Chapter 29 #3
The door opens. Coach Ramirez fills the frame in a dark sweater, and he looks older than he did at the rink, the lines around his eyes cut deeper, the salt in his hair winning over the pepper. He looks at me for a long moment, and something moves behind his face that I can’t read.
“Miss Carver.”
“I think after all this you can call me Miranda.”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Miranda, then.” He steps in, hands behind his back, and stops at the foot of the bed. “How do you feel?”
“Loud. Everything’s loud.”
“That passes.” He glances at the mark on my neck, then away, and his jaw clenches. “I owe you an apology. You got caught in something you should never have been involved with. I shouldn’t have ignored Derek’s pain. I should have paid more attention.”
“You didn’t put the knife in anyone’s hand, Coach.”
“No.” His voice is even. “But I held a secret for the Council for a long time, and that silence is part of what made him do what he did. I’ll be living with that for a while.
” He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t push because Grayson has gone still beside me, and this is clearly a conversation the two of them have already had once.
“The Council,” I say instead. “Are we in trouble because of the mark?”
“No.” Coach’s eyes are steady. “They sent healers because I gave them no clean way to refuse. The marking happened without prior approval, which under the Accord is a capital matter for both of you.” He pauses there a second.
“But Derek’s crimes broke open something the Council would very much rather keep buried, and I made certain they understood I know it.
They’ve granted retroactive approval of your bond.
In writing. As of this morning.” His gaze holds mine.
“It’s done, Miranda. No one can touch either of you for the mark.
Not now, not later. You’re sanctioned, and the matter is closed. ”
The breath goes out of me. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” For the first time, his face softens into something almost paternal. “I want you two to be happy together, live a good life.”
Grayson’s hand tightens on my ankle, and when I glance at him, the relief on his face is so total it’s almost hard to look at.
He inclines his head, the audience apparently over. “Rest. Eat Linda’s soup, or she’ll have all our heads.” He turns for the door, then stops with one hand on the frame and looks back at Grayson. “Your brother would have liked her.”
Then he’s gone, and the room is quiet, and Grayson is looking at the empty doorway with his throat working.
“He’s never said that to me,” he says finally.
I tug his hand until he looks at me. “Come here.”
He stretches out on top of the blanket beside me carefully, his arm sliding under my neck, and I turn into his side and press my ear to his chest. His heartbeat is the loudest thing in the house now, and for once, I don’t mind the volume.
The small presence under my chest stirs, turns a slow circle, and settles toward him, toward the sound, like she already knows where home is.
“I’m yours,” I murmur.
His arms come around me, careful of ribs that no longer need the care. “You’re with me for life now. Are you all right with that?”
I lift my arms and wrap them around his neck and pull him as close as I can. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Grayson.”
He exhales against my throat, long and slow, and I feel something inside him let go for the first time since I opened my eyes.
We don’t get to stay like that for long.
The door bangs open because four-year-olds don’t knock, and Ethan comes through it at a dead run with a plate held out in front of him in both hands. There’s a single piece of toast on it, buttered corner to corner, cut into triangles.
“I made it myself,” he announces, climbing onto the bed without any regard for whose limbs are where. “Linda only helped a little.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s the best toast.” He settles the plate on my stomach with great care, then plants himself in the gap between Grayson and me, wedging his small body into the space until there isn’t any space left. ChuChu gets jammed under his chin. “Now everybody’s here.”
“That we are,” Grayson agrees, his voice gone rough.
Ethan looks up at me, his amber eyes enormous, a faint smear of butter already at the corner of his mouth. “Are you staying forever this time?”
The question is the same one he asked me the morning after I first moved in, when forever was a word I couldn’t give him. I think of my wolf, of the mark on my neck, of the man whose heartbeat I can pick out of an entire house.
“Forever,” I tell him.
He considers this with the gravity he brings to everything, then nods once, satisfied, and burrows down between us, his bear tucked under his chin, his toast forgotten on the plate, his father’s arm coming over both of us to hold us where we are.
The house keeps making all its noise around us, every floorboard, every tap, every far-off heartbeat. I let it. Somewhere in the middle of it, my own small wolf has gone quiet and content, and so have I, happiness flooding my soul.