I held back the retort and just said, “Joe.”
“Between the two of you?” Mark asked.
“No. Well, yes, that too. But that’s not what I meant. Between all of us.”
Mark chuckled. “Of course that’s what you’d be thinking of. Everyone else but yourself.”
“It’s my job,” I said.
“That may be,” Elizabeth said, “but there’s a time to be selfish, Ox.”
“I can’t,” I admitted. “Not yet.” I hated those two words more than anything.
“You’re angry still,” she said, touching my arm.
“It’s not something I can just get over.”
“But you have already,” Mark said. “With Gordo. Carter. Kelly. Maybe not completely, but you’ve started.”
“And?” I asked, trying to play dumb. “That has nothing to do with—”
“Why should Joe be any different?”
“Because he is different.” It was petty, but I didn’t like feeling cornered. “He’s not the same to me as everyone else.”
And they knew that. But they’d also talked to him since I’d been back. Every day. They went back and forth between the old house and the main house. They spent the day with him while I was at work with the rest of my pack and Gordo. They hugged him, they touched him, they listened to him breathe. They didn’t wake up from nightmares where Joe was gone again, that he hadn’t said anything, he’d just been gone like he never was at all—
“You’re not dreaming, Ox,” Elizabeth said quietly, and again I wondered just how connected we all were. Because sometimes I thought they were always in my head. “I know it seems like you are. The edges are fuzzy and you can’t quite make sense of what’s happening, but I promise you, this isn’t a dream.”
“What do you talk about?” I asked, not looking at either of them. “When I’m not there.”
Mark sighed. “Not much. Carter and Kelly do most of the talking. Joe… doesn’t say very much.”
I felt guilty at that, even though I didn’t know if I should have. Apparently, he’d been like that for a long time now. I didn’t know what else had changed. I didn’t know how to ask.
“I have to let this go,” I said. “But I don’t know how. I’ve tried. I have. It’s killing me to know he’s right there and I’m not doing anything about it.”
“Then do something,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve never been indecisive before, Ox. Don’t start now.”
I snorted. “That’s bullshit. There’s plenty of times I haven’t been able to make a choice.”
She slapped me upside the head, and I glared at her. “Fix this,” she said. “Before I lose all my patience and take care of it myself. You don’t want that to happen.”
“You really don’t,” Mark said. “She’ll become like a little gnat, always buzzing in your—”
“Don’t even get me started on you,” Elizabeth said. “You’re in the same boat, Mark, I swear to god. You just wait until this is finished, and I’m going to start on—”
Mark raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, all right. All right. I hear you.”
“Either end it or don’t,” Elizabeth said to me after glaring at her brother-in-law. “Forgive him or don’t. Just don’t make him wait. It’s not fair. To either of you. Men. Useless. All you do is make things difficult just because you can.”
“Could a pack have two Alphas?” I asked, trying to distract them.
She narrowed her eyes at me, knowing what I was doing. But she allowed it. “Who’s to say we couldn’t? We already have a human Alpha. We’re not exactly orthodox here. We never really have been, even when we were supposed to be. There’s tradition, and then there are the Bennetts.”
I was still learning that. “And if I say no,” I said slowly. “If I rejected him. If I kept the packs separate.”
“It would be your choice,” Elizabeth said. “And we would know you thought you were making the right one.”
“But you wouldn’t agree.”
“Maybe,” Mark said. “Maybe not. But it’s not about that. You have… instincts we don’t.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“True,” he said. “But our instinct is to trust you to make the right decision for the pack.”
“Even if you disagree?”
“Even then.”
“That feels like I’m controlling you. That you’re not getting a choice in this.”
“We are,” Mark said kindly. “We chose you.”
“They’re your sons. Your nephews.”
“And you’re our Alpha,” Elizabeth said, eyes flaring orange. “This is the way things are.”
This wasn’t how I wanted things to be. “I don’t want to come between you.”
“You couldn’t, even if you tried,” she said.
And that was that.
HE WAS waiting for me on the dirt road.
Looking hopeful. Scared. Angry. Tense.
Because I’d talked to all of them. Except him. And he knew that.
I was tired. Of all of this. Something had to give. And it needed to be from me.
I just needed to find the words.
I reached him, and I knew he thought I was going to walk by. Maybe say not yet again, throwing those words back in his face like I’d been doing since he’d come home.
His shoulders were already starting to slump.
So I said, “Hey, Joe,” and hoped it was a start.
He was startled. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. He made a growling noise deep in his chest, a low rumble that made my skin itch. It was pleased, that sound, like even just me saying his name was enough to make him happy. For all I knew, it was.
It cut off as quickly as it started. He looked faintly embarrassed.
I scuffed my foot in the dirt, waiting.
He said, “Hey, Ox.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “Hi.”
It was weird, that disconnect between the boy I’d known and the man before me. His voice was deeper and he was bigger than he’d ever been. He radiated power that had never been there before. It fit him well. I remembered that day that I’d really seen him for the first time, wearing those running shorts and little else.
I pushed those thoughts away. I didn’t want him sniffing me out. Not yet. Because attraction wasn’t the problem right now. Especially not right now.
I cleared my throat, and he looked back up at me.
Our eyes met like a car crash, colliding and breaking away.
It was awkward in a way it’d never been before.
But it was something. More than we’d had in a very long time. I couldn’t help but think of the single kiss we’d shared, the driest brush of his lips against mine as we lay side by side. I will come back for you, he’d said, and hadn’t I believed him? Hadn’t I believed every single thing he’d told me?
I had.
And he had come back. Like he said he would.
It’d just taken longer than we thought.