Page 89 of Lavender and Lightning

“Is it that bad?” I ask softly, not sure I even want to know the answer, but unable to stop myself from speaking.

“In a word, yeah. It’s a tight race for who’s handling this the worst. Mateo won’t answer his phone, and only spoke to me because I was physically in the room with him this morning and he couldn’t pretend I didn’t exist. He’s canceled or rescheduled all of his meetings and appointments for the next month, and Lex is having a hard time explaining it away to clients, which is only making her more upset with him.

“Rhett, on the other hand, won’t leave the pack house. Any work he can do from home, he’s had delivered, and he’s taken over the formal dining room with it. He’s trying to hide it, but I know he’s been drinking and working out a lot, and he’s barely sleeping or eating. I’ll make him a plate before I leave for work, and it’ll still be where I left it when I get back.

“And Lex… I have no idea where she’s gone. Erica says she’s shown up for work, acting like nothing is out of the ordinary, but she doesn’t come home to the pack house. She’s not answering my calls, and her texts are unhelpful in the extreme. If anyone’s seen her, they aren’t telling, and…”

Lucas stops, looking at the ground, but his eyes are distant. I grip my leg tighter, my heart galloping in my chest. I’d expected the reaction to be bad, but this is so much worse than anything I could have imagined. My leaving should have helped them, not destroyed them. All of their problems stemmed from my involvement in their lives, or at least that’s what I thought.

“I’m not telling you this to try to guilt you into coming home, Lydia,” Lucas starts, his tone low.

I meet his eye as he looks up, and there’s something hard about his expression that I don’t like.

“You were right to leave, right about what you said. I’ve done everything I could think of to get through to those stubborn fucking alphas and make them realize their heads were too far up their own asses to see they were hurting you, not helping you. You deserve better than what we’ve been giving you,” Lucas goes on, voice deadly serious.

“And you don’t think Pack St. Clair can be better?” I ask, barely above a whisper.

Lucas sighs and rubs his eyes. “Honestly, Rhett, Lex, and Mateo are some of the best people I’ve ever met, and I know they can do better. But we fucked up, bad. It’s on them to apologize for what they’ve done, but after everything you’ve been through, I can’t say I would blame you for not wanting to come back.”

I blink at him, eyebrows nearly to my hairline. Of all the things I expected him to say, this wasn’t one of them. But Lucas has always been like this, willing to say the hard thing even if it hurts. And maybe that’s why my heart aches so badly. Because he’s right. I’ve seen so much goodness from this pack, so much kindness and selflessness, but fear has run this pack ragged. They’ve resorted to merely surviving, not living, and that is a struggle I understand more than they could ever realize. When you’re living in constant fear for your safety, things that would otherwise seem outlandish suddenly become perfectly reasonable. How often did I lie to Jason in those first few months, telling him I was going out and making friends, when in reality, I was spending my days behind locked doors and drawn curtains, terrified to step outside? Was withholding terrifying details about the level of Seth’s obsession with me that much different? They’ve been trying to protect me, even if their methods left something to be desired.

I’ve spent so long thinking that reasoning with alphas was an exercise in futility. Any time I’d asked for some control, an alpha shut me down. Growing up, that had been my father, using my mother to impose his will on me. The things they taught me warped my view of the world so badly that Darren had no problem tricking me into believing he loved me and wanted to take care of me. But what Darren and I had wasn’t love; it was toxic codependence. He needed me to feed his ego, someone he could tear down to make himself feel like a man. And I needed to please my parents, to gain their approval for once in my life that I willingly walked back into the arms of the alpha, who very well could have been my murderer.

But Pack St. Clair has never asked anything from me. They’ve offered me shelter, protection, a place inside their inner circle without ever expecting anything in return. Rhett has never asked for my body in exchange for his love. Mateo hasn’t ever withheld his heart from me on the condition of my unquestioning loyalty. And Lex… she’s never made me feel less than simply because of who I am.

Have I let my family ruin the one real chance I had for freedom?

“Is… is that what you want? For me to not come back?” I ask, trying not to let myself get washed away in the tide of my thoughts.

Lucas blinks slowly once before letting out an ironic bark of a laugh. “Fuck, no, that’s not what I want. Watching you leave and not chasing after you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. You’ve only been gone a few days, but it’s felt like an eternity,” he says, dropping to one knee in front of me, taking one of my hands in both of his as he looks up at me with wide, emotion-filled eyes. “I want you to be happy, and I know me and my pack can do that for you. But if that’s not what you want, if we’re not what you want, then…”

As his voice cracks and fails, his hands squeeze mine tight. Words fail me as I try to grapple with the weight of his words. Somewhere in the depths of my mind, on an instinctual level, I know that if I decided to get up and walk away right now, leaving this pack behind for good, Lucas would do everything in his power to make his alphas forget about me. He’d do whatever it took to stop Pack St. Clair from ever interfering in my life again.

But as I consider that option, of moving on with my life, the past several months becoming nothing more than a memory, I whimper at the pain in my chest. I could walk away, but I would never be free of them. They’ve done so much for me, changed me so fundamentally for the better that I don’t know if I could ever exist without them. I try to look back and remember what my life was like a year ago, back before fate decided to intervene, and I can’t picture it. How did I wake up in the morning and not share coffee with the most generous woman I’ve ever known? How did I get through a workday without the knowledge that the most amazing men would be waiting for me at the home we share? How did I sleep at night without their arms around me, their warmth keeping me safe from bad dreams?

How could I go on living without them beside me?

“I don’t want that, Lucas,” I whisper at last.

We look up and meet each other’s gaze at the same time, and the hope staring back at me makes my eyes burn with unshed tears. He smiles at me, and my whole world seems to get a little brighter. When he leans in and brushes my lips with his, I can’t help but smile.

“I… thank you, Lydi-bug,” he breathes, resting his forehead on mine.

“What for?” I question, a little dreamily.

“For not giving up on us, even if we’ve given up on ourselves.”

I kiss him again, intentionally pulling away before I can give in to the want starting to pool in my belly. Lucas steps back, letting go of my hand as he leans against the desk again.

“Do you want me to tell them?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I… I want to talk to them first. Mateo’s already apologized, but I need to hear what Lex and Rhett have to say before…”

Lucas hums understandingly. “If nothing else, I’ll make sure Rhett keeps kneepads at the ready, just so he can be prepared for when you do decide to come home.”

We share a laugh, and I smile warmly. While I didn’t understand it at first, I get why Caleb didn’t let me talk to Rhett that first day. I would have forgiven him too easily, and he never would have had the time to miss me and learn. Now, after days of nothing but having to live with the consequences of his own actions, I think he’s ready to listen and we can move forward together, better than we were before. Lex, on the other hand…

“I’ll admit to not looking all that hard for Lex,” Lucas says, reading my thoughts in my expression. “But I’ve got a fairly good guess as to where she could be hiding, if you were inclined to go seeking.”

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