“And what does that look like?” It’s like she’s trying to torture us.Aren’t we saying all the right things? Aren’t we explaining ourselves properly?
Women always talk about wanting grand gestures, but they don’t know how to take it when you give them one. It’s pretty damn unrewarding.
But Alaric tries to give her more. Whatever the fuck she’s fishing for. “We want you to be our wife. We want you to be in our bed every night. We want you to care about us the way we care about you.”
“You care about me?”
“Fuck!” I shout. “Why are you making this so hard?”
“I’m not making anything hard!”
“You sure as hell are,” Gareth barks at her.
She glares. “I’m not asking for a lot here, guys. We’ve had a tumultuous relationship so far. You spent most of it trying to make me miserable enough to leave here and give you Ebron. Oh, not just that though, you’ve been trying to make me miserable while also peeing all over me and claiming me as your own, while not really seeming to like me in the least bit. If I were to guess at your feelings, I’d assume that you really want to fuck me, and that you don’t like the idea of Sevrin stepping into your territory, and that’s why you’re getting all weird now about what we are to each other. You didn’t really care about how I saw you before Sevrin.”
“That’s not true,” Gareth says angrily, but he looks hurt.
Alaric has the demeanor of a dog who's been kicked.
I just stare. That’s not how things have been between us, right? Our night together was everything. I’ve never felt that connected to anyone in my life. While I was holding her, I could picture our whole lives together. Marriage, her pregnancy, kids. Her, always in my arms.
“Just give us a chance to show you we want more than that,” Alaric says softly. “Can you do that?”
After a minute, she nods. “It’ll just take some time. We have a connection, but that doesn’t mean a lot without trust.”
Something inside me eases. “We do have a connection. Remember that.”
“We can earn your trust,” Alaric adds.
“We’ll work for it,” I say, and I mean it.
Gareth comes closer, kneels down, and brushes a kiss to her lips. “You’ll see.”
Our responses earn us a smile. “I can’t wait.”
We head for the door, and I’m sure my brothers feel as confused as I am. We have to earn her trust? How? More sex? How does a person… earn trust?
Outside the door, the Hollowborn leans casually, looking bored. Two guards have moved to stand at the end of the hall, watching him, and I wonder if they just decided to do it on their own, or if someone instructed them to keep an eye on him.
“All done?” he asks, smugness in his voice, and I really want to punch him.
He didn’t just get his heart ripped out. He wasn’t just told to do something impossible that makes no sense. Somehow, he’s already earned Harper’s trust in a much shorter amount of time. Not just her trust, but a place in her bed.
Pushing away from the wall, he heads towards us. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Harper.”
I don’t know what comes over me. He’s in my space, talking about my woman, and something just snaps.
My fist goes out and strikes him in the cheek. His head snaps back, but, somehow, he remains standing. He cricks his neck, like I didn’t just hit him with all my force, like he’s just stretching. As he continues forward, pushing past my shoulder,he says, “We both know that came from a place of jealousy. You get one of those. The next time, I do something about it.”
Then he enters Harper’s room, shutting the door behind him.
All three of us turn and look at the door, feeling helpless. The Hollowborn gets Harper. And us? We get left in the cold. All because we have no idea how to be the men she needs.
Our father taught us a lot, but not what we really needed to know. Not how to show the woman we love that we love her.
And that’s all we really need to know what to do right now. At least if we ever want to be happy.
9
