our jaws and poured another glass of wine and handled our shit with composure and grace.
“And I just... fell into it. I wasn’t even trying. And now I’m sitting on a bench in the middle of nowhere talking to myself because I don’t know how to let myself have this without feeling like I stole it from her.”
The wind picked up, rustling through the cottonwood leaves with a gentle “shushing” sound that was oddly soothing.
I sat with it for a while. The guilt. The want. What life would look like if I left. What life would look like if I stayed…
Eventually, my gaze drifted down to the base of the bench. The vines were thick here, climbing the legs in ropy tangles, choking out whatever had originally been planted. I reached down and snapped off a brittle piece of dead brush, rolling it between my fingers.
Underneath the neglect, I could see the bones of a proper garden. There was intentional placement, designed, not just grown. Someone had cared about this space once. They had planted things here, tended them, and sat on this bench while they grew.
I wondered if it had been an Omega. Gideon had told me that the Double T had been in Stetson’s family for generations.
Maybe his mother had created this space, or his grandmother.
Maybe there was a long line of women who had found this spot under the cottonwoods and claimed it as the one place on the ranch that belonged to nobody but them.