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His gray gaze snaps to me. “Why are you apologizing, Vee?”
“Because my grandmother was awful and twisted and she blackmailed your family…”
“No,” He growls and tugs me into his chest, wrapping his arms around me, burying his nose in my hair. I take a deep inhale of his scent, letting it soothe me. “No. You don’t apologize for her. She made her choices. She picked money over family and she is the asshole because of it, not you. Never you.” He kisses the side of my head. “Besides, my family is the one that went along with it, when the alternative was my pack’s happiness. They paid her off rather than let us be together.”
I press my lips to his chest out of instinct more than anything, the need to make my alpha feel better. A low purr rumbles out of him, equally eager to soothe me. “Why doesn’t Maxim like me?” I whisper the question.
It’s something I’ve always wanted to know the answer to. He didn’t have a problem with me until he learned my last name, who my mother was, who my father was. Until then, he tolerated me, a gangly twelve-year-old kid who hung out with his sons.
But once he learned who my family was, it was like a switch flipped and not to just general dislike for our lack of status or money. No, it was hate. Immediate and insistent.
The rest of the Werth pack isn’t like that, I don’t think. But they go along with most of what he says because he’s their Prime alpha. Not listening to him, not following his orders, can cause strained bonds that weaken over time.
Though you’d think that it would be more important that their sons be happy than to just blindly follow orders. But that is just me.
Jacks shifts, leaning his ass against the counter and taking me with him, so I’m all by laying on his chest. “I don’t know, baby girl. But I’m sure it’s not a good enough reason to treat you this way, to treat us this way.”
I nod, pressing my ear over his heart, listening to its strong beat. “You deserve so much better than this, Jacks.”
“So do you, Sylvie Grace.”
We stand there in silence for long minutes, wrapped up in each other, his purr rumbling out of his chest making me drowsy, and my eyelids droop. When they close entirely, I whisper a truth to him that absolutely terrifies me. “I want to forgive you so bad, Jacks. I want to forget the last seven years of pain and loneliness and just… be with you so fucking bad.”
His arms tighten around me for a moment, before he slides a hand up to grip my chin and tip my face toward him. His gray eyes are soft as his thumb strokes over my bottom lip. “I want that too, baby girl. But I want to earn your forgiveness more. I want to earn you. I want to deserve you.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him he does deserve me. What happened all those years ago was not his fault. Everyone was working against us. Should they have told me about Yasmin before that fateful party? Hell yes. But I can understand the need to have time for a proper conversation about it, to not just blindside me with that information and then leave me to stew with it.
If my grandmother hadn’t dragged me to that party—an act I’m now almost positive was orchestrated by Maxim Werth—I would have been blissfully unaware of what was happening until later that night, where we probably would have spent hours hashing everything out. I might have been hurt, but I’m fairly certain they would have talked me around to their way of thinking, and I could have talked them out of the two year time frame they’d settled on.
But Jackson’s right, she chose money over family, dragged me to that party and then immediately sent me away. Now that I think about it… She had that bus ticket to Alver City already printed. She didn’t leave the room before she gave it to me.
It was all an elaborate ruse to keep us apart.
And oh boy, did it work.
Guilt hits me hard and fast. If I’d just trusted my instincts, the ones that told me I needed to stick around long enough to hear them out, to have a conversation, none of this would have happened. Or if at anytime in the last seven years I’d actually followed through and looked them up, I would have known they weren’t with Yasmin. That their pack was incomplete.
But I’m a stubborn asshole.
“No, Vee,” Jackson murmurs against my hair. “Don’t do that. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
I pull back and look up at him. “How do you know what I was thinking?”
He gives me the softest, warmest look I’ve ever encountered in my life. The same one that he gave me last night, positively brimming with that l-word that is far too soon to be feeling. “Because I know you, baby girl.” His big hand cups my cheek, his thumb stroking along my cheekbone. “Even after all this time. I know your heart and I know the way you think. You’ve changed, sure. We all have. But at your core, Sylvie? You’re still the girl I fell in love with, the girl I’ll love until the end of my days.”
“Jacks,” I whisper as his hand slides to the back of my head, cradling it so he can dip down.
“Is this okay, baby girl?” He asks, hovering just over my lips, waiting for my permission. Breathless, I nod and his fingers tighten in my hair. “Words, Vee. I need you to say it.”
I understand where he’s coming from. He doesn’t want to do too much too fast. He doesn’t want to push me if I’m going to regret it later. But I want to be pushed just a little bit, otherwise my fear of heartbreak might keep me from making that leap with them again.
And if what I’ve learned recently has taught me anything, it’s that we all deserve a second chance at this.
So I need to be brave. Jackson needs me to be brave.
“Kiss me, Jacks.”
The words are barely a whisper and have hardly passed my lips before he’s tasting them. His tongue wastes no time sweeping into my mouth, tangling with mine, while his hand directs my head where he wants it. I melt into him, becoming pliable and heady.
