Chapter 40 Nelly #2
"I think I know what he meant," I said, trying to steady my voice.
My legs trembled against Ghost's sides, but I refused to show weakness.
"You all think I'm fragile. Like I'll break at the slightest touch. No," I tilted my chin, feeling the kind of fury that drowned people, “You think I’m not worth it. You’ve finally figured out I’m not strong enough for this place, not strong enough for you. Just say it so I can get on with my life. Say it so I can leave.”
Wyatt's eyes flashed with pain and frustration; he shook his head violently. “You’re wrong, Nelly. Everything you just said is so damn wrong.”
"Then what is it?" I demanded, my voice rising. Ghost shifted nervously beneath me, and I forced myself to breathe deeply, to calm down for her sake. "What changed between last night and this morning?”
Boone stepped forward, his jaw set in a hard line. "Nelly, come down from there. Now."
The command in his voice only stoked my fury higher. "No."
"Please," Cooper's voice cracked. "Just—get off the horse and we can talk."
"Talk? Like this morning when you all barely looked at me? Or like now, when you're ordering me around like I'm a child?" I tightened my grip on Ghost's mane, determined not to back down.
“We didn’t mean to, Nell,” Cooper pushed, word still fracturing. “We just didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say.”
“So, instead you decided to treat me like crap and ice me out?” I challenged.
Levi moved faster than I thought possible, walking to the fence and launching his body over it with only a few precise touches of hands and boots on wooden rails. He strode towards me and Ghost. When he was right next to us, he raised his arms.
“Come down and talk to us, Nelly. Please, just trust us.”
I stared down at Levi, the plea in his lavender eyes almost undoing me. His arms remained outstretched, waiting for me to fall into them, to trust him. To trust any of them.
"Trust you?" The words fell like acid droplets, eroding the pull I’d felt to the ranch just yesterday. Trusting the first time wasn’t so hard.
Trusting the second time was far harder.
"Why should I? You all clearly don't trust me with whatever's going on.
Instead of just telling me, you acted like assholes. "
"Keeping this from you isn’t about trust," Levi said, speaking slowly, calculating what he should say next as he studied every shift in my expression.
"Then what is it about?" I demanded, my voice shaking with emotion, hot tears slipping down my cheeks. "Because from where I'm sitting, it sure looks like you don't trust me enough to tell me what's wrong."
Levi's eyes never left mine as his hands traveled nearer to my body. I didn’t move as he wrapped his long fingers around my waist. God help me, I didn’t even fight him as he pulled me off Ghost’s back and lowered me to the ground.
I let the man, this stupid Alpha with breathtaking eyes, pull me tightly against his body in a hug.
“Come inside and we’ll tell you what you want to know.
Come inside and we’ll tell you why our hearts are breaking. ”
I pushed away from him, flattening my palms against his body and searching for what he meant. Why would their hearts be breaking? Wasn’t my heart the only one shattering?
I let the men surround me when Levi and I exited the paddock. Ghost followed me until the edge of the fence, as if she too wanted to come along and hear what the Alphas had to say. I didn’t think any excuse would satisfy me. They’d been inexcusable jerks this morning.
Though I wanted them to start explaining immediately, I held my tongue until we were inside the house, circled around the well-used dining table.
Without a sixth chair, Cooper was leaning against the windowsill behind Wade.
Part of me wanted to suggest we move to the living room.
Being in the kitchen only made breakfast crash back into my brain with startling clarity.
“Well?” I pressed, after five minutes of seated silence.
Cooper, staring down on me, was the one who finally let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
“I got an email,” he revealed, words like stones falling from a great height to hit a lake that was peaceful moments prior, “from Eros.”
My breath caught.
I couldn’t speak.
My own pebbles that would be words fell into my belly.
"It's our choice whether to break the contract," Cooper continued, his voice carefully controlled despite the bombshell news. "Nothing will happen to you. No refund for us. The NDAs stay in place."
The words didn't immediately make sense, my brain scrambling to rearrange them into comprehensible meaning. Break the contract? Our choice?
"What are you saying?" I asked, needing absolute clarity.
Wyatt answered when Cooper’s voice seemed to fail him. “He’s saying you don't have to stay if you don't want to. We can tear up the contract right now, and you're free to go. Back to Seattle. Back to your life. No consequences.”
“We won’t force you to stay here,” Wade added, “But, God, Nelly, we hope you do.”
“We all hope you do,” Levi breathed out.
Boone said nothing, he didn’t have to. His face held such unveiled pain and hope and need that it caused me physical agony.
The world tilted beneath me. All day I'd been interpreting their earlier behavior as rejection, as them wanting me gone. But this... this was the opposite. They weren't acting strange because they wanted me to leave; they were acting strange because they thought I would want to.
Because I could.
A storm of emotions hit me at once—relief that I wasn't being rejected, fear at the sudden responsibility of choice, and an unexpected, devastating sense of loss at the thought of returning to my old life.
My scent bloomed with the complexity of it all, filling the kitchen with notes of confusion, relief, fear, hope, and desire. It made all five Alphas inhale sharply.
“Oh,” I managed, the syllable entirely inadequate for the magnitude of the moment. My chair scraped back as I stood, my legs unsteady beneath me. I felt like someone had put my heart and mind into a blender, wildly contradictory emotions blurring as one. “I can leave.”
It wasn’t a question.
Just a statement, uttered to the universe in surprise.
Though I’d just been outside, though I’d been away from them all day, I needed space. I needed to process the news. I needed to think. I needed to figure out why the thought of leaving Sagebrush made me physically sick.
"Nelly—" Wade began, half-rising from his seat, but I shook my head.
"Please, don’t.” I said, already backing toward the doorway. “Please,” I said again, the word breaking into pieces.
No one tried to stop me as I fled the kitchen, my footsteps quickening as I reached the hallway. I ran into my borrowed bedroom, shutting the door behind me, and I sank onto the edge of the bed, my mind reeling.
Freedom. I had freedom now. I could go back to Seattle, back to…
An apartment that might not be mine anymore.
A job that definitely wasn’t mine now.
A Grandmother who didn’t know me.
I could go back to being alone.
I can leave. The phrase echoed in my head, turning my stomach.
I can leave, but I'll never again wake up to the smell of Cooper's pancakes. I can leave, but I’ll no longer get to ask Levi what he’s reading.
I can leave… behind Wyatt’s emerald gaze, Wade’s adorable gap, Boone's crow-dark braid. I can leave… I can leave?
I stood and began to pace, five steps in one direction before the small room forced me to turn. My hands pressed against my abdomen where a physical ache had formed, as if my body were already mourning what my mind hadn't fully processed losing.
Now that leaving was possible, leaving also seemed unbearable.
But could I really stay? Did I belong here with these five Alphas? Did it matter how I arrived? Did they truly want me, Nelly Shaw, permanently in their lives? Or was it just biology at work, their Alpha natures needing my Omega to survive?
And what about me? What did I truly want?
Was I ready to build something new here? Was I ready to trust that this wouldn't be taken from me too?
I sank onto the bed, overwhelmed by questions without answers.
Outside my window, the Wyoming night spread vast and star-filled, indifferent to my turmoil.
Somewhere in the small house, five Alpha men waited for a decision I wasn’t sure I could ever make.
In a way, their futures were as uncertain as mine right now.
Should I leave?
Should I stay?
The possibility of staying, of choosing this place and these men, settled over me like Grandmother’s sun-drenched quilt. Sagebrush was somewhere that would wrap me in its embrace…
If I let it.