Although not the mark I would have wanted.
Her hand rises up to cover her throat. “We didn’t—”
I shake my head firmly. “We promised, sweetheart.”
Her nod is a little forlorn, and there’s a pulse of hope in my chest. Now that the heat is over, everything a little clearer, I pray that Gabrielle will choose to stay with us.
That our pack will be her choice.
After coaxing her forward so I can wash her hair, I bundle her up in the lilac bath robe Nate ordered, slipping the matching fluffy socks onto her feet. She points her toes, admiring the knitted pattern. “Oh, these are lovely.”
“Blame Nate,” I admit. “We’re all fairly useless at that sort of thing, but he’s definitely got the knack.”
I don’t mention the something else that’s waiting for her, carefully packed and stored in various boxes along the back wall of Nate’s room. He can handle that conversation.
She protests as I set her down on her bed and pull out a comb. “You don’t need to comb my hair for me!”
“But I want to.” I carefully section her hair, gently tugging at the strands to not hurt her scalp. “Let me look after you, Gabby. I need it just as much as you do.”
I catch her frown in the dressing table mirror opposite the bed. “I didn’t think of it like that.”
I kiss a patch of exposed skin at the base of her neck, enjoying the light shiver of her shoulders. “In this situation,needandwantare the same thing. Stop overthinking.”
She flushes. “Am I that obvious?”
I pause, my fingers running through the ends of her hair. “I know that part of you is frightened that all of this is just biology. That it’s not real. What can I do to show you that’s not true?”
Her eyes are damp when I glance up, our gazes meeting in the mirror.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “It’s hard to break the habit of a lifetime, Hudson.”
I continue working the comb through her hair, thinking hard. This feels like a precipice. If I say the wrong thing, I could push her away from us.
Tossing the comb down, I climb off the bed, circling around to face Gabrielle, and dropping down to one knee. Her lip wobbles when I take her hands. “Hudson—,”
“I love you.” My voice is firm, no hesitancy whatsoever. “Iloveyou, Gabrielle. You belong here, with us. And we belong with you. So if you decide to leave, to make your own way, I will wait for you. I will wait, and if that means that I’m sitting, gray-haired, in a rocking chair with an empty one beside me on the porch I’m going to build for us sixty years from now, then I will still wait. For as long as you’re ready, even if that means forever. I. Will. Wait.”
Leaning in, my thumb wipes away the tears from her cheeks. “The only one I want sitting in that chair beside us is you. You understand me?”
She stares at me, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
“And if you need to take some time for yourself…,” I force the words out, even though it feels like I’m smashing my chest wide open from the inside, “then you take all the time you need. We’ll be here. All of us.”
My eyes move to where Cade is watching us, his eyes dark as he lingers in the doorway of her nest. He nods, slowly, a tic in his jaw that tells me how happy he is at the thought of her leaving us.
But we’ll do it. Even if it kills us to let her go.
ChapterFifty
Gabrielle
Little hands stroke through my hair, incredibly gentle as they brush through it. “Pretty.”
I smile, my heart clenching. “You think so?”
Emery Grey circles back around, her unique purple eyes narrowed as she carefully considers my hair. Her eyes move to my outfit, a cute little dark red knitted number with thick woolen tights and gorgeous buttery brown ankle boots, courtesy of Nate and his inability to stop buying me things. The latest being a whole new wardrobe that we’re still battling over, but items still keep moving from his room into mine.
She nods seriously, and Molly laughs from where she’s watching us play hairdresser. “That’s a big compliment, coming from Em.”
