46. Gideon
GIDEON
I sleep in my own room because Briar told me to, and sleep doesn’t come.
I lie in my own bed and resist the urge to walk the corridor, check her door or find a repair that will keep my hands occupied.
At one, I sit up. At two, I put my feet on the floor.
Both times I lie down again. Through the bond, I know she is sleeping one floor above me.
She asked me to stay put. I stay until morning.
Breakfast is set for four. Rhys discusses guest counts with me in a cool but civil voice.
Soren asks whether I completed the fuel order and accepts my answer without checking it.
Briar eats across from me while talking to Naomi about hearing dates.
When Rhys asks why the west-wing booking was moved, I answer him directly and show him the message on my phone.
When Soren says the repair roster is too full, I ask which jobs he wants deferred instead of choosing for him.
He moves two to next week and gives me back the page.
Briar hears both exchanges. She offers no approval, and I do not look for it.
After the plates are cleared, I remain in my chair until the others leave rather than taking refuge in a task.
Nobody sends me away. Nobody forgives me.
They expect me to sit at the table and tolerate both facts.
After breakfast I find Soren at the walk-in with the logbook. The compressor’s cycling too often. I can hear it from the door, a short-cycle stutter no cook should have to diagnose, and my hand is already reaching for the panel gauge on instinct.
“The compressor’s short-cycling,” I say.
“It can wait.”
“It may fail.”
“Then it fails while we finish this conversation.” He closes the logbook. I take my hand off the gauge. “You apologized last night. Today I want answers.”
“Ask.”
“When Lilah asked you whether she was allowed to want the severance.” He doesn’t raise his voice.
He never has. The kitchen register, flat, and worse than shouting by any measure I own.
“Did you ask whether she wanted us in the room? Did you ask whether she wanted to tell us herself? Did you ask what she wanted waiting for her after she survived?”
Three questions. I’ve had four years to prepare, and the preparation is worth nothing, because the honest answer was always going to be the same size.
“I asked none of it. I took one answer off her and built the rest myself.”
“That’s the pattern. You hear one need and decide everything else without asking. Lilah wanted the pain to end. You decided exile was the answer. Briar wanted the bond. You replaced her answer with your own.”
“I replaced her answer with my fear.”
“Stop polishing it. Fear you would have brought to the table. You decided your fear outranked her answer.” For the first time in all our years, he lets me see how angry he is.
“I held the log through every hour of her heat. Her readings never wavered. She reviewed the terms lucid the next morning. You had months of evidence that she could choose, and you ignored all of it because the answer frightened you.”
“I know.”
“Stop fucking saying that. Knowing changes nothing unless your behavior changes.”
“Then tell me the work you want.”
“Go to her office and tell her the whole plan before she has to question it out of you. Tell the panel the truth in your own voice. Do not submit another statement designed to make you look worse so she looks better. The panel will recognize it, and so will she. When someone is angry with you, stay in the room and answer instead of finding something to repair.”
My eyes go to the compressor. I can’t help it. Thirty years of practice go to the compressor.
“It’s running within range,” Soren says. “I checked. Leave it until this afternoon.”
I go upstairs without stopping to repair anything.
Her office door stands open. I knock anyway, because the open door is hers and the knock is mine.
“Come in.”
“May I sit?”
She points to the chair across the desk. I sit, then stand again. We have spent all winter negotiating across tables and speaking in professional terms. I do not want another apology delivered from the safe side of her desk.
So I leave the chair and go down on my knees beside it, on her office floor, in the morning light.
She looks up at that. Both eyebrows.
“What are you doing?”
“Groveling.”
“Gideon.”
“The word applies. I checked.” I did check.
Two dictionaries, at five in the morning, in a bed I was forbidden to leave.
To crawl low. To show oneself ready to obey.
The etymologies were unflattering, and none of them offered an exemption for pack alphas, so here I am, kneeling on a county officer’s rug.
My knees report that the floor is cold. My knees can file a complaint with the front desk.
“Of course you checked,” she says, and almost laughs.
“I’m going to tell you the full plan. All of it, before you have to ask.”
She closes the laptop. “Go on.”
“I filed when the gates opened because I expected the board to remove you. If it didn’t, I planned to ask you to leave.
If you refused, I had prepared the exact sentences that would make you hate me enough to go.
I expected distance to weaken the bond. I expected the charter to die and the summary review to clear your license without your testimony.
I decided Rhys and Soren would survive losing the lodge.
I decided you would survive hating me. I asked none of you. ”
“You were going to repeat Lilah’s severance with me, after I warned you.”
“Yes. You warned me, and I went ahead anyway.”
She gets up. She comes around the desk and stands over me, arms loose, reading me collar to hairline in a manner she learned from a cook. I stay where I am, knees on cold wood, and let her read.
“Do you understand why this apology can’t end with I love you?”
“Because loving you did not stop me. It does not excuse what I did.”
“Do you understand why punishing yourself is not an apology?”
“Because it lets me leave. The apology is staying and changing.”
“Then grovel properly, damn you.”
So I do, on my knees, in full, and it costs less than the lying ever did.
“I’m sorry I filed without telling you. I’m sorry I described your consent as duress and used your previous trauma to discredit your judgment.
I made you doubt what this winter was. You trusted me with your body and your no, and I broke that trust while fully lucid.
The correction is filed with all four names on it.
At the hearing I will state that you disclosed first, remained medically stable, and chose every part of the bond.
I will accept any restriction the board gives me.
None of that obligates you to forgive me. ”
Her mouth doesn’t soften, quite. “And what do you want from me?”
The dangerous answer is forgiveness. The true answer is worse, so I give her the true one.
“The chance to keep doing the work while you decide.”
“Do you expect comfort for this? Sex? A completed bond, because you knelt on a floor and said the right paragraph?”
“I expect none of them.” A breath. “I want all of them. I want you, and I want the completed bond. Your coat belongs on the second hook by the door. Your name belongs inside my charter. When we’re old, I want your face across the breakfast table, correcting me in front of my own staff.
Wanting it gives me no claim. But you asked, so there it is.
Every private thing I’ve no right to request today is still wanted.
It will go on being wanted at whatever distance you set. ”
Her eyes shine. Her voice doesn’t move an inch, and God, the discipline of this woman. I could kneel here a year.
“And what do you have a right to ask for?”
“Whether I may keep trying.”
“Then ask it properly.”
“May I keep trying to earn your trust, Briar?”
“You may. Don’t waste it. You may stand.”
I stand. My knees hurt from the floor. I would kneel again if she asked.
“I’m not ready for you to touch me,” she says.
“Then I wait until you invite me.”
“That might be tomorrow. It might not.”
“You decide.”
“That’s the rule.”
I’m at the door when she stops me. I turn back with my hand on the frame, and she’s already gone back to her laptop, delivering the last of it to the screen in the tone she bills at.
“Leave the compressor alone until Soren tells you to fix it.”
“He sent you a message.”
“He didn’t need to.”
I go down to the kitchen and sit at the table. The compressor short-cycles forty feet away. I leave it alone until dinner.