To the clinic?
Where she's guaranteed to see my face?
Fuck no.
My hands shake as I sign back to her.No. Can't.
I need the injections. Know I do. The pain's been getting worse for weeks, making it hard to sleep, hard to eat, hard to exist.
But I can't do it when it would skyrocket the chances of her seeing my face. Not when I'm already hanging on by a thread so thin it might snap if someone breathes on it wrong.
"Wraith—" Thane starts, but I cut him off with a sharp gesture.
Can't today. Can't.
Ivy's arms tighten around me from behind, and I feel her press a kiss to the back of my head. "It's okay," she whispers. "You don't have to do anything you're not ready for."
My chest cracks open at her understanding. No pushing. No demanding explanations. Just acceptance of where I'm at, broken and fucked up as that is.
I turn slightly, catching her eyes over my shoulder. My hands move slowly, carefully.
My M-O-M.
She tilts her head, watching.
W-I-L-L… Y-O-U… C-O-M-E?
Ivy's eyes soften, and she nods without hesitation.
"Of course I'll come." She squeezes me a little harder. "And then we'll come back here and watch more terrible movies and eat even more terrible pizza."
Hope flickers in my chest.
Maybe today won't break me completely after all.
When I finally fucking manage to calm down, she follows me to the car. Lets me get the passenger's side door for her. Takes my offered hand even if she doesn't need it to hop in.
Somehow, the complete silence between us on the drive to the care facility isn't awkward.
It's... comfortable.
Like she knows I can't handle words right now.
Can barely handle existing.
Her honeysuckle scent fills the SUV, cutting through the panic that's been crawling under my skin all day. Her hand stays wrapped around mine the entire hour-long drive, her thumb drawing small circles on my scarred palm through the leather of my glove.
Such a delicate hand in mine.
Soft where mine is rough and ruined.
The memory care facility is in a healthier part of Cedarbrook that hasn't been eaten away by the town's failing economy. I would rather my mother live closer to the pack house, but she would never agree to that.
Cedarbrook is her home.
The only home she's ever known.
I pull into the parking lot of the flower shop next to the care facility and cut the engine.
