When I saw that it was just her and me tonight, I almost jumped for joy like an obsessed teenage boy.
I have her to myself.
“Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to you earlier,” she murmurs, grabbing a glass from me. She picks up the other rag on the counter and begins to polish. “You were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s fine,” I grumble.
“No, it’s not,” she says, raising on eyebrow.
But that soft, playful look is still on her face, and it’s hard to stay frustrated.
I was pissed when I woke up this morning with a stiff neck and Ash purring loudly on my chest. Blair was nowhere to be found, but her scent was all over Ryland and Rowan.
When they told me they had dropped her off at her apartment, I was sick with jealousy.
Rowan has spent all day looking like he’s won the goddamn lottery, and Ryland has a goofy smile that hasn’t left his face.
My packmates are pleased, and that’s something.
“As long as you got home safe, that’s what matters,” I tell her.
“Thank you for last night,” she adds. “For giving me a place to stay and not judging me after what I told you.”
“You always have a place to stay with us. You’re always welcome,” I tell her.
She huffs. “Even if I knock over your trash cans again?”
“Knock ‘em all over, sweetheart.”
The pet name slips from my mouth, and her scent sweetens.
My inner Alpha rumbles in delight.
“I usually don’t run away from circumstances,” she adds quietly. She turns her back to me as she polishes the glasses, and I catch the way her shoulders hunch slightly. “That’s not who I am. I don’t run from things. I face them head-on. I don’t like that you saw me like that, Travis. I was weak.”
Her? Weak?
“You are not weak,” I growl, and she stiffens. She still won’t look at me, but she nods curtly. “You’re the strongest damn person I know. I admit a bunch of shit to you in the middle of the night, and you drop everything to help the cats. That’s not weakness.”
She turns back to me, her eyes slightly misty. “Yeah,” she croaks. “If you say so.”
“You want to talk about weakness? I’m the one that didn’t tell you about my packmates. I could say I did it because I didn’t want to overwhelm you, but I was scared as hell to.”
She furrows her brow. “Of what?”
I swallow. I don’t want to tell her this part. I’d rather keep it in for the rest of my life than admit what a coward I’d been.
“Ryland thought you wanted nothing to do with him. And if that were true and you found out he was my packmate, I thought you wouldn’t speak to me again.”
It’s part of why I wanted Rowan to stay away from her, too.
We had decided to leave the decision up to Blair if she wanted to reach out to Ryland, but I was selfishly able to still be around her.
Only Ryland and Rowan would suffer because of it.
She shakes her head. “You’re an idiot,” she says, surprising me.
“Wait. What?”
