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“Is it something with me?” he asked, propping himself up on his elbow and hovering over me to get a better look at my face. “Marley, if I did something—”
“No, no, no,” I said quickly. “You didn’t do anything. I just….”
“Did someone do something to you?” he asked, his anger already flaring. “What happened? Did someone say something?”
“Down, boy,” I said, putting a hand on his chest. “No one has done anything or said anything to me. Just…if I tell you what I’m worried about, I’m scared you’ll try to use it against me, and I don’t think I can handle that right now.”
“Marley, sweetheart,” he said reassuringly, “I would never do something like that to you. You know I have nothing but respect for you.”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing a line across his collarbone. “Yeah, I know.”
He took that hand and started rubbing my palm with his thumb. “So, tell me what’s going on. Otherwise, neither of us is going to be getting any sleep.”
He lifted that hand to his mouth and kissed the ring finger where my wedding band and engagement ring nested together. A little reminder of who I was to him. A reminder that I was his wife, and he was my husband. That we were a team.
“Okay,” I said. “But you have to promise not to try to change my mind about things if I tell you. I only want to be supported and soothed. I don’t want to have my mind changed.”
“Alright,” he said. “No husbandly, solution-oriented mode. You got it.”
“And no opportunistic devil’s advocate,” I added.
“I am only here to listen,” he promised, his voice lowering to show he was serious.
I took a deep breath, meeting his pretty eyes in the moonlight as I gave it a few more moments of thought. Finally, I exhaled and said, “I’ve been having a hard time sleeping lately.”
“How long is lately?” he asked.
“The last week or so. Since we finally set a date to start gene therapy,” I admitted.
There was a brief pause, and he exhaled. “Ah,” he said. “That’s what you meant about not changing your mind.”
“I’m not getting cold feet!” I blurted, already feeling that wall of defensiveness snap up in response to his understanding.
“I know you aren’t,” he said, smoothing a hand over my back. “You don’t have to be second-guessing your choice to feel nervous about starting the process. I mean, we saw it with Travis firsthand. He was certain of what he wanted to do, and he was still scared shitless most times when he got his injections.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I acknowledged.
“Do you want to run your fears by me?” he asked. “So I can help you soothe them, and we can both get some much-deserved sleep?”
“If you’re tired, you don’t have to stay up for that,” I told him, feeling guilty.
“I’m not so tired that I’m going to let you stew in anxiety by yourself all night,” he said. “Come on. Let’s work through them.”
“Alright,” I said. “Well…I guess the thing I’m most scared about is that I’ll take the transition so poorly that I won’t be able to support the pack going through their gene therapy. And that you’ll be too focused on me to help them much, either.”
His face took on an expression that seemed like something was dawning on him for the first time. “Ah, so that’s what that weird conversation was.”
“What conversation?”
“A couple of days ago, Lana called me and told me that just because I’m an alpha doesn’t mean I don’t have to take care of my wife,” he said. “When I told her I agreed and asked her what she was talking about, she suddenly clammed up and told me she had to go and hung up.”
“Really?” I asked. “Did…did she sound drunk?”
“Does Lana ever sound drunk?”
“When you put it that way, I guess not,” I said. “And she does tend to drink wine when she’s stressed out. Maybe that was one of the nights she was working on the campaign.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Travis asked me today if we could host a party for Lana’s campaign at the office in New Middle Bluff. Still not sure when that’s going to happen, but I told him we’d be happy to do it.”
