Chapter 14
THE WATERFALL
DESTINY
I had not cooked since the cabin.
Not quite. Not with any real purpose. Not with candles burning on the table and something simmering on the stove long enough to fill the place with the scent of someone expected back soon. I had fed myself, naturally. Ate like someone who lives alone — quickly, without attaching meaning to the act.
But cooking was different.
Cooking meant believing someone was coming back.
For a long time, I had not believed it deeply enough to build routines around it.
I did now.
I began with what I knew he liked: chicken and rice, since Ty always finished them regardless of quantity, and greens, slow-cooked as Mama Mara taught, because she said people could taste impatience in greens — and I suspected she was right.
I even made the cornbread Larissa showed me.
It all felt oddly like training: sequence, timing, heat management. Each decision flowed into the next once I committed. I lit two candles in the center of the table without overthinking what they signified.
I was standing at the stove, finishing the greens, when I heard Ty’s key in the lock.
He came through the door the way he always did — calm, unhurried, carrying that steady energy of a man who never needed attention to prove he belonged. I heard him stop almost immediately after entering.
I didn’t turn around.
“Hey,” I said.
Silence stretched for a second.
Then his voice came low and careful behind me.
“Destiny.”
“Food’s almost ready,” I replied. “Wash your hands and sit down.”
He didn’t move right away.
I felt him taking in the stove, table, candles, and plates across from each other. I focused on the greens, afraid that turning around might break my nerve.
“You cooked,” he said finally.
Not suspicious or teasing me in any way. Just genuinely processing what he was looking at.
“Yes, Ty, I cooked.” I stirred the greens once more before glancing over my shoulder at him. “Now wash your hands and sit down.”
This time he listened.
I plated everything the way Mama Mara taught me — greens last so they stayed hot — then carried the food over and sat across from him in the candlelight.
He was already watching me, trying to analyze what was really going on, just as he looked at me late at night when he thought I was asleep. As if I were something he hadn't fully figured out and wasn’t in a hurry to simplify just to claim understanding.
“Eat,” I muttered.
That small real smile appeared immediately, the one that always started in his eyes.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We ate quietly at first.
“This is really good, Angel.”
“I know.” I smirked, then let that smile he loved so much spread across my face.
About halfway through dinner, I set my fork down.
“Jelisa came to the training room this morning.”
Ty’s fork paused midair before he set it down carefully beside his plate.
“Oh yeah?”
“I know you know,” I said. “I’m not bringing it up because I’m upset. I’m bringing it up because I’m done keeping parts of myself separate from you.” I held his gaze. “She said what she came to say. I said what needed to be said in return. Then she left.”
Ty stayed quiet.
“She’s not really the point anyway,” I added.
“What is?”
I looked at him for a long moment before answering honestly.
“Sometimes it takes realizing that somebody you love actually has options before you stop acting like they don’t.”
Something shifted slightly in his face.
“I’ve been treating your patience like it didn’t cost anything,” I continued quietly. “Like I could keep standing halfway behind a locked door forever while you waited there indefinitely.” I shook my head once. “And the worst part is, you would have.”
“I would have,” he admitted immediately.
“I know.” My chest tightened around the words.
“That’s what finally got through to me. You would’ve kept showing up every morning.
Kept making those terrible eggs. Kept loving me the same way, while I kept rationing out pieces of myself because I didn’t know how to stop surviving long enough to just… let somebody have me, completely.”
Ty sat very still after that.
Then, slowly, something eased in his expression. Weeks of careful emotional distance softened right before me in candlelight and over cornbread, and the truth was finally spoken out loud.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said quietly. “I need you to understand that you are it for me, Angel.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
“I know that now,” I admitted. “Or maybe I always knew it in theory.” I looked down briefly before meeting his gaze again. “Receiving it is what I’m still learning.”
Ty reached across the table then.
Just his hand. Palm up between our plates. Not demanding anything and not pulling at me. Just there.
I placed my hand in his.
“I kind of like you in that apron,” he said after a second.
I narrowed my eyes immediately. “Don’t make this weird.”
His laugh came soft and warm, and I felt it through the hand still holding mine.
We finished dinner like that.
We did not speak on the way to our favorite spot, the waterfall, just our fingers interlocked, taking in the warm night air.
I stopped at the water's edge.
The falls themselves were maybe fifteen feet — not dramatic, not a spectacle. Just steady. I looked at them for a moment. Then I reached for the hem of my shirt.
I undressed without making the decision available for discussion. Each item was folded and set on the flat rock at the water's edge. I waded in.
The water's warmth embraced me as always — full and instant, the pure warmth of something unconditional. I swam toward the falls, hearing the water swirl behind me as Ty entered, sensing his presence in the pool just as I did everywhere else.
I swam behind the falls.
The area behind them was tight—suitable for only two, with the rock face looming on three sides and the white water rushing in front, creating a curtain that blurs the distant world into indistinctness.
Ty came through the curtain behind me.
We stood in the water, face-to-face, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him in the enclosed space. His gold eyes began to glow, signaling Kai's presence.
I looked at this sexy man in front of me, water dripping from his black curls and slowly down his cheeks. I ran a finger down his chest.
"I was wrong," I said.
He was still.
“At the lake, my words were true, but I said them as if you weren't real, as a variable in an equation.
I realized I treated you as something I might lose rather than as something I already had.
I let it go on for weeks because I didn't know how to start the conversation.
I'm sorry for the time, the lake, and for choosing safety over you.”
Ty looked at me.
"I love you," I said, letting it be as big as it was. "I have loved you since the night you read me to sleep, and I have been managing it for a year because that is what I know how to do. I am done managing this one."
He had not spoken yet. He was giving me space to continue. He always gave me space to continue.
"I need to tell you something," I said. "I should have told you sooner, but I didn't because it is what has kept me behind the door. But it is time to open it completely." I looked at him steadily. "His name was Deon, a Beta."
"I was sixteen when Sage and I were separated. The worker I went to for help sent me to a group home. One of the bad ones. The workers there didn’t care that we were pups.
We were just unwanted and inconvenient. They made us earn everything, including a bed, food, and even the right to use the bathroom.
Everything was treated as a privilege. The girls who gave in got a bed.
I got stone walls, a bucket, and a concrete floor for two months.
” I swallowed hard. “Then I broke, and I gave in.”
Ty pulled me closer. “You were just a pup, Angel.”
“Not in their eyes. So, I spent two months surviving and selling designs when I could. Two months of running calculations every night about what it would take to leave. Sell three designs — maybe four, though I was already doing seven most months — and I would have enough to cover rent somewhere. Not much. Not comfortable. But mine. The outside gave me Deon.”
Saying his name still fueled anger inside me.
“Thirty-eight. Beta. He had a reasonable, cheap room in the city for three hundred a month with secure locks and private neighbors. He didn’t mind that I was a pup, as long as I paid on time. It was all good until it wasn’t.”
I took a breath.
"He told me he would be gentle and take care of me.”
The muscles in Ty's jaw flexed.
"He wasn't gentle, but he wasn’t any of the monsters I had known. He didn't beat me or leave any marks, and he kept me safe from the outside world.”
The shame I'd carried for years waited for judgment, but Ty gave me none.
"I had no pack, no family, no safety net, so I did what I had to. I told myself it was a transaction. Transactions aren’t personal.”
His hand tightened around mine. As if he already knew how badly I needed that reminder.
I looked away before my emotions got the better of me.
"It was survivable. I became skilled at avoiding full presence.
I learned to be present in the room while being mentally elsewhere.
I would retreat to a specific place—an imagined room with ideal lighting, sketches, and fabric samples covering every surface.
I would escape there and return once the moment passed. "
I paused to gather myself.
“When Sage presented purple, I knew immediately what she was. What predators would see. What they would want. We packed everything in one night."
I smiled faintly.
"We had a cabin two counties away. We had train fare. We had enough.”
Ty raised an eyebrow.
I nodded.
"My designs and her herbal products. All in a joint account. Emergency fund."
His lips twitched.
"I've always had contingency plans."
"Of course you did."