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Just like that. One second she’s asleep, the next she’s looking at me with those hazel eyes that go sharp and alert instantly, no transition, just awake.
Her gaze drops to the pillow. To what I’ve left there. Her eyes go wider. Startled.
“What the fuck is this?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
June
“What the fuck is this?”
The words come out sharper than I intend, edged with something that sounds dangerously close to panic.
But seriously?
Roses.
Actual fucking roses.
Pink ones with petals that catch the amber light filtering through the motel curtains.
They sit on the pillow beside my head like an accusation, like a question, like something I don’t have the emotional vocabulary to process after everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.
My heart does something that feels like it’s trying to crack open and spill out feelings I’ve spent so long fighting to lock away.
Wraith stands beside the bed, and his face changes. Changes into something I don’t recognize. Something soft. Something that makes the anger I’m reaching for slip through my fingers before I can properly grip it.
“Calm the fuck down,” he says, but his voice doesn’t have its usual edge. It’s gentle. Patient. “I bought them for you.”
I stare at him. Then at the roses. Then back at him.
“You bought me flowers.”
“Yeah.”
“Roses.”
“Yeah.”
Dylan Mercer — Wraith — the man who spent our entire relationship treating me like a possession he could control and use and discard when convenient, just bought me flowers. Not expensive flowers from some fancy florist that he’d use to prove his worth or show his power. Just... roses.
Simple pink roses.
Laid beside me on the pillow in this shitty motel.
“Why?”
He shifts his weight, winces slightly, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Not too close. Giving me space. Respecting my boundaries in a way he never did before.
“I never paid attention to you,” he says. His eyes are on the roses, not on me, which somehow makes it easier to hear. “So I don’t know what your favorite flowers actually are. I stood in that pharmacy looking at the options and I realized I don’t know shit about what you like. What makes you happy. What matters to you.”
Something in my chest twists. Hard.
“But I bought these anyway,” he continues. “Because I want to show that I respect you. What you did today. It was insane. Threatening that vet, robbing that dealer. Completely fucking crazy.” He finally looks at me and there’s something in his grey eyes that makes my breath catch. “But it worked. You handled everything. You kept us safe. You kept us moving. And I appreciate that.”
Real, honest-to-god vulnerability from Dylan Mercer, who built his entire identity around control and dominance and never showing weakness.
And I don’t know what to do with it.
