Page 23 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

I have to fix this.

My wolf stirs with the same desire to claim her. To make the official promise that I won’t let a soul harm her again, even if I don’t deserve that right.

Despite everything, I can’t let her go… I don’t want to let her go.

I want to earn back the trust I destroyed, and to see her look at me without that flicker of wariness in her eyes. I want to hear her laugh, and to learn who she’s become in the years since I left, what she loves, what she fears, and what gets her out of bed in the morning.

I want to know her, and I want her to know me—the real me this time.

It’s going to take time and effort, but for the first time in years, I’m willing to try.

Pushing off from the railing, I turn back toward the house while my resolve hardens with every step.

I need to apologize again, but properly this time, and without fumbling.

I’ll make her understand that things are different now, and that I’m different now. I’m not a frightened child. I’m a man who has grown and now knows how to face the impossible. If it really is fate that’s been pushing me in her direction all along, then so be it. I’ll stare it down directly.

And maybe, if I’m very lucky and work harder than I’ve ever worked for anything before, maybe she’ll believe me someday.

Chapter 7 - Tessa

The house is far quieter than I expected it to be.

Standing at the window for the fourth time in an hour, I watch the tree line with the hope that it might bring me some clarity. The late afternoon light comes through in beautiful beams of warm light, and I hate that I notice it at all.

There shouldn’t be anything beautiful about this situation. I was taken like something he misplaced and finally remembered to retrieve, and now he won’t let me go.

My reflection stares back at me in the glass, pale and visibly miserable, and I look away before I have to confront it for too long.

I’m angry, which should be the only thing I feel, but underneath the anger is something humiliating, squirming around in my chest, and it feels too much like relief for my comfort. I resent it completely.

When the door opens, I don’t turn around.

Still, I hear the weight of Hunter’s boots on the floor, and the silence that follows him like a shadow. Hunter moves the way predators do, like every step is deliberate and calculated. Even when he isn’t trying, he takes up the air in a room. I’ve been aware of that since I was a teenager and too stupid to understand why it disturbed me so much.

I keep my eyes on the tree line and silently hope he moves on quickly.

“You never left the room.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.”

As if I had a choice, I think to myself without airing it out directly.

Biting the inside of my cheek instead, I keep my shoulders squared and my spine straight. I try everything I can to not fold inward like my body always does when Hunter enters a room. That reflex has been conditioned into me over years of silences that stretched just long enough to mean I wasn’t needed or wanted. My body learned to make itself smaller before my mind even registered the threat.

I hate it, and I hate the fact that it’s still there, more like evidence of something I was never brave enough to stop.

Instead, I make myself turn around.

Hunter is standing just inside the doorway with his arms loose at his sides, watching me with that expression I’ve never been able to read. His blue eyes are more intense than ever, and his jaw is sharper than I remember from when we were young. He has the kind of face that has been through things and came back without softening.

He doesn’t move toward the kitchen or the stairs like I expect him to. He doesn’t move at all, and just looks at me, steady and certain.

Feeling the irritating pressure of being under his gaze, I lift my chin and refuse to be the one who looks away first.

Finally, he breaks the silence and murmurs, “You’re not going anywhere.”

He says it like it’s already been decided, and he’s simply passing the message along to me.