Chapter 21 #2
He dropped his hands. She was staring at him, the recipe book forgotten in her lap, and her face had changed. Not soft, or forgiving, but cracked open in a way he'd never seen, like she'd been braced for everything except those words.
"Don't say that unless you mean it." Her voice came out unsteady. "Don't you dare use that word to—"
"I mean it." He held her gaze and his eyes were burning and he didn't look away. "I'm in love with you. I was in love with you then. That's the worst part. I knew what I felt and I did it anyway."
She pressed her hand over her mouth. Held it there. He could see her breathing through it, her ribs expanding and contracting under her sweater, and the urge to cross the room and pull her against him was so strong his muscles shook with the effort of staying on the floor.
"I drove you to sever the bond." His voice had nothing left in it. "I made you so desperate that you cut part of your own soul away to get free of me. And I—"
He couldn't finish. His jaw locked. The poker chip was in his hand, he didn't remember pulling it from his pocket, and his thumb dug into the worn edge hard enough to leave a mark.
"You what?" she said, and there was nothing gentle in it. Her hand had dropped from her mouth and her brown eyes were fierce and wet and she was going to make him say every word.
"I did that to you and that’s a part of you that will never come back." Each word cost him. "My wolf chose you. You were supposed to be safe with me, and I made you bleed to get free and I will never forgive myself for it."
She uncrossed her legs and set the book aside and he tracked the motion without meaning to, his gaze following the shift of her body on the bed, the way her bare feet tucked under her, the strip of skin above her waistband where her sweater rode up when she moved.
His whole body tightened and he had to look at the floor until he could think straight again.
"Tell me about Cara," she said. "The real version. Not the one you gave the pack."
So he told her. Not the facts she already knew but the shame underneath.
How proud he'd been that Cara chose him, the beta with the easy grin, when she could have had anyone.
How he'd vouched for her when other wolves pushed back.
How his certainty, his absolute conviction that his instincts were right about her, had opened the door that got Ash killed.
He broke on Ash's name. Stopped talking and turned the poker chip over in his fingers, the click of it against his thumbnail the only sound in the room.
"Gray never blamed me." He stared at the chip.
"But honestly, that was worse than if he hated me.
If he blamed me, I could fight it. I could argue or make a case or do something.
But he just... doesn't. So I carry it alone and there's no one to tell me when the debt's paid because the only person who could is the one who won't blame me. "
He looked up. Willow had moved to the edge of the bed.
Closer. Her knees were a foot from his shoulder, her heat reaching him across the gap, and he didn't know if she'd done it on purpose or if her body had made the decision before her head caught up.
His cock stirred and he hated himself for it, hated that his body couldn't tell the difference between vulnerability and invitation, and he kept his eyes on the poker chip in his hands.
"My wolf went silent that night. Three years of reaching for it and getting almost nothing.
" He swallowed. "I thought I deserved it.
So when you showed up and I started wanting again, I convinced myself the wanting was the problem.
That feeling anything for you was proof my instincts were still broken. "
"They weren't broken," she said, and her voice had gone quiet, stripped of the sharpness she'd been wielding. "Your instincts were right about me. You just couldn't hear them over all that noise."
For so long he'd believed his instincts were the thing that got Ash killed, and she'd just told him they weren't broken. He closed his eyes and let himself breathe through it. When he opened them she was looking at him and the air between them could have caught fire.
"I know the bond is gone and that you can’t bring it back.
I'm also not here to ask you to forgive me either.
" He set the poker chip on his knee. "I'm here because you deserve the truth, and I'm not going to soften it by calling what I did a mistake.
It wasn't a mistake. It was a decision. A really bad one.
" He looked at her. "I chose fear over you, every single time, and I need you to know I see that. "
The room was quiet except for the wind against the window and the muffled sounds of the cabin beyond the door, someone moving in the kitchen, and the clink of a mug.
"You terrify me," she said. "You know that, right?
Not the wolf, not the pack, not any of it.
You. Because I felt that bond from the beginning while you treated me like a threat, and I survived it.
I cut it out of myself and I survived it.
But this?" She gestured between them, the space that was too small and too charged and too full of everything they'd been circling around since the cove.
"This is me with no bond. No magic pulling me toward you.
Just me, choosing to sit here and listen to you fall apart on my floor, and that's so much more dangerous than anything the bond ever did. "
His breath caught.
"I need time," she said. "I'm not saying no. I'm saying I need to figure out if I can trust you when there's nothing supernatural forcing my hand. I need to know the choice is mine."
"It is. Whatever you decide." He picked the chip up off his knee and closed his fist around it. "However long it takes. I'll be here."
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then her eyes dropped to his mouth and back up so fast he almost missed it, but he didn't miss it, and his blood went hot and his hands clenched against the urge to close the distance between them.
She caught herself and looked away, reaching for the recipe book and opening it to a page she didn’t look at.
"You should go now."
He got to his feet. His legs were stiff from the cold floor and she was close now, the bed at thigh height, her body curled on it with the lamplight turning her skin warm gold. The pulse at her throat was racing.
He forced himself to walk to the door.
"Ryker."
He stopped. Didn't turn around because if he looked at her right now, on that bed, with her eyes dark and the scent of her in his lungs, he wouldn't leave. And she'd asked him to leave.
"The jacket looks good on you," he said. Then he walked through the cabin, past the four women who watched him go with faces he didn't register because he’d left something vital in that room, and out into the cold dark where the wind hit his skin and changed nothing.
Tomorrow was the plunge. And with any luck, she'd make her choice.
Which meant he'd stand in whatever answer she gave him, because she'd sat on that bed and looked at his mouth and said this is me choosing and that was more than he'd let himself hope for since the night he'd burned everything down.
His wolf stirred, and for the first time in days it wasn't reaching for a bond that wasn't there. It was reaching for her. Just her.
And he let it.