Chapter five #2
"I tracked her credit card. She was at a coffee shop three blocks from Eastwood at 9:47. She's never been to that neighborhood in her life." I take a step closer. "She went there for you, Willow. She went there specifically to corner you."
Willow's jaw tightens. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me."
"Why?" The word comes out sharp, defensive. "Why would you care? I'm just the nanny. I'm just…" Her voice cracks. She presses her lips together, hard, and looks away.
Just the nanny. Just a match. Just a body. I can hear Serena's words in Willow's mouth, and the rage surges again, colder now, more focused.
"What did she say to you?"
"Nothing I didn't already know."
"Willow…"
"She said I was a placeholder." The words come out in a rush, like she's been holding them behind her teeth and can't contain them anymore.
"She said you hired me to fill a gap. That I'm a biological function.
That the match will fade, and you'll get bored, and I'll be discarded like… " She stops. Swallows. "Like her."
The silence that follows is deafening.
I look at her, really look at her. Standing against the wall in the dark, arms wrapped around herself, chin trembling, trying so hard to be strong. Trying so hard to hold the pieces together while Serena's words eat her alive from the inside.
And I feel something shift in my chest. Something that's been locked down for six months, since Mara died, since I became the guardian of a child I didn't know how to raise, since I buried my grief under spreadsheets and strategy and the cold comfort of logic.
It cracks open. And what comes out isn't controlled, strategic, or precise.
It's raw.
"She's wrong," I say.
"You don't know what she…"
"I know exactly what she said because I know Serena, and I know what she does.
She finds insecurities and presses on them until they bruise.
" I take another step. "And I know she's wrong, because I was there when the match with her faded.
I know what it felt like. And what I feel with you is nothing like that. "
Willow's eyes are wet. "You don't have to say that…"
"I'm not saying it to make you feel better.
I'm saying it because it's true." Another step.
I'm close now. Close enough to see the tear tracks on her cheeks, the trembling in her lower lip.
"Serena was a single match. A weak one. The connection with her was like a spark, bright for a moment, then gone.
I felt it fade. Day by day, the pull weakened until there was nothing left. "
I stop and inhale. Her scent is soured with pain, but underneath, still sweet, still warm, still Willow, fills my lungs.
"With you, it's different. From the moment you walked in, I haven't been able to think about anything else.
I sit in that office and try to run financial models, and all I can smell is honey and vanilla.
I lie in bed at night and imagine what your hair feels like.
I watch you hold Lily, and my chest aches with something I haven't felt since…
" My voice breaks. I clear my throat. "Since Mara. "
Willow's breath catches.
"Mara was my sister," I say. "My blood. The only family I had before JD and Knox.
And when she died, something in me," I press my fist against my sternum.
"Something closed. I couldn't feel anything.
I went through the motions. I took care of Lily.
I ran the numbers. I kept the household running. But inside, I was..."
"Empty," Willow whispers.
"Yeah." I swallow. "Empty. And then you walked out of that elevator, and something, I don't know what, something clicked. Like a light turning on in a room I'd forgotten existed."
She's looking at me with an expression I can't fully read, hope and fear and need and something desperate that makes my chest physically hurt.
"Deklan, I…"
"I'm not done." I close the distance between us. One more step, and I'm right in front of her. Close enough to touch. "Serena told you you're a placeholder. She's wrong. You're not a placeholder, Willow. You're not a function. You're not a warm body filling a gap."
I reach out and cup her face. My hands are steady, they're always steady, the Beta's gift, the strategist's curse, but the contact sends a jolt through me that I wasn't prepared for. Her skin is warm, damp from tears, impossibly soft.
"You're our home," I say.
The words come out rough. Barely recognizable.
Not the voice of Deklan Kros, the strategist, the numbers guy, the grumpy Beta who hides behind his laptop.
This is the voice of the boy who grew up with nothing, who lost his sister, who's been pretending he's fine for six months while drowning in his own grief.
Willow makes a sound, a small, broken sob, and her forehead drops against my chest. Her hands fist in my shirt, and she cries. Not silently this time. Not the muffled, practiced crying of someone who expects to be ignored. She cries like someone who's finally been given permission to fall apart.
And I hold her.
Not the way Knox would, with whispered filth and wandering hands and the promise of pleasure. Not the way JD would, with iron strength and protective authority and the weight of an Alpha's claim.
I hold her the way I held Mara when we were kids, and she'd wake up screaming from nightmares. The way I held Lily the first night she was ours, screaming for a mother who would never come back. Steady. Solid. Unmovable.
I wrap my arms around Willow and press my mouth to her hair and breathe her in, and I let her cry until the sobs turn to shudders, and the shudders turn to sniffles, and the sniffles turn to silence.
"You're not a placeholder," I say again, against her hair. "You're not a gap-filler. You're not a function."
"Then what am I?" Her voice is muffled against my chest.
I pull back just enough to look at her face. Blotchy. Tear-streaked. Swollen-eyed. Beautiful.
"You're the person who checked the baby food labels and noticed Lily doesn't like sweet potato," I say.
"You're the person who sang to her during a diaper change.
You're the person who sat in the rocking chair and let her fall asleep holding your finger.
You're the person who walks into a room and makes it warmer just by being there. "
My thumb traces the curve of her cheekbone, wiping away a tear.
"You're the person who made me feel something for the first time in six months. And I am terrified of that, Willow. Terrified. Because the last person I loved died, and I can't, I can't…"
My voice cracks. I press my lips together, hard, and look away. My glasses are fogged. I take them off and set them on the dresser with a shaking hand.
When I look back at her, her expression has changed. The fear is still there, but it's been joined by something else. Something fierce.
"Deklan."
"Willow."
"Look at me."
I do. Without my glasses, the world is softer, blurred at the edges, impressionistic. But she's close enough that I can see her clearly. The gold flecks in her brown eyes. The curve of her upper lip. The mole on her neck that I've been trying not to stare at since she arrived.
"I'm not going to die," she says. "I'm not Mara. I'm not going to disappear."
"You can't promise that."
"I can." She lifts her hand and places it over my heart. Her palm is warm through the fabric of my shirt. "I'm not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to."
I cover her hand with mine. Our fingers lace together, and the contact is so simple, so human, so right that something in my chest unlocks.
"Willow." Her name comes out like a prayer. "I need you to understand something."
"What?"
"I'm not good at this." I gesture vaguely between us. "I'm not smooth like Knox. I'm not commanding like JD. I'm a Beta who hides behind spreadsheets because feelings are unpredictable and I can't model them in Excel."
A surprised laugh escapes her, wet, shaky, but real. "You're doing fine."
"Am I?"
"Better than fine."
I stare at her. At this small-town omega who walked into a penthouse full of broken men and somehow, impossibly, started putting them back together. Who held a stranger's child as if she were her own. Who cried in the dark because a bitter woman told her she wasn't enough.
She's enough. She's more than enough.
My hand moves from her cheek to the back of her neck. My fingers curl into the soft hair at her nape, and I feel her shiver. The scent shifts, still tinged with sadness, but underneath, warming, the honey and vanilla reasserting themselves. The fear receding and want rising.
"Willow." My voice drops. I can't help it. "I need to show you. Not tell you. Show you. That you're not a placeholder."
Her breath catches. "Show me how?"
"Let me touch you."
The words hang in the air between us. I watch her process them, watch the way her pupils dilate, the way her lips part, the way her chest rises with a sharp inhale. Her scent spikes, honey and vanilla suddenly thick and sweet, and I feel the heat radiating off her skin.
"You don't have to," I say. "I'll hold you all night without touching you anywhere else if that's what you need. I'll sit in that rocking chair and watch you sleep. I'll…"
"Touch me," she whispers.
The words hit me like a detonation.
I don't move fast. I'm not Knox, I don't pounce.
I move slowly, deliberately, giving her every chance to change her mind.
My hand on her neck tightens slightly, tilting her head back.
My other hand finds her hip, the same hip Knox touched this morning, I realize, and something possessive and unfamiliar rears up in me at the thought, and I pull her against me.
She's small against me. Not fragile - strong and resilient, a woman who survived a small town with nothing but stubbornness - but small. The top of her head barely reaches my shoulder. My hand spans the curve of her hip, fingers digging into the flesh there, and I feel her tremble.
"Not a placeholder," I murmur against her temple. "Not a function. Not a body."