To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

PART III

Chapter 22

It’s been five days since Slate has been home and Gray hasn’t seen him.

The first day she could understand that he wanted to be with family, they’d had to travel a long time to get home, she got it–barely, but she got it. Another day passed and Gray barely resisted ringing Sara every hour on the hour for an update. Space was a concept, yes, she understood.

The third day she finally did call Sara, only to be told that Slate just wanted to recover at home with family. Okay…somewhat painful to hear, but Gray could understand. He’d been gone for five weeks, three days wasn’t nearly enough to recover.

The fourth day, she’d called Asher, who’d sounded reluctant when he delivered the same news, that Slate wanted to be with family for a while longer.

The fifth day, Gray was pretty confident that this was no longer just about “wanting to be with family”. The Slate she knew would be suffocating if he’d had to spend five days underneath his family’s thumb with no time to himself. Squashing down any doubts about her rightful place in the family, Gray marched right over to the big Atwood house and knocked firmly on the door.

It’s the alpha who answers the door, a tired smile on his face when he sees Gray. “Ah, Gray. It’s been too long, how are you?”

Gray manages a smile, but it’s tight. She tries not to crane her head around to see if Slate is somewhere behind him. “I’m good. Is Slate around?”

Alpha Atwood sighs and tells her, “I tried to tell him he needed to talk to you, but he’s stubborn when he wants to be. He finally broke down and begged–in his own way, of course–to go home, but Sara categorically refused and you know Slate can’t deny Sara anything.”

Gray frowns. “So where is he now?”

“They just took him to Sara’s this morning. Just…go there, he won’t turn you away if you go there,” he promises.

Gray looks at her shoes, scuffs the porch a bit, then eventually ventures, “Do you…do you really think I should?”

When she looks up again, the Alpha is smiling tiredly. “I do. Go, he’ll be glad to see you. He might not act like it, but he’s been worried about you, it’ll be good for him to see you.”

“Worried?”

The Atwood patriarch purses his lips for a short moment before sighing and relenting. “I know you know how he is, Gray. He worries about everyone but himself and his hypervigilance is worse than it’s ever been. The truth…the truth is that he’s terrified. Maybe not for himself–but for you? Absolutely. He is scared out of his mind that something is going to happen to you, or Sara and the baby, or Raven or–any of us. And he needs us right now. So please, go be with him. He might try to push you away, but I’m asking you to remember that he needs you. Okay?”

Gray is already nodding before he finishes, resolved. “Okay.”

:::::

This time, it’s Jason who opens the door. When he sees Gray, his face goes through myriad expressions and settles on something she can’t interpret.

Before she can say anything, however, he puts a finger to his mouth and steps outside with her, closing the door behind him. “He’s sleeping,” Jason whispers.

Gray’s brows fly up, shocked.

In the same quiet tone, he explains, “Probably won’t be for another fifteen minutes, thirty if we’re lucky. I don’t think he’s slept more than an hour at a time since he’s been home.” Then he turns and opens the door, stepping through and speaking almost inaudibly. “Come on in, we’re just having lunch–but, maybe just bond communicate with Sara and Asher. Slate’s really…well, he doesn’t do well with being startled.”

Gray frowns, but nods in agreement. She half expects Slate to be sleeping on the couch in the living room so he can keep an eye on everyone even in slumber, but the couch is empty–he must be in one of the bedrooms. Jason and Gray find Sara and Asher both at the little round table in the kitchen.

When Sara sees her, her blue eyes immediately fill with tears and she rounds the table quickly to wrap her arms around Gray. He’s back, Gray, Sara sends through the bond. We’ve got him back.

Gray feels tears of her own prick her eyes. She gives Sara one last squeeze before they let go. How is he? Really, Gray asks worriedly, round eyes searching Sara’s face for any good news.

When Sara hesitates, Gray knows it’s bad. She knew it wouldn’t be good, no one expected that, but there are a lot of degrees of bad and she has a feeling Slate is currently on the severe side of that slippery scale.

He’s…alive, Sara starts. And he’s happy to be home. If he’d been there much longer…

Sara doesn’t have to finish the thought for Gray to know exactly what would have happened if he’d been there much longer. At that moment, there’s rustling from another room in the house. Sara holds her breath for a moment, as if waiting to see if Slate will settle back into sleep or if he’ll force himself awake. The rustling doesn’t stop.

Gray startles when Jason touches her shoulder, having had her eyes fixed on the doorway Slate would come through to enter the kitchen and living room. “I’ve got to go check his bandages and then he’ll be out, okay?”

Gray blinks. Bandages? What had they done to him? Her heart sinks and the glassy sheen returns to her eyes.

Asher is the next to touch her shoulder, guiding her to the living room to sit and wait. He’ll be okay, Gray. He’s in a lot of pain right now, but he’ll…heal.

Gray doesn’t miss the hesitation, but Asher shakes his head when Gray starts to ask him about it. He leads her to the couch and gently pushes her down, sits next to her, and makes room for Sara on his other side. There are two armchairs leftover for Slate and Jason.

Sara flicks on the TV for some normalcy, but they all three know the others are listening to what’s going on down the hall. Slate and Jason are, presumably, speaking through the bond, because they hear no words, just the sound of movement and clothes–and bandages–sliding across skin.

Soon enough, there are footsteps coming down the hall and Gray can’t help but hold her breath, body tensed and unabashedly staring at the doorway, willing Slate just to be here. There’s a part of her that won’t believe he’s safe until she sees it with her own eyes.

Gray’s eyes flick right past Jason when he emerges first because then there’s Slate. Tears immediately start streaming down her face and her body shakes with the tears because he’s just so…he’s so…he’s hers.

That’s the feeling that comes to mind. This person is hers and she’d missed him like a missing limb and he’s here!

She leaps to her feet and closes the distance between them in a fraction of a second, about to launch herself at him and wrap her arms around his middle and squeeze him to death when…he catches her. But not against his body, he…he stops her before she can really reach him. Her little cries pause in confusion, but soon enough, he gently takes her arms and wraps them around his shoulders and cradles her so, so gently against his body so their chests are barely touching. Distracted again, she tightens her arms around his shoulders involuntarily, like she’ll die if she can’t feel him solidly under her. She steps forward so their bodies mold together.

She breaks down sobbing into his neck, whole body trembling. She’d never missed anybody like she’d missed him. For three years, she’d missed and longed for her siblings, but that was different. She’d had to believe they were okay on their own, they would be okay without her, that they’d had each other, and…there was always the thought in the back of her mind that she’d be able to find them again someday. That one day soon, she’d be able to come back to them and they’d all be a family again.

With Slate, there was the terrifying and very real possibility that she’d seen him for the last time that day, that he’d die because of her, because he was protecting her. The most exquisitely painful thing, though, would have been all the unrealized futures they could have had together. All that beautiful, hard earned, hard fought potential all dashed in a day.

She couldn’t have lived with herself.

When she finally comes back to her body a bit, she feels how tense he is. He’s rubbing her back soothingly like nothing is wrong, but his body is all hard and he’s slightly bowing his torso away from hers. The word bandages abruptly pierces her subconscious and she practically leaps away from him.

Before she’d quite literally thrown herself at him, she hadn’t even really looked at him, just had the unquenchable desire to touch him. What she sees now sends her back into quiet crying. She knows he’s got to hate people breaking down at the mere sight of him, but he’s just, he looks so…dead.

His hair is limp across his forehead and longer than Gray had ever seen it. His usually golden tan skin is blue-gray like a…like a corpse, and his eyes are dull. His cheekbones are too prominent, the cheeks underneath them hollowed slightly, and his clothes don’t hang the way they should. He’s not skeletal, he wasn’t gone long enough for that, but the starvation had to be severe for him to look like this after only five weeks.

Five weeks. She can’t believe it was only five weeks. It felt like years.

Finally her eyes slide down his torso and across his hands and she stops breathing altogether. Each of his fingers is bandaged, and one of them…one of them is much shorter than it should be. She covers her mouth with a hand, horrified.

They’d cut off a finger?

She feels like she’s going to be sick.

Slate’s sigh snaps her out of her spiral of horror and she darts her eyes up to meet his gaze once more, though she’s sure her eyes are as wide as saucers and cheeks still tracked with tears. She is quite literally incapable of keeping her emotions to herself at this time.

His shoulders have lowered ever so slightly and he’s leaning to one side. Hunching, almost. As though trying to take the pressure off the other side.

He says his first words. “I missed you.”

Gray starts sobbing anew, burying her face in her hands and desperately trying to get herself together. She knew she’d be emotional when she saw him again, but she didn’t know she would feel this much all at once. I missed you, he says, like it’s nothing. I missed you, he says, like he doesn’t know how that will crush her and build her up all in the same instant. I missed you, he says, the man who never lies.

She loves him.

“Gray,” he murmurs, hands lightly grasping her wrists and pulling her hands away from her face, forcing her to look at him. His eyes are tired, but soft. “I’m okay,” he says to her impossibly. “We’re going to be okay.”

“Are you?” is what comes out of her mouth, unbidden.

She realizes she’s terrified. Terrified that he’s different, that he won’t be the same Slate who would listen to every dramatic, ridiculous thing that came out of her mouth with patience, who would fold her into his arms when she didn’t know she needed it, who was unbearably kind and unbelievably strong. She’d still love him, she loves every version of him, but can he love her anymore?

He ducks his head to look her in the eyes. The gaze is firm, unyielding, and a message that he sees right through her. “Yes,” he says aloud and in her head.

She gasps at the sound of his deep bass in her mind, feels it like an embrace. Without meaning to, she finds herself nodding, whispering desperately, “I missed you too.”

He nods, kisses her temple. “Come on,” he murmurs, taking her hand and leading her to the couch. She grips his hand tightly at first, afraid to let go, but because her eyes are glued to his every movement, she sees the way he goes rigid and abruptly remembers the bandaging on his hand. She tries to release him like he’s burnt her, but he holds on and gives her a look out of the corner of his eye. The meaning is too hard to parse, so she just decides to be grateful for the allowed contact.

When she can manage to drag her eyes away from him, he sees that the house’s other occupants have reconfigured and are talking quietly amongst themselves, TV on as background noise. Now Asher and Jason are on the armchairs and there are two seats open next to each other on the sofa next to Sara. Gray, having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that she’s going to have to let go of Slate eventually, decides to be grateful again.

Gray takes the spot in the middle, leaving Slate to lower himself gingerly next to the arm of the couch. The way he’s breathing in careful rhythms suggests, counter to what it would in most people, that big movements are painful and he’s putting effort into not betraying his discomfort.

Gray curses herself for not thinking to heal him. She takes his hand immediately again and starts to pull in the pain. Her problem, she realizes very quickly, is that she underestimated just how much pain he was in. The minute it starts to funnel in, she inhales sharply at the bursts of pain down each hand, deep in the chambers of her ribs and side, and a dull ache everywhere else.

It’s there only for a fraction of a second, because Slate rips his hand away from hers violently the second he realizes what’s happening. “Wait, Slate, I just–” Gray hurries to say.

“No,” he says with a clenched jaw, meeting her gaze with a hard stare. “No.”

“If I could just–” She tries again, desperate to help him.

“No,” he says aloud and through the bond. “Not me, Gray.”

She stares helplessly. “But–”

“Gray,” Asher murmurs, forcing her to drag her eyes away from Slate’s now heavily guarded stare. “Let it go.”

Her mouth stays open for two seconds more before she feels she has no choice but to stay silent and she sinks deeper into the couch feeling chastened. There’s no worse feeling than knowing you can help someone and not being able to do it.

Then a brief knock precedes Forrest, Sage, and Raven into the little house. With all six Atwood siblings, Jason, and Gray, it’s a full house.

“Slate!” Raven exclaims right away with a gap-toothed grin. He gets a running start and launches himself toward Slate, causing Gray to hold her breath in horror at the immense pain this is going to cause, when Asher appears to save the day. He darts forward to catch Raven midair and swings him around, making airplane noises.

“Asheeeeer,” Raven exclaims again through giggles. “I want to say hi to Slate!”

“Okay, okay,” Asher says with exaggerated exasperation. “I see how it is, Asher is just chopped liver.” Nonetheless, he gently places Raven in the small space between Gray and Slate. Gray scoots a bit closer to Sara to make room.

Raven, of course, is blissfully unaware of the purposeful interventions being made and wastes no time scrambling right into Slate’s lap. Gray holds her breath again, compressing her lips in worry when she sees Slate hold his breath and brace his body against Raven’s clumsy movements.

“Raven–” Asher begins, stepping forward to lift him again.

“It’s okay, Ash,” Slate interjects, gingerly raising his arms to wrap around his little brother. He musters a convincing grin and a wink for Raven. “Ray’s good, I missed him too much.”

“Yeah, you missed me most, right?” Raven asks slyly.

Slate laughs, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. His body is still tense everywhere though his arms hold Raven gently, soothingly. “Maybe I missed Sage most, how about that?”

“Yeah, he missed me most!” Sage crows, having settled on a kitchen chair he’d dragged into the room with Forrest. He sits on the edge of his seat like he wants to launch himself at Slate too.

Raven clutches Slate around the neck possessively. “No, he didn’t say that, he was teasing!”

“But he–”

“Alright, alright,” Slate interrupts, prying Raven’s hands from the chokehold around his neck. “I missed everyone the same.” Then squints his eyes at Raven. “I just didn’t miss losing to a little squirt in Go Fish everyday.”

Raven laughs with his head thrown back, obviously drinking in the feeling of just being present with his brother, hands now fisted in his shirt. “Don’t worry, I beat Dad while you were gone, but it wasn’t the same.”

“But he lost candyland to me,” Sage tosses in, sitting impossibly closer to the edge of his seat.

Slate carefully stands, taking Raven with him, body mechanical and stiff, and goes to sit against the wall on the opposite end of the circle, under the TV. Asher jumps to his feet to grab Raven from Slate, but Raven clings tighter to Slate and Slate shakes his head.

“Slate,” Jason says warningly, “you should sit down.” This sounds like a conversation they’d had a version of many times already.

“I am,” Slate says, lowering himself painstakingly to the floor, placing Raven on his crossed legs. “Come here, Sage.”

When Slate lifts the hand not around Raven’s back, Sage wastes no time in diving right under it. He manages to curb his momentum some so as to not knock Slate right over, but Gray can see Slate close his eyes in pain and grit his teeth after the boy impacts with his ribs. Still, amazingly, sadly, heartbreakingly, his face clears completely into something joyful by the time Sage looks up to meet his brother’s gaze with a grin.

“Slate,” Jason warns, firmer this time. “You need to be–”

“Jason,” Slate grinds back, “it’s fine.”

Jason looks like he’s about to press the point when Sara takes his hand, getting his attention and shaking her head at him. Don’t push it, she seems to be saying. Jason sees her, clenches his jaw, and shakes off her hand, standing up. “Sage, Raven, how about you go lie down in the back room with Slate.”

“Aw, but I wanted to play games!” Raven protests, looking back up at Slate for help.

Slate, for his part, looks off to the side, gaze guarded, face inscrutable, for only a moment before he sighs and nods. “Alright, how about this: you two go wait for me in the back room for a minute while I get Sara’s iPad and we can take turns playing games or watching a show while we lay down. How’s that sound?”

It’s not really a question, and the younger boys seem to sense that. Raven lifts and drops his shoulders in a longsuffering sigh, but relents. “Okay, but I get the first turn picking a game.”

“Fine with me,” Sage shrugs. “Just means I get to pick the show.”

Raven narrows his eyes at his brother, but decides to agree to the negotiation after all. “Kay. Let’s go!”

And the two boys go tumbling down the hallway, thick as thieves. For all the seven years between them, they seem close. Sometimes Sage seems younger than his thirteen years, but Gray supposes that’s quite reasonable with his upbringing and the simple fact that he has a lot of older siblings and will always be the second to youngest of a large brood.

Once they’re gone down the hall, however, the room doesn’t settle. In fact, the tension rises so high it’s almost suffocating. Slate manages to drag himself from the floor and steps forward until he’s face to face with Jason, who has held his ground the whole time, frustration building into anger.

“Slate,” Jason starts in a remarkably calm voice for the rigidity of his jaw and posture. “You need to start taking care of yourself.”

“What makes you think I’m not?” Slate lofts infuriatingly calmly.

Jason’s jaw drops an inch in incredulity. He extends an arm in a broad gesture. “You let them climb all over you! You’re healing from broken ribs and have dozens of stitches in your side, Slate, you can’t be sitting on the floor and carrying around a seventy pound child!”

“I can do a lot of things you seem to think I can’t,” Slate shoots back with an edge.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Don’t play dumb, Slate, I know you know you’re not helping your recovery at all. Something has got to change here. You can’t go on like this.”

Slate inhales and exhales deeply, hands twitching at his sides. “You don’t know what I can and can’t do.”

“I know what the human body can and can’t do, Slate, I work in a hospital. I’m telling you as a medical professional that you cannot go on like this.”

Slate’s twitching hands slowly ball into fists and he steps impossibly closer to his brother-in-law, face stony. “You have no idea what I am capable of, Jason.” When Jason opens his mouth to protest, Slate presses on, tensions rising. “You might think you know what a human body can do, but you have no idea what I’ve been through. I know pain well, Jason. I know how hurting feels and I know how healing feels and this is not hurting. My body is healing. My body is strong. My body is mine. Don’t pretend you know it better than me.”

Jason doesn’t back down. In fact, he becomes more incredulous, angry. “Slate, you were half dead when we first picked you up! Frankly, I’m still not sure how you survived all that silver and I have no idea what that’s doing to your insides right now–especially with the infection. I don’t think you know how close things got, Slate. It was close, okay? And we’re still in uncharted territory with the aftermath of the poison so you need to be careful. That’s all I’m saying,” he says, breathing heavily after impassioned speech. “Just please, please, be more careful.”

Slate stares at him with stormy eyes for an uncomfortable moment before nodding and saying, almost tinged with threat, “Sit down and rub your wife’s feet, Jason. They hurt.”

The message is clear. My body is mine, don’t pretend you know it better than me.

Jason’s jaw sets again and he looks like he wants to get back into it, but Slate carefully sidesteps his brother-in-law and walks down the hallway without looking back.

Everyone left in the room–Jason, Sara, Asher, Forrest, and Gray–exhales as the tension eases. The intensity leaves the room with Slate, but the conversation doesn’t end. Forrest fidgets one hand, staring at the floor. “What happened to him?” he whispers.

Asher and Jason exchange a look. “He was tortured,” Asher says after a moment of indecision. “Starved, beaten, poisoned, isolated. They almost killed him.”

Gray shivers. She’d thought she’d imagined the worst, but it’s different seeing the effects in person. She’s suddenly glad she wasn’t there for the…transaction that brought Slate home. She doesn’t think she could have held it together.

Forrest speaks again, “The silver…what does it do? Besides cause a rash in small doses, I mean. What did they do to him?”

“Well,” Jason sighs, having exhaustedly collapsed on the couch next to his wife, taking her left foot in his and massaging it, “medically, we don’t really know all its effects. It sounds like they used it mostly to slow down the healing process by making him ingest it with food and water. But on the day we picked him up it was…” Jason drops Sara’s foot, rubs his forehead, trailing off. “They’d given him so much and the way he looked… I really thought he might die. He was tachycardic, in respiratory distress, feverish from an infection, maybe internally bleeding, definitely externally bleeding–it was bad. It was worse than what I was expecting, to be honest.”

“I’ve never seen him like that. I was scared,” Asher says quietly. Even lower, he says, “Slate wasn’t. But I was.”

“You don’t think he was scared?” Gray finds herself asking. She doesn’t know what possesses her to say it, because she’s certainly never seen Slate even close to scared, but she can’t help but think he’s got to have a limit. Everyone is scared sometimes.

Asher shakes his head. “No, I don’t think he was. If it was me? Oh yeah, he’d be terrified. If he saw me the way he was when we got him back, he’d raze the ground out of sheer terror. But for himself? No, not even a little.”

“You don’t think death scares him?” Forrest asks with furrowed brows as if trying to understand how a person like Slate could actually exist in the world they live in.

Asher shakes his head. “He’s seen too much of it.”

“Have you ever seen Slate scared?”

Asher thinks for a second, but it’s Sara who answers, voice thick with emotion. “With our mom. On the day she died, he was terrified.”

Silence descends upon the room then, and they listen to the sounds of electronic race cars and virtual crowds cheering coming from the iPad in Sara and Jason’s back room.

“When does he ever rest?” Forrest breaks the silence in a whisper.

Silence is the only answer.