To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

Days later finds Gray sitting on the floor of Sara’s house with one hand in Sara’s drawing out her aches and pains and the other on her laptop’s trackpad, scrolling to try to find gifts for everyone that she can actually afford. Sara has been dozing on and off, stretched out on the couch on her side trying to find a comfortable position to lay in. Now only two months away from her due date, she’s getting pretty uncomfortable.

She, Gray, and Jason have all talked in depth about the birth and how she wants it to go. She wants Jason there, obviously, and Gray in case of emergencies, and Paige and her assistant Sheila will be there to actually deliver the baby. Fortuitously, Paige is a pack member and a physician’s assistant specializing in obstetrics and gynecology by trade. Gray doesn’t foresee any complications, not with how diligent they’ve been about everything, but one can never be too careful. She’s sure there will be some PTSD involved for the Atwood family at large. She wants to ask Slate about it, but is unsure if that would be crossing a line.

Speak of the devil, Slate’s customary two knocks rouse Sara from a light doze. “Slater?” she croaks. When he opens the door at the same time as she cracks an eye, she perks right up and holds her arms open. “Slate! Come here, stranger. I don’t see you enough anymore!”

Slate rolls his eyes, but reaches down and heaves Sara off the couch and into a tight embrace. Or, as tight as an embrace can get with a twenty pound basketball in between them. “I was here yesterday,” he says into her hair.

“Yeah, and you waited all the way until evening to come back!”

Slate laughs and set Sara back on the couch. “I’ll be sure to be back tomorrow morning then. I’ll make you french toast with raspberry jam.”

Sara sighs happily and lies back down. “I love you, bro.”

“I love you too, bear,” he says back quietly with that private smile he has that makes you feel like one-of-a-kind.

“Now take Gray somewhere,” she waves a hand imperiously. “She driving herself nuts.”

Slate raises an eyebrow at Gray. One glance back at the screen and the little “0” by the shopping cart does, in fact, drive her nuts. “Gift shopping never used to be this hard,” she gripes.

“Enough that you could scream?”

Gray glances up at him, attention piqued. “What?”

“Want to yell it out?” He grins with half his mouth.

Gray grins back. “Yes.”

“I’ll wait outside,” he says with a sly slant to his eyes.

Gray scrambles to put on her shoes but before she follows her True Mate, she doubles back for Sara. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sara waves a hand again. “I feel nice and floaty. If not for the beach ball, I’d be perfectly comfy, but that can’t be helped for another couple weeks.”

Gray hesitates, feeling guilty. But when Sara sits up to literally push her toward the door, she knows her job here is done. She grins at her best friend, her sister. “Thanks.”

“No problem, now get.”

When she meets Slate outside, he immediately offers her a hand and a faint smile. That expression is becoming more and more common lately and she loves it, she can never help but smile back. “Ready?” he asks.

“Ready,” she confirms.

They walk in silence for a bit, before he asks, “Have any luck? With Christmas shopping?”

Gray sighs. “Sort of. I’ve got something coming for Raven, Sage, and Aria, but I’m working on the rest. Turns out actually having people in your life who you love is expensive.”

Slate rolls his eyes, bumping her shoulder with his affectionately. “Get Asher two tickets from the $5 theater for him and Erin, offer Dad a night off from the kids, Sara and Jason will refuse anything you give, but you can offer them a redeemable date night as well, once the baby comes. Forrest has a thing about fuzzy socks, he can never get enough of those. And Zander…” he hums in thought. “Well, since he keeps such a strict budget, he never buys himself any junk food. Think he would like that?”

Gray gapes. “How did you do that so fast? And how did you know that about Zander?”

Slate gives her a smirk. “I pay attention.”

Gray huffs. “Well now nothing I give is going to be original. They’ll all be your ideas.”

Slate bumps her shoulder again, catches her eye and gives her a sly conspiratorial look. “Where do you think Sara gets all her ideas from?”

Gray throws her head back and laughs. “Absolutely nothing gets by you.”

His mouth turns smug. “I’m a brick house.”

This time Gray has to snort at the look on his face. “Okay, don’t get too full of yourself now.”

He chuckles quietly. “I could never, not with Aria around.”

Gray groans. “I’m sorry about her.”

Slate shakes his head. “I didn’t say it because I was bothered.”

“I know, but still. Even if she hasn’t learned enough to apologize yet, you should know that you don’t deserve some of the things she says.”

“Whatever she’s said, I’ve heard worse.”

Gray frowns. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Well if it doesn’t,” he says mildly, “you can scream about it. Will that help?”

Gray looks around and finds that they have already made their way to their spot. “I don’t know,” she says. “So…what do we do now? Just scream?”

Slate shrugs. “Just be loud. Make your presence known.”

“You make it sound so simple,” she grimaces. “Are you not uncomfortable with this at all?”

“Well, it is simple. Don’t think too hard, just let out whatever big emotions you have. Whatever feels too big to hold inside, let it all out however it needs to come out.”

Gray eyes him. “You didn’t answer the second question.”

He rolls his eyes and nuges her shoe with his. “Okay, I am uncomfortable. I’m rarely loud. But sometimes a little discomfort is good.”

Gray opens her mouth to say something else evasive and belligerent, but he cuts her off with a massive howl. All wolf, no man. Pure, unadulterated, haunting power.

After getting over the initial startle, Gray opens her mouth and lets out an equally charged howl, all wolf, no woman.

“I murdered three people when I was sixteen!” he shouts next.

Okay, I guess we’re starting from the beginning, Gray thinks.

“I watched three people die when I was twenty!” she yells into the woods.

“I miss my mom!” he lets pour out.

“I miss my mother but I hate my father!” Gray cries.

“I’m scared for my sister!”

“I still hate myself for promising my family I would never leave them and leaving the next day!”

“I hate that I let my family down when I let myself get kidnapped!”

Gray looks at him sharply for that, but he doesn’t look back and lifts his head to the sky and roars instead. It’s so forceful it feels like it blows Gray back the step she takes in the wake of it.

Unbidden, the next words tear from her throat, “I hate that you don’t trust me and I’m so, so sorry I let you down.” The words start as a vicious yell, but somehow end up as a whimper, tears streaming down her face, the culmination of all the pent up emotion overwhelming her nervous system. She’s held these words inside for a long time now.

“What?” he startles, so unlike him.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, covering her face with her hands, covering her shame.

“Hey, hey,” he says, putting his hands on her biceps and rubbing up and down in long, calming strokes. His voice sounds rougher than usual. “It’s okay, Gray, whatever you think you’ve done, it’s okay. You haven’t let me down.”

“But I have,” she cries more quietly.

“Look at me,” he says, taking a step closer and gently taking her hands from her face. “What’s going on?”

Finally, Gray looks up at him through blurry vision. “That day, the day you were…taken,” she chokes on the word. “When you looked at me and saw relief.” He opens his mouth to say something, but she shakes her head hard and cuts him off. “No, I know you did, I saw you shut down. I saw you see me the way you see your family, as someone to protect and shield to your own immense detriment. But that’s not me, Slate. We’re supposed to be different. I’m supposed to be different.”

He digests this for a long moment, impossibly vibrant blue-green eyes almost boring into her, seeing her soul. Finally he says, “What makes you think I don’t trust you?”

Acutely relieved that he hasn’t denied what she knows is true, she sighs and collects herself, closing her eyes against the slowly calming sea of emotion. Opening them again, she states very clearly. “Because you haven’t let me see you like you were starting to. You pretend to be okay, you laugh and you tease me and you talk to me like you did before, but you aren’t being you. Not all the way. I don’t think I’ve ever truly seen you like you see me.”

He keeps staring, brow now furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“Slate,” she says, “you aren’t acting like someone who is recovering from a kidnapping. Especially one that involved intense and systematic torture. I’m not expecting you to act like an average person who has experienced what you’ve experienced, but you’re not even acting like you having experienced what you’ve experienced. You’re acting…normal. But that’s the thing. You’re acting. Even now, you’re protecting us from the truth of what happened to you, what’s still happening to you, on the outside and on the inside. You need to let it out.” Then she whispers, “Please let me be with you when you do. You need someone. You need me.”

“I don’t need you,” he says immediately. “I’ve never needed you.”

She nods and takes his face in her hands, understanding immediately. “I know, I know. You’ve wanted me from the beginning, I’ve never doubted that. But it’s your turn to need me now. Not forever, maybe not even for very long, but you can need me for now. It’s okay.”

He stares for a long time, but Gray watches the cinema in his eyes closely. It’s the place where he gives up the most emotion. Slowly it starts to echo in his face too. His brows unfurrow and his blinks become long and slow, like they’re too heavy to lift anymore. His mouth goes tight, then droops at the corners.

Then his body breaks down. His shoulders drop slowly, his chest curls in on itself, he hunches ever so slightly over his vulnerable parts and his right hand slowly lifts to cradle his left side.

His eyes finally close. “I’m so tired,” he whispers, gritting his teeth against the admission. He has to try so hard to let her this close and she is incredibly proud and honored and relieved. And then, “It hurts.” And, “I’m sorry.”

Feeling relieved and sorrowful and heart breaking for him, she takes him in her arms, cradling his shoulders and pressing her body to his, taking some of his weight as he lists into her. “Don’t be sorry,” she murmurs into his neck. “Thank you. For protecting me, for listening to me, for loving me, for helping me see my own worth. Thank you for letting me do the same for you.”

He kisses the crown of her head and they stay like that for a long time until she can feel Slate start to curl in on his left side even further. “Let’s go home,” she says, unwrapping her arms gently in favor of taking his hand and leading him to his cottage. When he stays still, unmoveable, she turns back questioningly. He tilts his head in the direction of her den. Gray shakes her head and pulls him again, stronger this time. “You need a bed, Slate. No one will see you, I promise. I’ll protect you.” When he’s still slow to move, she says quietly, “Let me take care of you.”

Finally, he relents and they make slow progress through the forest, Slate straightening and blanking his face and body language when they break the line into the settlement part of the property. Gray lets him be while they’re out in the open, the silence lingering but once they’re inside she pushes him straight to his bed and sits him down. Unbidden, she rifles through his clothes until she finds some worn, soft sleep pants and a different shirt. She offers them silently and starts to walk out the door to give him some privacy, but he catches her hand. The message is clear: stay.

He lifts his arms and painstakingly removes his shirt, ribs obviously in pain. It was truer than she’d thought, when he said it still hurts. He’s been hurting so badly for so long and hiding it so well.

When Gray moves to help him, he takes a step away and shakes his head. He needs the space to process, if only for a moment. Gray lets him.

She almost doesn’t notice it at first, though it’s quite prominent. The scar on his side can only be described as huge and gruesome. It’s raised and thickly scabbed. If she hadn’t had a background in medicine, it might make her sick just to see. As it is, it makes her sick just to think of the pain that had to have caused it.

It’s in the shape of a capital D. For the Dreidens, presumably. She hates those people with a passion she didn’t know she possessed. She’d kill them without a second glance.

Before she can look past the scar, his sturdy jeans are exchanged for the softer sleep pants and he’s pulling back the covers. Gray goes to the opposite side and sits on top of them, until he says in low tones, “Lay with me?” She gets up to turn off the light first, but he catches her wrist. “I keep them on.”

She sits back down and catches his hand so it’s held loosely in hers instead of circling her wrist. “Why?”

“I was blindfolded for most of the first three days. And then the room I was held in was very dark all the time.” He closes his eyes to say, “I wondered if I would ever see the sun again.”

It’s not said in a pained or saddened tone, but rather factual. His new aversion to darkness might make him uncomfortable, but it’s now just a fact of life. He looked death in the eyes and he knows it. He’s not ashamed of it. Gray is proud of him for this.

“Tell me something about it,” she urges gently, laying next to him but not touching except for their twined hands, not yet.

It’s quiet for a long time, but Gray is content to listen to him breathe until he’s ready. “You brother and sister forgive you for lying to them.”

Gray blinks. That was…unexpected. It shoots a bolt of relief through her. It’s an odd emotion, she thinks, to be feeling right now, but it’s because he said it that she believes it so immediately. If anyone else had told her the same thing, she’d never trust them, never believe them to be saying anything other than a hopeful reassurance, but Slate would never lie. He doesn’t placate or pacify, he deals only in truth.

“How?” She asks, not doubting but needing to know how he knows. “How could they possibly forgive me for that?”

“Because I forgave my mom,” he says in a tone very matter-of-fact.

Gray stops breathing for a moment, almost waiting for him to take it back, for him to spook at his own words. When no such reaction comes, she turns on her side to face him. He’s still looking up at the ceiling, hands folded on top of the covers, still as ever. “What?” is all she knows how to say.

“When she died,” he says slowly, as if bracing against the pain of the words, “she made it so I was the only one in the room. And she told me it would be alright. All the way up until she took her last breath, she was reassuring me that it was alright.”

“What happened?” Gray whispers.

He turns his head slightly to look at her for a moment before facing the ceiling again and telling his story.