Chapter 20
Twenty
LIANA
The short drive to my shop is silent.
Cole keeps both hands on the wheel, his eyes on the road, and I keep my forehead against the cool window glass and watch the city of New York slide by. Neither of us says anything the whole way.
I don’t know what I would say if I tried. There’s really no explanation on my part, except that I need to think. He silently parks the car, and we both walk towards the front door of my shop. It’s still dark out since it’s 5 am.
My legs feel unsteady on the sidewalk.
At the door, Cole presses his thumb to a small black panel I have never seen before, low on the frame beside the old brass bell. It hadn’t been there before I left. A thin green light blinks once. The lock clicks.
“That’s new,” I say, breaking the silence between us.
“Biometric,” Cole says. “It reads your thumb. Mine. My brothers’. Nobody else’s.” He pushes the door open and holds it for me. “You don’t need a key anymore. You don’t need to remember a code. Just your hand.”
“That’s…that’s really nice,” I say, and I mean it, and it feels good to mean something small and simple after five days of meaning everything too much. “Toby’s going to try to break it within a week just to see if he can.”
The corner of Cole’s mouth moves. Not quite a smile. Close enough. “He can try.”
We step inside. The bell above the door gives its familiar small ring, and the shop exhales its cool, green, familiar smell around us, soil and stems and old wood. For one second, I feel my shoulders drop an inch, like they haven’t dropped in days.
Cole gives me a long look. My heart beats faster as he studies my face, as if memorizing it. His nostrils flare like he can’t bear to leave.
But it’s time now.
“I’ll wait around outside until I see your bedroom light come on,” he says gruffly.
I nod. I don’t trust my voice enough to answer him out loud. He doesn’t move toward me as he shoves his hands into his pockets.
“Get some rest,” he says. “Let your mind clear. That’s all I want for you today.”
I nod again. My throat is too tight to push words through it. If I open my mouth right now, I am going to cry, and I don’t want to cry in front of him, not after everything, not when he’s being so careful with me.
He steps back onto the sidewalk.
I close the door gently behind him. Through the old warped glass I watch him walk to the driver’s side of the Range Rover, unhurried, and I make myself turn away before I can watch him get in.
I pick up the watering can from behind the counter out of habit. I move toward the buckets by the cooler. My hand is on the spout, tilting it toward a bucket of ranunculus, and I stop. I can’t do this right now.
My hands are shaking too hard right now.
I set the can down. Then I climb the narrow stairs to my apartment slowly, one at a time, my legs trembling with a tiredness that has nothing to do with muscle.
The apartment is dark.
I don’t turn on the overhead light. I walk straight through to the bedroom and click on the small lamp by my bed, and the warm gold glow of it against my own walls, my own dresser, my own narrow bed, makes me sigh in relief. There’s no pressure being in my own space.
I cross to the window, pulling the curtain back just enough.
Cole is still on the sidewalk, standing beside the car instead of in it, looking up. He sees the light come on. He gives me one small nod, and then he walks around to the driver’s door and gets in. The engine starts. He pulls away from the curb, and the street goes quiet and empty behind him.
I let the curtain fall closed. I stand there a long time anyway, my hand still against the fabric.
The apartment is exactly as I left it.
A wine glass sits abandoned in the sink, a half-inch of red gone syrupy at the bottom, from the night Ezra’s and his pack ate dinner here.
My bed is unmade, the sheets thrown back the way I left them the morning my heat started.
The book on my nightstand lies splayed open at chapter four, exactly where I abandoned it, like it’s been waiting for me.
My closet door hangs open, and I can see my grandmother’s locket swinging gently from the corner of my dresser mirror where I hung it before everything happened, before I became someone else for five days.
I take the locket down. The chain is cold as I fasten it around my neck, the metal warming slowly against my skin, and something about its familiar weight calms me.
My stomach growls.
In the fridge there’s half a loaf of Mira’s sourdough going stale on the counter, a small jar of butter, and not much else.
I tear off a piece of the bread and eat it standing at the counter, chewing without tasting, and drink a full glass of water because I know I should, even though I’m not hungry.
I finish the bread and wash my hands at the sink beside the abandoned wine glass.
I put on my oldest t-shirt, soft from a hundred washes, and a pair of cotton sleep shorts before climbing into my bed.
The sheets are cold. I hadn’t realized how warm four bodies keep a bed until I’m lying in one without them. I pull the blanket to my chin and stare at the ceiling.
I think about the ring under Ezra’s bed, small, green, and exactly the color of my eyes. I think about Julian’s voice asking if I was still their omega.
I’m not crazy for leaving.
I barely know these men. That is not enough time to decide the rest of my life. It’s not crazy that I needed to come home. It’s the sanest thing I have done in a long time.
So why does my chest feel like it’s caving in?
I turn onto my side, drag a pillow against my chest, and press my face into it; it smells like laundry detergent, missing the scent of Ezra and his brothers. I hadn’t realized I’d already learned the brothers’ scents as safety until the safety wasn’t here to smell.
I get up. I pace the narrow length of my bedroom twice before I end up back at the window, pulling the curtain aside again.
Cole’s car hasn’t really left.
It’s parked across the street from the shop now, engine off, and through the windshield I can see him reading something by the dashboard light, a paper cup of coffee steaming faintly on the console beside him.
He hadn’t left me.
I press my palm flat against the cold glass.
He doesn’t look up. I know that he knows I’m watching anyway. He’s the kind of alpha who always knows. He turns a page. He lifts the thermos and drinks.
The tears come fast and silent, sliding down my face and onto the inside of my wrist where it rests against the glass.
I don’t deserve him sitting out there for hours.
I don’t deserve any of them. I cry quietly, without moving, watching him turn another page like there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.
Eventually I let the curtain fall closed. I climb back into bed. The thought of him down there under the streetlight loosens something clenched tight behind my ribs, and I finally feel a little more relaxed.
I close my eyes, and think of the four men not in my bed anymore.
Groaning, I wake up suddenly from a bad dream, and for a long moment I don’t know what time it is or how long I’ve been under. The sun is up. The city outside has that low, steady hum of mid-morning traffic.
Getting out of bed, I go straight to the window before I even think to do anything else.
The Range Rover is gone.
The spot across the street is empty, just a stretch of curb and a maple tree dropping the last of its yellow leaves onto the pavement, and something in my chest drops with it, hollow and sudden.
I don’t know what I expected. Of course he left once the sun came up. Of course he had somewhere else to be.
I get dressed and put on my grandmother’s apron. My hair is twisted into a loose bun at the back of my neck as I brush my teeth. Walking into the kitchen, I groggily make coffee because I definitely need it right now.
I drink it standing at the counter, watching the morning light slant through my own window onto my own worn countertop.
I’m surprised by how much I missed this. The particular slant of this light. The particular chip in this mug. But I also miss Pepper yelling at his owners. It’s bittersweet. I smile as I finish my coffee and head downstairs to my shop.
The wonderful smells of stems, flowers, and dirt greet me as I reach the bottom steps. The buckets by the cooler are mostly full. Somebody, probably Toby, my delivery guy, has brought the chalkboard sign in from the sidewalk and propped it against the front of the counter.
There’s a sticky note stuck crooked to the mahogany. I peel it off and read Toby’s terrible, cramped handwriting: I tried. Sorry about the foxglove…please don’t fire me - Toby.
The foxglove in question sits brown and shriveled in its bucket by the window, thoroughly, unmistakably dead. I shake my head and smile despite feeling the intense heartbreak of leaving the Frostwood Pack.
I walk behind the counter, running my palm along the mahogany surface I sanded and refinished myself, feel the grooves and knots I know by heart, and touch the little bell jar with its single pressed sprig of mountain ash.
Something in me settles half an inch back into place, the way a bone does when it’s finally set right.
I turn toward the back room, meaning to grab my shears apron, and stop.
But there’s a small white envelope lying on the floor just inside the front door. I must have stepped right over it coming in, too distracted by the note and the dead foxglove to notice.
I bend and pick it up. The paper is heavy. There’s no name on the front. No return address. No postage stamp.
Hand-delivered.
Were the Frostwoods trying to buy me out again? Feeling betrayed, with tears in my eyes, I quickly tear the envelope open, fully expecting to read a letter from them because I walked away.
Something slides out of the envelope and lands on the counter.
I stare down at it.
A single sprig of dried white pine, needles gone brittle and pale, tied together with a thin strip of black ribbon. No note tucked inside. No card. No signature.
Just the sprig.
The smell of pine hits me. Memories of Magnus and his pack wash over me, and I suddenly know who left this for me.
I stumble back.
My shoulder hits the wall behind the counter, hard enough to jar my teeth, and I can’t breathe, I can’t move, I can’t scream; I can only stare at that small, brittle sprig lying innocent and terrible on the counter.
Silus knows where I sleep. He knows where I live. And I know he won’t stop even after I’ve moved on with a new pack. He will always come after me.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor behind the counter, knees drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped tight around them. My phone is still in my apron pocket. My hands are shaking so badly it takes three tries to unlock the screen.
I scroll to Cole’s name. I press it, and hold the phone to my ear with both hands because one alone isn’t steady enough.
He answers on the first ring. “Liana.”
“Cole…?” I start to say, unable to continue. My throat feels tight, and I have no idea how to explain what’s going on.
He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He doesn’t waste a single second of breath on questions.
“Liana. Where are you? Are you at the shop?”
“Yes.”
“I am six blocks away. I am coming now. Stay where you are. Lock the door. Do not move. I will be there in three minutes.”
He doesn’t hang up.
I hear him moving on the other end — a car door slamming, an engine catching, his voice pulling away from the phone for a second to bark something short and clipped into another line.
He’s already calling his brothers. Shaking, I stare at the sprig of pine, watching it like it’s going to wrap a hand around my throat any second.