“Fuck,” Grey huffs out, his frustration evident. When I look up at him again, he’s running a hand through his hair, his jaw clenching tightly.
“Grey, relax,” Oliver says soothingly as he pulls me away from Grey and over his lap. His arms wrap around meprotectively as he kisses my temple. “It’s a lot to ask for forgiveness.”
“No, I forgave you,” I hurry to say. “That’s the thing, I forgave you for what you did. I told you, but I don’t know if I can trust you not to do it again.”
“For fuck’s sake, Princess,” Grey mutters with a mixture of exasperation and something else I can’t quite place, but I can’t bring myself to meet the hurt in his eyes again.
“You told me that you’re sorry for how I found out, but not for watching me.” The words hang in the air, heavy and uncomfortable.
“She has a point there, man,” Misha says quietly, earning a scowl from Grey.
Oliver takes a deep breath, his chest rising and falling against my side. “So let’s break this down. You’ve forgiven us, you want to be with us, but you don’t trust us.” His voice is calm and measured, trying to find the logic in this.
My logic.
“Yet,” Misha interjects with a glimmer of hope.
I nod slowly, feeling a lump form in my throat.
“That’s fair,” Oliver agrees, his arms tightening around me.
“Trust takes time,” Misha adds, and his sincerity makes my heart ache. “As long as you give us the time to earn your trust again, I’m fine with that. But believe us, Amelia, we will never again do anything that could risk losing you.”
I nod again and sniffle, feeling a tiny bit of relief wash over me.
“Come on, I think I have an idea that might help.” Oliver puts me on my feet and stands, taking my hand in his. He leads me to their home office, where the familiar hum of computers fills the air. Gesturing toward the monitors, he says, “Take a good look. Go through all our stuff if you want to. We’ve logged out of everything. We don’t have access anymore.”
“I can’t just look through your stuff,” I protest, turning to look at Grey and Misha who have followed us in.
Misha shrugs. “Sure you can. I have nothing to hide from you.”
Grey steps up to me, gripping my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “No secrets anymore,” he says before leaning in and giving me a peck on the lips.
I don’t like the idea of invading their privacy, but I reassure myself that I won’t look at anything personal. I just want to check what I saw when I first found out.
Maybe it will help.
Taking a deep breath, I start to navigate through the systems, ensuring that they’ve indeed logged out of everything. To my relief, they have. From what I can tell, there’s no backdoor either. But knowing them, there might be some I just can’t detect.
And they’d be back in there in no time if they really wanted to.
And I hate myself for thinking that.
When I’m done, I turn the chair and look up at them. “Thank you.”
“Do you want Jamie back?” Oliver asks softly, his eyes searching mine.
“We haven’t looked at him yet, but I saw that he made the emergency upload to the cloud,” Grey adds uncharacteristically gentle.
I hesitate, weighing my options. Jamie is something they could misuse, just as they already have. The thought of giving them anything that could tempt them makes my stomach churn.
I need this to work out.
“No… not yet, please.”
“Okay, just say the word if you change your mind,” Oliver says, reaching out to pull me up from the chair.
We walk back out to the couch, and Oliver tugs me to sit beside him. His arm wraps around me protectively as he begins to stroke my upper arm in soothing circles. Misha settles on my other side, his finger tracing lazy patterns on my knee over my sleep pants.
