Chapter 23 #2
Sage stood up and crossed the kitchen, and when she put her arms around Willow the hug had the specific weight of someone who'd been awake in the dark giving away pieces of themselves and was tired and glad and would do it again.
"You're ours," she said, against Willow's temple.
"Whatever you need, that's why. No matter what grumpy Neve says about Ryker, you're ours and we knew what it meant to you, and that's the whole reason. "
Willow pressed her face into Sage's shoulder and let herself cry for real, the ugly kind, because she'd earned it and so had they.
She felt the others close in, Esme's hand on her back, Hazel's arms around both of them, and after a moment even Neve, who hugged the way she did everything, precise and intentional and completely genuine.
"I swear I'm going to make it worth it," Willow said, when she could talk again. "This place. All of it. I'm going to make sure we're here for good."
"We know," Hazel said. "We've always known." A beat. "Also, I've started seeing one of the harbor wolves, so I personally have excellent reasons for wanting permanent residency."
“What?!” Sage shrieked, jumping on Hazel. “You didn’t say anything. Which, of course, means now you must tell us everything and then some.”
Willow laughed, and it came out wet and wrecked, and someone found her a tissue, and after listening to Hazel talk about her new man, she managed to wipe her face and tell them to get dressed because there was hot food and tea at the bakery and they needed to celebrate.
The Honey Moon Bakery was packed.
Apparently, everyone had decided, without discussing it, that this was where they wanted to be.
Pack members filled every mismatched chair and every inch of standing room, voices overlapping, windows fogged from the warmth inside fighting the cold out.
The string lights were on, lending even more cheer to the small space.
The last of the morning's honey croissants were gone along with the special Polar Plunge cake she’d made, forcing her to pull out the emergency shortbread she kept for days exactly like this, which was also going fast.
She stepped behind the counter because it was where she fit, and took stock of her bakery.
Maeve's triplets were once again attempting to climb Ryker.
All three of them, simultaneously, with the single-minded focus of babies who were almost three months now, chubby and determined and absolutely fascinated by the tall man who had made the mistake of sitting on the low bench near the window.
Ryker bore it with an expression of complete helplessness, one baby propped against his chest and two more being corralled by Connor, who looked like a man who had not slept since October.
Gray stood two feet away pretending not to find this funny. He was not succeeding.
Cal leaned against the far wall with his coffee, watching Ryker's situation with the serene satisfaction of a man who’d escaped that particular brand of chaos. He caught Willow's eye across the room and raised his mug in a toast that was clearly directed at Ryker's predicament.
Lily appeared at Willow's elbow, ducking behind the counter with the ease of someone who'd spent months learning this space, her auburn braid over one shoulder, one hand resting at her slightly-rounded belly in the absent way she had now.
"He's being so careful with them," she said quietly, watching Ryker extract a tiny determined fist from his ear.
"It's ruining the whole grumpy wolf thing he's been working on for years. "
"Don't tell him that, he'll never recover."
"Oh, he absolutely knows." Lily bumped her shoulder against Willow's and then tilted her head, reading the claiming mark with green eyes that warmed into something that wasn't quite tears or a smile.
She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.
They'd been rebuilding this, the two of them, stitch by careful stitch since October, and some things were better said in borrowed warmth and shared counter space than in words at all.
Across the room, Faith was holding court in the corner booth with Allison and Rebel, all three of them watching Ryker with triplets and trading commentary that Willow couldn't hear but could perfectly imagine.
Behind Willow, the display case rattled as someone restocked it.
"The shortbread goes on the bottom shelf," she said, without turning around.
"It's more visible up here," Sage said.
"The honey squares go up top because they're taller."
"The shortbread is also tall."
"Sage."
A pause. "Fine."
The sounds of deliberate, pointed restocking filled the air. Willow hid her smile in a coffee cup.
At the window table, Neve and Esme had claimed seats and were deep in something with Mara, who had a notebook open and the expression of a woman who had found people willing to discuss logistics over pastries and was fully in her element.
Hazel, across from them, was tilted toward the harbor wolf she'd mentioned, a younger pack member named Bram who was doing an extremely obvious job of pretending he wasn't here specifically because she was.
Willow watched all of it from behind her counter.
The warmth, the noise, the overlapping voices.
Pack wolves and sanctuary witches taking up the same space without the careful calculation that had marked every interaction in those first weeks, the wariness on both sides.
It had been replaced by something easier. Not perfect. Not finished. But real.
Ryker successfully transferred two of the babies back to Connor and stood, running a hand through his hair in the automatic way he had, and his eyes found her across the room with the unhurried certainty of a man who knew exactly where she'd be.
He started toward her, stopping twice. Once when Gray said something to him that made him snort, once when Shaw flagged him down.
He handled both without losing the thread of where he was going.
She looked around her bakery, Maeve's gift and her own daily labor and the island's heart in some small way she'd helped tend, at the found family that had taken root in it.
The coven women who'd followed her here. The pack who’d opened their doors to her.
The man making his way toward her through the crowd with his sandy hair and his smoky blue eyes that held naughty promises for when they were alone again.
He reached the counter. Leaned on it. His eyes moved over her face and then reached across and tucked a strand of damp hair behind her ear.
"You've got flour on your cheek."
She hadn't been baking yet. "That's impossible."
He rubbed it off with his thumb anyway, which meant he was making excuses to touch her face, which meant she was going to have a serious problem with the concept of productivity for the foreseeable future.
Through the bond came the warm press of his satisfaction, deliberate enough that she knew he was doing it on purpose.
"Stop that," she said.
"You like it."
"Ryker."
"Willow."
She looked up at him, this stubborn, scarred, impossible wolf who had taken the longest possible road to get here, and the words came out before she'd decided to say them.
"I love you."
He went very still. The noise of the bakery continued around them, Sage and the shortbread, the triplets, Hazel laughing at something Bram said, all of it carrying on while he looked at her like she'd just handed him something he hadn't known he was allowed to want.
"Say it again," he said quietly.
"I love you." Easier the second time, and truer somehow, the words finding their shape in her mouth. “I love you."
He reached across the counter and took her face in both hands, right there in the middle of her packed bakery with half the island watching, and his voice came out strong and certain and nothing like the man who'd spent three months building walls against her.
"I love you. Probably since the first morning I watched you talk to your bread like it could talk back." His thumbs brushed her cheekbones. "I was just too stupid then to let myself know it."
She laughed, wet at the edges, and covered his hands with hers.
Somewhere behind her, Sage made a sound that was definitely crying, and Faith and Lily were probably fist bumping by now. She didn't look. She kept her eyes on him, this man she'd chosen, who was finally hers, in a bakery full of people who were going to talk about this for weeks.
But for the record—the bread started it.