Chapter 20 Knox
Knox
Her footsteps are light, but my awareness of Maisie is too sharp that I almost always know when she’s close by.
“It’s late.” I strum the strings on my guitar, head down, pretending I’m not secretly watching her out of the corner of my eye.
She curls her bare toes on the porch floor. “Couldn’t sleep.”
I lift my head. She’s in an oversized t-shirt that smells of Wyatt. Wyatt is a friend. Pack. But it’s hard not to feel jealous when he had all day and all night having something I’ve wanted for over a month.
Maisie.
“Elias’s computer game?” I guess.
It was only a matter of time before flying limbs and all that gore and violence would wreak havoc on her sleep. Maybe it’s dislodging more painful memories from her past.
“Surprisingly, no.”
I pat the seat next to me, scooting over to make more room for her. It’s not a freezing night, but it’s definitely not warm enough to be standing outside in bare feet and a t-shirt that hits her mid-thigh.
She takes a seat beside me with a flash of bare leg, revealing a small cluster of freckles under her left thigh that requires my full focus to stop staring.
The second she’s settled, I snag the blanket from a brown basket on the floor and drape it over her.
As much to keep her warm as to keep myself from touching her.
Or mauling her. She leaves a tantalizing trail of blackberries and wild honey in the house, and her scent is growing stronger by the day.
Wyatt said she’d been taking heat suppressants since she was eighteen, and while everyone knows there’s no long-term risk, I have to wonder if that isn’t what’s delaying her heat. Whatever the reason, she smells so damn good that being around her is both pleasure and torture.
“Thanks,” she says, wrapping the blanket around her with a grateful smile.
Nodding, I return to my strumming as her scent envelops me.
“Florida,” she says a couple of minutes later.
I glance at her, eyebrow raised. “Florida?”
“I keep thinking that maybe I should tell you to take the Florida job.”
Head down, I ask her, “Why?”
I know. I just want to know if she does.
Out of the corner of my eye, she shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I feel out the next few notes, but the song doesn’t sound right, so I let it go and settle for more strumming instead. “You think it’ll make us happy.”
“What?”
I stop strumming to tell her, “That’s what you do when you care about someone. If you think you’re getting in the way of something that will make them happy, you move yourself out of the way while nudging them toward it.”
She tilts her head. “How do you know that?”
“My dad was a musician.”
Her eyes widen with interest, and she glances at the guitar. “A guitarist?”
I chuckle. “Absolutely not. He’d have smacked this out of my hand if he'd seen the way I was strumming. Drums. Mom is a lawyer. She pushed him to go after his dreams and flew out to see him any chance she could. He toured a bit and had a bite of real success, but that wasn’t the dream he wanted to chase anymore. ”
“He missed your mom?”
I nod. “A family with her. She supported his dreams. Then he took over and worked as much as he could so she could have more time off to stay home after she had my sisters and me. A partnership—that’s what they are—in all things. That’s why I don’t settle.”
Her brows draw together. “Are you telling me you aren’t interested in me, but in a way that won’t offend me?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
What I’m saying is that I’m prepared to sit back and wait. When I’m sure of what I want, I go hard after it.
Maisie is dying to ask, biting her lip to contain her curiosity. She won’t. She’s too afraid of rejection to walk into a question that comes with an answer she might not like.
“My dad fell for my mom when she was walking down the aisle,” I explain.
Her nose wrinkles. “She was getting married?”
“Not her. Her sister, my aunt. My dad was friends with the groom. They hadn’t met since he had flown into town for the wedding and nearly missed it when his flight was badly delayed.
He was standing beside the groom when she walked down the aisle toward him, clutching a small purple bouquet.
She smiled right at him, and he told me he’d never fallen so hard or so fast in his life.
” I strum the guitar. “But she was engaged to an accountant.”
She sucks in her breath, drawn into the story of how my parents met. “No way.”
“Way. So he won her over.”
“How long did that take?”
“Six months. That’s how long it took him to convince her that he was the perfect man for her.
That no one could make her as happy or love her the way he could.
” I look at her. “She was a law student. She wanted serious and stable. He was attractive, but the second she learned he was a musician, she told him he wasn’t that attractive. ”
Maisie laughs. “To his face?”
I grin. “Yup.”
She sits back in the seat, blanket tugged up over her shoulders to keep the chill out. “Then what happened?”
“She didn’t account for her feelings. Or the bond that had snapped between them.”
“They were alpha and omega?”
I get why she would assume that. Everyone believes that alphas and omegas have the strongest bonds.
When you have physical attraction, sexual need, and scent compatibility, the combination is intense.
Betas lose a bit of that by not having a scent.
I know differently. Hearing the story of how my parents fell in love changed my view of everything.
“She’s an alpha. He’s a beta.” He pursued her as unrelentingly as any dominant alpha would have, and she submitted to him in a way no alpha would have submitted to anyone.
Love changed all the rules, and that’s what I want for myself.
That’s why I refuse to settle for anything but forever with someone who can make me feel the deep, forever kind of love they have for each other.
Their love is so constant. As real as it is raw.
That’s what I want, and that’s what only Maisie can give me. I feel it in my soul.
“Oh,” she says faintly, “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Head down, I strum for the next several seconds. “I got hit with both of their strongest attributes. When I need to feel in control, I go for a run; when I just want to feel, I pick up the guitar.”
She hugs her knees. “So how come you’re not a musician or a lawyer?”
“My parents ask me that same question every year, and I never have an answer for them.”
“Do you want to do construction forever?” she asks, resting her chin on her knees.
With a shrug, I admit, “I like to do stuff with my hands right now, and I like knowing that what I build will outlast me. Maybe that’ll change one day, but what I do and who I do it with is enough. When I want things to change, I’ll change them.”
“What about the rest of your family?”
“They’re still in New Jersey. I have three older sisters. What about you?”
I don’t expect her to answer. For the most part, she’s heavily guarded her past from us. I get why. She was trying to protect us, and she didn’t know if she could even trust us, but the less we know, the less we can protect her.
“I have an older sister,” she eventually says. “And a niece and a nephew. They were three and five the last time I spoke to my sister.”
She said as much when she was telling us about her ex-husband, but she hasn’t mentioned her family again.
“When was the last time you saw her?” I ask, hearing the longing in her voice.
She lifts one shoulder in a subtle half-shrug. “Too long. It wasn’t safe. Derek…” Her voice trails off, and she looks at her knees. “He would hurt my family trying to get to me, and I couldn’t let that happen. Even if it meant being alone.”
“Call her tomorrow.”
She lifts her head to look at me. “What?”
I put my guitar down on the ground beside me and lift her feet into my lap, resting my hands on top of them.
Her feet are slender, as petite as she is, and I barely feel their weight.
“Call her. Derek hasn’t shown his face, and he clearly knows where you are to have set the fire in your apartment.
What’s there to lose in calling her and talking with her? ”
She studies me for a beat, thoughtful and slightly amused.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re very confident.”
I squeeze her feet. “About the things I want, yes. Very.”
We hold gazes, and I silently communicate that she is the thing I want. I don’t intend to settle for anything less.
She yawns, breaking the moment. “Sorry for yawning in your face.”
“Ready for bed?”
Her eyes turn speculative. “For sex?”
I tuck a strand of her wavy blonde hair behind her ear. “Eventually. When you’re ready. Right now, you need sleep, and so do I. I’ll play guitar for you tomorrow night.”
“What will you play?”
I brush my thumb against her lower lip. “I’ll have to think of something that will make you fall in love with me.”
Her breath hitches, and she releases a breath she probably intended to be quiet, but I hear it just the same. “And why would you want to do a thing like that?”
I lean in, the tip of my nose sliding along the side of hers, though I don’t kiss her just yet. When I kiss her, I want her to be all in. She isn’t yet. “Because you’re mine, Maisie Lucas. And an alpha always knows when he’s found his mate.”
I pick her up, cradling her against my chest as she yawns and snuggles in.
I nod goodnight to Wyatt when I spot him watching TV in the living room with Hunter, who lifts his hand in a wave. Elias must be asleep already.
Maisie is dozing when I slip her beneath cool cotton sheets and slide in beside her, tucking her against me.
Her lips tilt up in a smile, though her eyes remain closed. “This doesn’t feel like my bed.”
“It’s not.”
Her eyes open, and she glances around, taking in my bedroom, dimly lit by the lamp on my nightstand.
There’s not much to see. It has the same black metal bedframe and dresser as the other bedrooms, posters of my favorite musicians—including one of my dad—on the wall, and the sneakers I like to run in beside the door.
Her gaze soon returns to me.
She turns on her side to look at me, and I read so many emotions chasing across her face. Confusion, arousal, need, and wariness, but most of all confusion.
“You are safe with me, Maisie Lucas,” I tell her quietly. “I want you to love, not to destroy. You are safe in my bed and with me.”
She gives me a searching look, then snuggles in, sliding her arm around my waist. “If you snore, I’m leaving immediately,” she warns.
My lips tilt up in a smile as I wrap my left arm around her, reaching out with my right to switch off the lamp. “No, you won’t,” I say, smiling.
“Shut up,” she grumbles and snuggles closer. “Night, Knox.”
I kiss her forehead. “Night, beautiful.”