Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Emily
Ishiver inside the shell of the fitness center. The site has taken on only a hint of warmth from the sun, all vapor and sawdust, every gap in the frame sucking in the cold that comes up from the water.
I brace a boot on the lower rung of the ladder and balance the clipboard on my thigh, copying out the same note I’ve already written twice.
My pen scores deep into the page, the carbon copying through so hard it ghosts the sheets beneath.
On the third try, I catch myself. The line is identical.
Nothing’s changed except for my grip leaving sweat on the pen.
I set the clipboard down and flex my hand until it stops cramping. The crew is on the second floor, hammering away. The echo travels down the unfinished beams, loud enough to feel it in my teeth.
I rub my face, then the heel of my hand finds my stomach, firm beneath layers of canvas and wool. I catch the motion, drop my hand fast, and scan my surroundings to ensure no one is paying attention to me.
The weekend comes back in a rush, Jared’s hands, the clean, familiar sea salt notes of his skin, the two of us never once getting around to the conversation we were supposed to have. We’d meant to, but instead, we spent the weekend in bed, venturing out only to eat.
A flush crawls up my throat before I can stop it, and I turn hard toward the supply bench, putting my back to the crew as I search for a distraction.
As I run through the rest of the morning’s checklist, my phone buzzes on the plywood table.
Reflexively, I pick it up and swipe before the name stops me cold.
Auren.
Even now, the sight of it twists in my gut, and unable to help myself, I open the text.
Auren
hey
didn’t know who else to reach out to
having a rough patch. would help to hear from you, even if you don’t have time
My thumb goes straight to the keyboard. I can see the words before I write them.
Sorry that you’re struggling. I hope you’re staying safe. What do you need from me?
Easy.
But I stop myself from typing out the response. That’s the open door he’s looking for to slither his way back into my life.
With a deep breath, I lock the phone and put it screen-down, where new alerts won’t distract me.
A shout from upstairs breaks the spell. “Wilson! You got a sec?”
“On my way!” I belt back.
I unstick my gloves from the bench, tuck the clipboard under my arm, and hustle up the stairs.
The next twenty minutes are a haze of numbers, tape measurements, marks, and cuts. Clint holds the window unit in the rough opening while I crouch to check the sill with my level. The bubble drifts.
“She’s low on the left,” I say. “Shim it.”
He grunts and digs through his apron. I hold the level steady and keep an eye on the bubble.
He taps the shim in, and I check it again. Dead center. “Good. Nail it off.”
He does, and I mark the sheet before I move to the next opening.
When he heads off for lunch, I double back to the bench, pick up the phone, and stand there, my attention drifting beyond the trees to the water, where gulls wheel on the updraft, and white chop pounds the rocky beach.
It takes two tries to type out the message I send.
Emily
Taking ten. I’ll be at the dock.
I pocket the phone and walk out the open doorway, following the path that crunches with a skin of new frost. My boots leave prints deep enough to last until the next thaw.
By the time I reach the water, the urge to text Auren is as strong as it ever was, but I keep my hands in my pockets and my eyes on Jared. He’s already at the dock, with a wrench in one hand and grease up to his elbow, crouched over the hull of the second-hand skiff brought in for island tours.
Engine oil and salt spray stain his overalls, and the knees bear patches from last week’s mishap. I watch him for a minute, the steady rhythm of his hands calming me, before his head lifts.
“Em.” He brightens when he spots me, the wrench still turning in his hand. “Was that you texting? Sorry, I didn’t catch it—”
He stops as he catches my expression and sets the wrench down on the hull. “Hey. What happened?”
I hold out my phone. “Auren.”
He pulls the rag from his pocket and wipes his hands before he takes it. He reads the texts once.
Then again, before he sets the phone beside his tools. “You good?”
“I’m okay.” The words ring hollow, and we both hear it.
He tugs me forward by the front of my jacket, leaving grease smears on the canvas, and kisses me quick and hard, mouth tasting of the cold and a little bit of coffee. He holds me after, chin on my temple, arms holding me close.
“How bad is it?” he murmurs.
“Not bad. Just… It’s like muscle memory.” My throat tightens. “I see his name and my brain… defaults.”
He keeps holding me, the creak of the dock and the slap of rope on the pilings filling the silence.
I try to explain it. “I keep thinking if I— If I handle it right, if I keep a lid on it, if I ignore him long enough—he’ll stop needing things from me. But he doesn’t.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Jared rests his chin more heavily against my temple, as if to pin me in place. “But you don’t have to give it to him.”
I don’t move.
“You understand that, right?” He pulls back, his sea-glass green irises luminous in the gray morning. “You don’t owe him a reply. You don’t owe him a damn thing. Not your time. Not your headspace.”
“I still carry a lot of guilt for leaving him at Safe Harbor,” I admit. “Sometimes, I still can’t shake the belief that I should’ve done more.”
“You did more than anyone else would’ve. Even when it nearly broke you.” His hand cups the back of my neck, thumb moving in slow circles to ease the tension from my muscles. “Let yourself be done with it.”
A long, salt-laden wind blows in from the water, flapping the canvas tarps on the moored boats, and a seagull lands on the piling, head cocked, ready to scavenge anything we might drop.
After a bit, I say, “I’m worried I’m punishing Leif for what Auren did.”
Jared’s hand stills.
“I understand that he’s not the same as Auren,” I rush to add, “but I keep catching myself pulling away. Not letting him in. Like if I keep him at arm’s length, I can’t fuck it up. Or he can’t hurt me.”
Jared drops his hand to see me better. “He’s not Auren.”
“I do understand. But the reflex is the same.” I fold my arms, fingers digging into my sides. “Leif said he’s not going to give up, and that he’s going to win his way back.”
Jared nods. “He wants you. I never doubted that part.”
I gnaw on my bottom lip. “Should I let him back in?”
Jared wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist, leaving a streak of black above his eyebrow. “Do you want to?”
“I don’t know what I want. That’s the problem.”
“I think you do.” He taps my chest, where the flutter of a bond for Leif hasn’t quite died. “But you’re scared of wanting it.”
My breath hitches. “What if he hurts me again?”
“What if he doesn’t?” he counters. “What if you give it a real shot and it actually works?”
I stare out at the gray, roiling whitecaps. “I want it to work.”
Jared steps in again, forehead resting against mine. “Then let it.”
My jaw aches from clenching it so hard.
Jared tips my chin up, studying me. “Let him in. Worst case, he breaks your heart. You’ll survive it. Best case, we get a solid addition to our family.”
My eyes sting, but I keep them open. “You really mean that?”
“I do.” He plants a kiss on my nose, rough and matter-of-fact. “But if he fucks it up again, I’m allowed to punch him in the face.”
The laugh that comes out is shaky, but real. “Pretty sure he could hold his own where you’re concerned.”
“I’m so offended right now,” Jared says as he lets me lean into him, the two of us side by side, hands buried in our jacket pockets, saying nothing for a long while.
“I don’t want to text Auren back,” I admit after a while. “But I kind of want to see him get his shit together. Just to know it was possible after all.”
Jared shakes his head, smiling a little. “Let someone else handle that. You’ve got better things to do with your life.”
We stand in the cold, the dock beneath us swaying with the tide, until the anxiety brought on from the texts dulls. My phone vibrates on the hull with another message, but I ignore it this time.
I straighten and look Jared over, taking in the grease drying on his skin and the way his hair stands up from the wind. “I love you.”
His mouth twitches. “I love you, too, Em.”
The simplicity of it settles me in a way nothing else could.
But when Jared pulls me with him down onto the dock, feet hanging off the edge above the water, it becomes clear we’re not done talking.
The February sun tries and fails to warm our faces, and I’m grateful for Jared’s body heat at my side.
He waits a minute before he says, “We need to talk about formalizing our pack.”
I grunt, more amused than annoyed.
He tries to sound casual. “We’re trying for a pup, and if we’re going to bring Leif in, it’s smarter to file.”
My jaw works before I admit, “It’s expensive.”
He nudges my shoulder. “Not as expensive as losing everything because you didn’t do the paperwork.”
I don’t answer. He’s right, but the tension returns, dread coiling under my ribs.
Jared sighs. “You said you’d think about it last time I asked. I’m hoping you’re ready to think out loud.”
I fix my attention on the scum of foam at the edge of the dock. “Do you have any idea what it cost me last time?”
He doesn’t move. Just waits.
“Five grand. Every dollar I had. Plus a loan from my supervisor.” I spit the words, still bitter after all these months. “It took two years to pay it off. Auren walked away with the registration, the pack name, everything. I got nothing.”
He shifts. “You got free. Doesn’t sound like nothing.”
I can’t stop the snort. “I got a bad credit rating, and my name is on some registry for failed packs. There’s no sponsor left for me to ask, and no family to fall back on.”
His shoulders slump. “I can’t ask my familial pack, either. You know how it was. Once they sent me off, that was it.”
A brittle laugh escapes me. “We’re a hell of a pair, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” he says. “We are.”
The wind picks up, and the tarps snap at their ropes.
“If I could pay cash, I would,” I say. “Maybe I could take out a loan using the cottage as collateral. I don’t think the bank will approve it, though. I still owe so much on the mortgage after buying Auren out.”
“No, we don’t need more debt.” He rubs his palms together for warmth. “But there are other options.”
“Like what?” My brow pinches in confusion. “The truck isn’t worth the parts.”
He looks at me from the corner of his eye, as if gauging whether I’ll bite his head off for suggesting it. “Blake and Nathaniel would front it. You know they would.”
The words cut harder than they should. “I don’t take charity from my bosses.”
He shakes his head in annoyance. “You’re not taking charity. They’re your friends. Quinn calls you Auntie Em.”
I turn my attention to the distant line where the water turns from gray to navy. “I don’t like owing people.”
“Then ask for a loan. Or for them to sponsor the registration in name only. There are ways,” he says, not pleading, not yet. “You don’t have to go it alone.”
I want to argue, to say that’s exactly what I have to do, but the fight drains out of me. “I’ll think about it.”
He stands, stretching his long limbs and wincing as his knees crack. He helps me up before he reaches for my phone and hands it back. “No rush.”
I flip the phone over in my hand, thumb on the glass. The message from Auren is still there. It takes three taps to open the thread, one more to delete it. And suddenly all that drama…vanishes.
A new lightness settles in my gut. Not a floaty, happy thing, but a clean emptiness where the guilt used to squat.
I scroll down to my contacts, thumb hovering over Leif’s name before I fire off a short message.
Emily
Dinner on Saturday?
Jared grins as he nuzzles me. “Good job, Alpha.”
I give him a flat stare. “It’s not a commitment.”
He laughs, the sound rolling out over the water. “No, but it could be, and that’s what matters.”
As I slip my phone back into my pocket, my pulse still hasn’t settled.
Because he’s right.
The message isn’t a commitment.
But Saturday is.
In six days, I’ll either be moving toward a future with Leif again, or I’ll be the one walking away for good.