Page 40 of Blizzards and Brews
Her eyes were narrowed on me like I’d protest but I just gave her a grateful smile.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning for far more than this breakfast. She’d been another rock in my life when I needed it.
“Now get out of here and you better get things straight with that pack of yours. We may not be blood but we’re family, and I’ll talk sense into you the same way I did Summer,” she warned me.
“I’m working on it,” I promised, letting out a chuckle as I hurried outside, tying my hair into a messy bun as I walked to the car. It was the best I had for today.
The town was back to normal as I drove through it. In the week of Ollie’s heat the snow had all but melted and people were walking down the sidewalks again, bringing Holiday Hollow back to life.
Which reminded me, we still had work to do before the winter festival.
Dustin’s car was already in the parking lot when I pulled in and I frowned. Something had to be wrong, there was no way in hell Adam just missed work today. He was always here first.
“Lindsay!” Dustin’s strangled voice rang out when I pushed in the door and he tackled me in a hug, holding me tight. The way he shook had my panic rising.
“What’s wrong?!” I demanded. “Is Adam okay? Ollie?”
“Yes,” he breathed out but hadn’t let me go yet. “We thought you were gone. That you’d left us.”
“What?” I asked. Now, I was more confused than ever. “My phone died and I passed the fuck out after that heat. I was in bed.”
“Your land was empty, Linds,” he said gently as he pulled back slightly, staring down at me. His grip on me was tight, not daring to release me.
“I… I know,” was all I could think to say. I’d fucked up. I should have told them but I was too embarrassed I’d let that asshole get close enough to fuck me over like that.
He let out a long sigh and pulled out his phone, tapping the screen before putting it to his ear. I winced at Adam’s frantic voice.
“She’s here. Said her phone died and she just woke up and came in. She’s got it and a charger in her hand.”
“Where the fuck is her house? Why was she at Beatty’s?” Adam barked out.
How in the hell did he know I had been staying there? It was then that I realized I’d had Spencer drive me there. Of course, the first thing Adam would have done was question the alpha as the last person to see me.
“Calm down before you get here,” Dustin warned. “You aren’t going to fuck this up with your temper, do you hear me?”
Adam hung up without answering and Dustin let out a breath before bringing me in for a hug again.
His breath tickled my ear as he started to explain.
“We were dropping something off to you and when he showed up, the lot was empty. Your home was gone and you weren’t answering. What else could we think?”
It was then that I realized how deeply I’d hurt the guys. I had spent so much time preserving my own feelings and pushing them away I hadn’t realized that they didn’t trust me either.
Not if they thought I would pack up my entire house and just drive off into the sunset leaving them.
It was a painful, hard truth that I needed to absorb and consider. My chest ached and I fought back tears.
Dustin–the man who was always calm and collected, keeping the rest of us together–was holding me like he was afraid to let go.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I dropped my things and held him back. I breathed in his vanilla-caramel scent and held back my tears. “But I’m here and I’m fine. I’m not running now.”
“You’re not,” he repeated, more of a warning than a reassurance. “I can’t take this anymore, Lindsay. I need to know you’re in this.”
“I thought I made that clear when I bit Ollie,” I said in an attempt to lighten the mood. He finally let me go and stepped back so he could look down at me again. His fingers rested on my jaw, making sure I couldn’t look away from his blue eyes.
“Lindsay, I need you to know how committed I am to you. I don’t want anyone else, I never have. You have always been it for me.”
The raw vulnerability and conviction in his voice had my breath catching. He was staring down at me, telling me in those blue depths what he couldn’t put into words.