Rowan
“I can be your family now .”
“It’s only a matter of time.”
I needed some fucking air. Everything was snowballing so fast, and I really didn’t know how to deal with it.
I’d given in. Well, really, I’d fallen face first into him with no plan on how I’d be getting back up, and it suddenly seemed like I was falling much further than I’d anticipated. He wanted to be my family? To have children with me?
This wasn’t just sex. It wasn’t a way for him to fill time before he got bored and moved along. He was really, truly planning to stay here with me. And I didn’t know what to do about it.
For so long I hadn’t considered a future, and then in came Milo holding one up in perfect, inhuman gray fingertips. As if it were the easiest choice he could make. As if there were no other option.
Why?
Why me?
I didn’t deserve him. Yet I wanted him so much. I felt an ache toward him unlike any other I’d ever known. Maybe it was my loneliness, or maybe it was the way his warmth managed to seep into the cold void at my center and wake things up I’d thought were long dead.
Days. It had only taken him days to show me how to feel again.
I wasn’t going to survive him. He was the storm I’d decided to lose myself in. As unstoppable and inevitable as a hurricane thrashing at the shell of the person I’d become.
He was more.
He was the first rays of sunlight that parted through the storm clouds. He was the rainbow after the rain.
Milo was going to destroy the hollow thing I was and leave me fragile and vulnerable as he offered me what I could become. A partner. A mate. A father. A family.
He wanted to give me a future, and I didn’t know how to take it. Didn’t know how to let myself have it and trust that it wasn’t going to disappear.
It hadn’t been long enough. I knew that. I knew it was completely irresponsible to trust him with my heart after so short a time, but I was finding I had little choice.
“I need to… I need to step outside for a minute,” I told him, feeling far too much and needing space to process it.
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” I answered quickly. “Sorry, Milo, no.”
“Why?”
“Because… I just… need some time alone.”
“Why?”
“To think.”
“About what?”
“Just… to think.”
I pulled my arm free from his hold and got to my feet. Milo followed me as I made for the bedroom closet to grab a coat. He snatched up the one I’d made him wear to the store. “You aren’t coming with me, Milo.”
“Yes I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Try to stop me.” He huffed. “Where you go, I go.”
“Milo, just… please.”
He looked at me, silver eyes flicking between mine as his brow creased in the center. “But you look so sad. I can’t let you be alone when you’re sad.”
Emotion burned up the back of my throat. I didn’t know how to be looked at the way he looked at me. How to be seen so much. “Yeah. Sometimes I’m sad, Milo. It’s just… me.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. So be sad here, with me. Just because you’re sad doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
That burning feeling bubbled higher until the heat and pressure of it built behind my eyes.
“It’s better if I’m alone,” I told him, my throat and voice strained.
“Better for who?”
I inhaled once, exhaled twice.
He continued. “If it’s better for you to be alone when you’re sad, then tell me honestly, and I’ll let you go. But if you think it’s better for me, then sorry, Rowan, but you’re not going anywhere without me.”
I fought to take in my next breath, my chest tightening too much. How was he real? How was he looking at me with so much desire still, when I was so close to breaking over something as beautiful as what he’d offered me?
“Tell me,” he said.
I swallowed heavily. What I should say and what I wanted to say were at war with each other. I was drowning, and I wanted to cling to him to save myself, and I knew that wasn’t right, but I was drowning.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I whispered.
He smiled softly as warm hands smoothed over my chest, my shoulders, up to my neck, and he pulled me down until my forehead pressed against his. “You aren’t. Not anymore.”
I made a sound I realized too late was a sob. “I don’t know how to be enough for you.”
He angled his head up until his nose brushed against mine.
“I don’t know how you could be more than you already are.
You’ve already given me more than I could ever want.
You brought me to your home and let me stay.
You mended my coat. You cared for me. You fed me.
You kept me safe, and you provided for me.
You teach me new things even though I know I annoy you sometimes.
” He huffed softly. “You saved my life, Rowan, that night we met.”
Tears trailed down the tip of my nose, and he rubbed them away with his.
“You saved mine too,” I confessed, another broken sound attempting to make its way out of me.
He pulled back slightly to look into my eyes, trying to find my meaning.
“That night, in the storm, I…” My throat burned. “I wasn’t going to come back.”
Tears welled in his, and I felt an overwhelming mix of guilt and relief at confessing it to him. Of finally saying the words out loud to someone. So that someone would finally know I wasn’t okay.
“That’s why she led me to you.” He smiled, pressing his lips to mine softly. “So we could save each other. Can’t you see it now? This is what we’re supposed to be.”
I couldn’t stop my tears, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to anymore. “I don’t know how.”
“That’s okay. Neither do I. We can learn together.”
I sniffed. “It won’t be easy, having someone like me as a mate.”
He chuckled. “That’s where you’re wrong. Accepting you as my mate is as easy as breathing.”
“What if you change your mind?”
“I won’t.”
“How do you know? You don’t know me, not really.”
“I do. I might not know all the details yet, but I know you. I feel you. You’re as familiar to me as my coat. More of a home than the sea. My goddess led me to you, yes, but I’m choosing you.”
My arms wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer to me, letting myself take in his warmth. I nodded. “Then I’ll choose you too.”
He smiled. “You’ll be my mate?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Milo. I want to be your mate.”
Milo grinned as his feet left the floor, and I caught him before he could knock us both over. “Then let’s go to our nest, so we can hold each other properly.”
The sadness inside me was deep and stubborn. I knew it wouldn’t leave just because Milo had decided to move right in beside it. But I wasn’t alone with it anymore. And that itself was just another way he’d saved me.
I took him back to our nest and lay with him on the blankets beside the fire.
For once, he didn’t talk or ask me endless questions.
He somehow knew exactly what I needed and just existed with me, giving me gentle touches and soft kisses.
He ran his fingertips over my arm and back, and nuzzled into that spot he liked under my neck.
And the storm passed. The feelings eased. And I drifted off to sleep beside him.