CHAPTER 25
WINDY
Not this again.
Fuck. No.
It doesn’t matter how many times this happens; I will not just sweep this mess under the rug.
“Give the flowers away,” I order Marlene, my secretary, as she attempts to deliver yet another bouquet into my office. This time, they’re summer flowers.
“Are you sure?” she asks, still gazing at the flowers. “They’re beautiful.”
I nod toward them. “You can have them then.”
Marlene lingers in the doorway, gazing at the flowers cradled in her hands as if they’re fragile treasures. She holds them so tenderly that it almost hurts to watch, especially knowing their sender.
She lifts her head, giving me a sad little smile.
She still doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches long enough that I finally take my eyes off what I’m doing, and I glance back up at her.
I see she’s staring straight at me. Not speaking, but clearly, from the look in her eyes, she wants to say something.
I lean back, rubbing my pregnant belly, the weight of everything pressing down on me. "What is it?"
For a moment, she thinks. Then, she takes that as an invitation, or maybe permission, and steps inside.
The door clicks softly shut behind her. She walks toward my desk, sets the flowers down with a kind of reverence, then lowers herself into one of the chairs across from me. Still silent. Still watchful.
After a few seconds, I snap, “What?”
She finally exhales, licking her lips as she prepares to speak. She looks like she’s been holding in these words for quite some time. “Can I be frank?”
I gesture for her to go on.
“I don’t know what they did to you,” she says, voice steady but soft.
“But I can tell—just from the few minutes they were here—that you miss them. I know they’re your scent match mates.
Your mother told me one day before you got out of a meeting.
“She hesitates, searching my face. “But ... they’re your mates. Don’t you want to be with them? ”
I look away from her. The question hits me, sharper than I expect. I want them in my life, but forgiveness feels impossible, and that realization unsettles me.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “Of course I want them.”
Marlene doesn’t move, but I feel her attention on me sharpen. “But?”
I let out a breath that feels like it’s been stuck in my body for weeks. “They hurt me. A lot.”
“I figured.” She nods slowly, like she’s already piecing it together but needed to say it out loud.
I don’t want to get into this, but I have a feeling that Marlene isn’t going to let this go.
Marlene has been with my family for the past thirty years.
She was with my grandfather, my father, and now with me.
I can remember plenty of times when she was more of a mother to me than my own.
She’d take care of me when my father brought me to the office.
When I was learning what it took to run this company, she kept things light and fun. She made my childhood bearable.
My fingers drift over to the edge of my desk.
“It wasn’t just one thing. It was ... well, it was everything.
The way they rejected me. The way they didn’t listen.
The way they acted like I was supposed to just fall in line because of a bond when they were the ones in the first place to ruin it all.
” My voice cracks, and I hate that I’m allowing my emotions to leak through.
Marlene leans forward, elbows on her knees. “And now?”
“Now they’re back,” I whisper, my frustration bubbling up through exhaustion. "They look at me like I'm supposed to pretend none of it happened, like I’m supposed to be grateful. That’s not me.”
She studies me for a long moment. “You’re not wrong to be angry. If my mates did half of what your mates did to you, I’d be in jail for murder one.”
I release a weary laugh. "I am angry. But I’m also exhausted, confused, and pregnant. Everything feels overwhelming, and I don’t know what to do." I stumble between irritation, sorrow, and simple exhaustion.
Marlene’s gaze softens. “You don’t have to decide anything, darling. All you need to do is worry about that little nugget in your belly.”
I rub my belly again, slower this time. “They're the fathers, obviously. They’re supposed to be here. They were supposed to be here and to care from the get-go, but they weren’t.
Now that they want to be, I’m not too sure I want them to be.
” I swallow hard. “Part of me still wants them. Wants what we were supposed to have.”
She asks gently, “And the other part?”
“The other part remembers how it feels when they forced me to walk away. All the pain they put me through.”
“You are the only person who can make that decision. No one else. You.”
“I know.”
Marlene nods, like she understands the kind of fracture I’m talking about. “You can want them, though. Wanting them isn’t bad. But you can want them and still not trust them. Those two things can exist simultaneously.”
Her response catches me off guard. Surprised, I look up at her. I didn’t know until right now how much I needed someone to say that.
She continues, voice even yet warm. "If they truly want you back, they’ll earn it. Not demand it, not assume it’s theirs because you’re their scent match. They must earn it."
I let her words settle inside me. They feel like the truth. At first, her words ground me, giving me a sense of calm, but even as they do, a deeper part of me can’t stop the fear from racing through me.
“I don’t know if I can let them try,” I admit.
“That’s the thing ... you don’t have to. However, you do need to be honest with yourself. You can’t continue to hide with your head in the sand.”
I close my eyes for a moment, breathing through the ache in my chest. “I’m so scared.”
“Of them?” she asks. “Or yourself?”
“Of me,” I whisper. “Of wanting something that might break me again.”
Marlene gets up from her seat and runs around the desk.
Even with her being in her sixties, she’s a spritely little thing.
She reaches out and turns me in my seat.
She gets on her knees, grabs my hands, and kisses the top of them.
“Let them be the ones who take the risk, honey. Let them be the ones who step up.”
“If they don’t?”
“Then you’ll know,” she says simply. “Then you can walk away with your head held high.”
She gives my hands another kiss. I sit with that when she makes her way out of my office. Marlene has always been the voice of wisdom. She has many years under her belt, and she knows how it is to forgive but not forget.
I glance toward the end of my desk. She forgot the flowers on her way out, and I can’t stop myself from looking at them. They are pretty, I will admit. But while they may be pretty, I know what they are. They’re masking the real issue. It’s a Band-Aid on a situation that needs surgery.
Flowers are not going to get them out of this shit shack of a problem. I don’t know what will, to be honest. All I know is that flowers aren’t going to win me over.
I don’t even know if I want to be won over.
Would it be terrific to be with my mates? Yes. Very much so. I’d love to spend the rest of my life with my mates. Who wouldn’t? But just because it would be terrific to be with my mates does not mean it is a good thing.
I sit there for a long time after Marlene leaves, doing absolutely nothing.
First comes numbness—I can’t focus on anything except the prospect of my mates wanting me back in their lives.
Then frustration sets in; I sit there not working.
Not thinking productively. Eventually, the quiet presses in until it feels like it’s filling my lungs and I’m drowning.
But finally, as the minutes crawl by, the weight around me loosens, and I start to feel myself return to the present, ready to face whatever comes next.
I want to talk to someone. I need to talk to someone. There is so much going on in my life right now that I need someone. My thoughts keep circling back to one person: Remi.
Remi, who never sugarcoats anything.
Remi, who sees straight through me even when I’m trying to be evasive.
Remi, who won’t let me hide behind excuses or old wounds.
I lean forward, elbows on my desk, hands hanging uselessly between my knees. My mind keeps replaying everything—my mates showing up, the way they looked at me, the way my chest twisted painfully even though I didn’t want it to.
I want Remi’s opinion. I want her to tell me why she thinks they’re suddenly back around. Why now? Why like this?
I know what they said. I know the story they fed everyone else—about the inheritance, about needing someone from a prolific family, about alliances and expectations and legacy.
I was ready to accept them without anything. Without a name. Without a title. Without a future mapped out in gold.
I was ready to choose them because they are my mates, and I feel a deeper bond with them. Because the bond mattered to me. Because they mattered to me.
They should have been the same with me, but they weren’t.
I rub my face with both hands, frustration and grief mixing into something sour in my throat.
I want Remi to tell me I’m not crazy for feeling betrayed.
I want her to tell me I’m not imagining the shift in them now.
I want her to tell me whether she thinks they’re here because they finally realized what they lost … or because they want something again.
I want her to tell me if I’m unfair, or if I’m not being nearly harsh enough.
Mostly, I want someone to hear me.
To see me.
To understand that wanting them and resenting them are tearing me in opposite directions.
I push back in my chair, staring at the flowers Marlene left on my desk. My chest tightens.
I need Remi.
I need her voice cutting through all this noise in my head. I need to know if I’m supposed to let them back in or finally let them go.
Pulling at my bottom drawer, I pull out my purse and grab my phone. I dial her number, waiting for it to click over. It doesn’t take long. The moment she answers, I’m already blubbering. I can’t help it. My emotions are all over the place.
“I need you,” I cry out, tears beginning to trail down my face. “Please.”
“Where are you?” she asks, and I can hear her shuffling around on the other side. “Tell me now.”
I do. I tell her, putting my head down on my desk and listening to her on the other side of the phone. It’s hard to breathe with my belly in the way, but I can’t bring myself to move. I’m so tired, and I don’t want to fight alone anymore.
“I’m coming. You sit right there, calm down, and drink some water. Stay calm for that baby girl.”
I promise her and end the call. Sniffling, I can’t help it when I break out into a sob. I think of what could have been. I think of all the things they did to me. I think of what could happen if I give them another chance.
I think about it all ... and I’m hopeless.