“He knew his wolf gifts weren’t okay, even if the rest of him was,” she said. “So not exactly a lie in that context, but Maggie, he hid something so important and deep. It feels like he’ll never show me his heart, not really.”
“Tell him that.”
“I just don’t understand him.” The words burst from her when she thought she’d said everything in her head. “I don’t understand how he could hide it when I asked specifically.”
For a few long minutes, Maggie ate. When her spoon clinked at the bottom of her bowl, she set it on the wood TV tray to one side of the recliner.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to suggest something, but you’ll have to verify it for yourself. I could be wrong.”
Kelsey nodded her on.
“When I knew I needed back surgery, I considered hiring a home health nurse.”
The absurdity pulled Kelsey away from their current topic. She cradled her bowl and stared at her aunt. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to come?”
“I knew you’d come. I knew the wolves would divvy up time slots and help me out whenever they could. I knew none of you would feel put out.”
“Then why?”
“It’s a big deal to expose your helplessness, Kelsey. There were days it felt safer to be helpless in front of a stranger than in front of y’all who love me. I’m not saying it’s right or healthy, but I wasn’t sure I could let you see me like this.” She gestured to herself in the chair, to the cane propped against it. “Whereas the home health nurse would pack up and go on to the next job.”
“I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.”
“You didn’t. That’s what I’m telling you. It had nothing to do with you. It was me, came from inside me. I froze up the first two times I tried to call you and ask for help. Stared at the phone and couldn’t make the call.”
“And…” Kelsey worked to reframe the conversation. Worked to fit Trevor’s“I’m okay”into the illustration. “Maybe he tried to tell me about losing his gifts, but he couldn’t get the words out?”
“I think it’s possible. Honestly, Kelsey, you’ve been apart for nine years. Maybe he needs to know you’re his, for good this time, before he’ll take the risk of opening up all the way.”
“Well, that’s just backward. How am I supposed to be his if hewon’ttake the risk?”
Maggie stretched her legs, gave a little wince and then a shrug. “So this might be your impasse. But again…I don’t see how you can decide until you talk to him.”
Talk to him. Again. Give him a chance to trust her. Again. Somehow she had to do this without getting her hopes up. Laughable, that. Trevor got her hopes up by striding into the room on his strong slim legs, by meeting her eyes with his warm gaze, by speaking her name with his rich honeyed voice.
She groaned and covered her face with one hand, managing not to forget the other held a bowl of half-finished chili. “How will I know?”
“Maybe see what he says before you try to answer that.”
“I feel like I’m going in circles now. I just want a clear path.”
“Oh, Kels. That’s one thing life doesn’t always give us.” Maggie chuckled. “Then again, if fate’s truly on your side, I bet you’ll know exactly what to do, as soon as you need to know.”
“Do not call Mom and Dad.”
“They’d want to know,” Ezra said.
“In a few days they will. Let them have their vacation. Come on, bro, it’s not that bad.” Trevor sounded convincing. Good. Because it wasn’t that bad.
The weakness had lifted after a few minutes. Some of it anyway. He had strength to walk, though he’d spent most of the cookout in a camping chair, compelled to let Sydney make his plate when he smelled her fear for him. He also had strength to tell her off.
“She just drove away, and you in this condition, and here I was thinking maybe she was actually your mate—”
“She is mine,”he had shouted through a surge of pain and defensiveness. No one would speak of his mate that way, not even Sydney, not ever again. Even if Kelsey never came back.
After that the wolves kept a loose perimeter, near him in turns. He gritted his teeth when he recognized the pattern. He was being treated like a pack member who needed protection. Like an injured wolf, like a pregnant mate, like a new mewling pup.
And Ezra became a burr on his shirt. By the time the pack broke up for the night, Trevor needed his brother to simmer the heck down. Or to go home and work some of his tension out among his bins and drawers of interlocking bricks.
