Then it was just me and Andrea in the hallway.
“What happened in there?” she asked.
“She’s sick. It’s serious.”
“Okay. I’m here. Whatever you need.”
I looked at her hand on my arm, at her face, at the woman who’d dropped everything to be here for me, who was standing in a hostile hallway full of people who didn’t want her there because she loved me. My wolf was screaming at me. Every cell in my body was screaming at me. Tell her. Tell her right now. Fix this before it’s too late.
“You should go home,” I said. “I need to stay.”
“I can stay too. I don’t mind waiting.”
“No. Go home, Andrea.”
She kissed my cheek. I didn’t lean into it because if I leaned into it I would crack open, everything would come out, and I couldn’t let that happen.
She left. I watched her walk to the elevator, press the button, step in. The doors closed. She was gone. I stood in that hallway and felt the distance between us open like a wound.
I waited. Sat in the plastic chair Andrea had been sitting in, still warm from her body, and I pressed my palms against my face and tried to breathe.
The door opened twenty minutes later. Lorraine came out first, glowing. Mascara streaked, eyes bright, cheeks flushed. She crossed the corridor in three steps and threw her arms around my neck and tried to kiss me. I caught her shoulders and pushed her back before her mouth reached mine.
“Don’t.”
She pulled back, confused, but only for a second. The joy was too big for my rejection to dent it. “Finneas, I’m so happy. I’ve waited so long for this. We’re going to have the most beautiful wedding.”
She was already talking about venues, about dresses, about spring ceremonies, her voice running at a speed that told me she’d been rehearsing this moment in her head for years.
“We have so much to plan,” she said, grabbing my arm. “This is going to be perfect.”
Her mother came out behind her, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. Satisfaction, maybe. Or something colder. She put her hand on Lorraine’s shoulder. “Let’s give Finneas some space, darling. He’s had a long day.”
Lorraine squeezed my arm once more, beaming, and they left. The corridor went quiet. I sat in Andrea’s chair and stared at the closed door of my mother’s room and the antiseptic silence pressed in from every direction.
Three days.
I didn’t answer her calls. Every time my phone lit up with her name my chest seized and my hand reached for it and I put it back down. I read every text she sent.How is she? How are you? Call me.The words on my screen, worried, scared, loving, and I couldn’t respond because what would I say? What words existed for “I just agreed to marry another woman because my mother is dying and I’m too much of a coward to say no”?
I didn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face and my body jackknifed awake with the bond screaming at me to go to her. I didn’t eat. My wolf refused to shift, refused to communicate, locked behind a wall of silence that felt like punishment because it was.
Lorraine visited my mother daily. She held Margaret’s hand, cried at her bedside. It looked real. For once it looked real, and I hated that it complicated things because it would have been easier if Lorraine was a monster through and through.
On the third morning, in the car on the way to the office, Lorraine told me she was going to give Andrea the magazine personally. Casual. Delighted. “I thought she should hear it from us. From someone she knows. Isn’t that nice?”
My blood went cold. “I’ll handle it.”
“Oh don’t be silly, it’s already in my bag. She’ll be so happy for us.”
The elevator opened. She was walking onto the floor before I could stop her. Andrea was at her desk, and Lorraine was crossing the carpet with the magazine in her hand, and I was three steps behind watching it happen in slow motion, unable to stop any of it.
Andrea took the magazine. Her hands started shaking. I could see it from where I stood, the tremble in her fingers, the pages rattling. My chest crushed inward, and I had to clench every muscle to keep from crossing the floor, ripping the magazine out of her hands, telling her everything.
Lorraine kissed my cheek. Said something about wedding planning. And she left.
Then it was just me and Andrea and the magazine on the floor between us.
She screamed at me. Every word deserved, every curse earned. I took it with my jaw locked and my hands in fists at my sides because I deserved all of it. My wolf was slamming against the wall I’d locked him behind, howling totell her, tell her, tell her,and I couldn’t. Every true thing I wanted to say stayed locked behind my teeth:my mother is dying, I had no choice, I love you, I’m sorry.
