Chapter 304

Chapter 304
Caitlin's POV

I got dressed slowly. Jeans. A soft jumper. I caught my reflection in the mirror above the dresser and stopped.

My eyes looked different, not glowing, not right now. But there was something behind them that hadn't been there before. A sharpness. An awareness. Like the lights had been turned up slightly higher than they used to go.

I looked at myself for a moment longer and then went downstairs.

The kitchen was full of morning light and the smell of toast and coffee and the soup from last night being reheated. My mother was at the stove and my dad was at the table, and Alex was sitting across from him with a mug in his hands looking for all the world like he had been having breakfast with my family his entire life.

He looked up when I came in. "Morning," he said.

"Morning," I said carefully.

My mother turned from the stove. "There she is. Sit down, I'll do you eggs."

"You don't have to-"

"Sit down, Caitlin."

I sat down.

My dad pushed the toast rack toward me. "Your boss was just telling us about the firm. Sounds like serious work."

"It is," I said, reaching for a piece of toast and looking briefly at Alex over the table. He met my eyes with a calm, steady expression that told me he had been careful about everything he said.

"Long hours?" my dad asked.

"Sometimes," Alex said. "Caitlin has been handling it very well."

I took a bite of toast.

My mother set a plate of eggs in front of me and sat down in her own chair and looked between me and Alex with the particular expression she had been using since I was a teenager. The one that meant she was collecting information and would form an opinion about it later.

"You look tired," She said to me.

"I'm fine, Mum."

"You look like you haven't slept properly in days."

"The new job has been a lot of adjustment. I told you."

She held my gaze for a second longer than was comfortable, then picked up her own mug and let it go.

I ate my eggs and let the conversation around the table carry itself and felt the pain in my body slowly, very slowly, start to loosen with the warmth of the kitchen and the food.

After lunch I went upstairs to pack.

Alex followed after a few minutes and stood in the doorway of my room while I pulled clothes from the wardrobe and folded them into my bag. He picked up a stack of books from the desk when I pointed at them and found space for them in the corner of the bag without being asked.

We worked around each other in the small room without getting in the way.

"I told them I won't be around much for the next few months," I said, folding a jumper.

"That the job requires full time commitment and I'll be living on site temporarily."

"That works," Alex said.

"I also told them the firm operates under confidentiality agreements so I can't talk much about what I'm actually doing."

"Also works."

"I'm lying to my parents." I stopped folding and looked at the jumper in my hands. "I have never done that seriously. Not about something that actually mattered."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"I know," Alex said.

"Add it to the list," I said, and went back to folding.

My mother appeared in the doorway twenty minutes later holding a large container sealed with a lid, the kind she used for soups. She held it out toward Alex with the look she gave people when she had decided she liked them and they had no say in the matter.

"For the drive," she said. "And for later. It's the chicken one."

Alex took it with both hands. "Thank you. You didn't have to do that."

"I know I didn't." She looked at him levelly. "You take care of my daughter."

It wasn't a request.

"I will," Alex said.

My mother held his gaze for a moment. Then she nodded once, turned, and went back downstairs.

I zipped my bag closed and didn't say anything.

Saying goodbye took longer than leaving usually did.

My dad hugged me on the front path and told me to call more often in the way he always did, practically and without drama, which was how he showed that he was worried. My mother held on longer than usual and I let her and pressed my face against her shoulder and breathed in the familiar smell of her hair and tried very hard not to cry on the front path in front of everyone.

"I'll call every few days," I told her.

"Every two days," she said.

"Every two days," I agreed.

She pulled back and looked at my face and smoothed my hair back from my forehead the same way she had done when I was small, and I held it together by a very narrow margin.

We got into the SUV. I watched the house in the wing mirror as we pulled away down the road until it disappeared behind the bend.

Then I looked straight ahead and breathed.

We were about twenty minutes from the pack land when Alex spoke.

"Thank you," he said. "For this weekend. For how you handled everything with your parents. That wasn't easy and you did it well."

I looked out the window. "I didn't have much choice."

"You always have a choice in how you handle things. You handled it with more grace than I deserved."

I didn't answer that.

The road was quiet around us, the afternoon light falling flat and grey across the fields on either side. The soup container was on the back seat. I could smell it from the front.

Alex's hands shifted on the steering wheel. When he spoke again his voice was measured, like he had been thinking about the words for a while.

"I know I have no right to ask you for anything," he said.

"After everything that happened. What I did and what I took from you. I know that."

He paused. "But I'm asking anyway. Give me a chance to make it right not to undo it because I can't do that. But to make it right going forward. To make your life in this world something you can actually want."

The fields passed outside the window.

"And I want to make you happy, Caitlin."

His voice was quiet now. Stripped of everything except the plain words. "I know you didn't ask for any of this. I know I'm the last person you want to hear that from right now. But I mean it."

I kept looking out the window.

The pull in my chest that had been pointing at him since the first night I woke up in his house was steady and warm and I pressed my hand against it and said nothing.

But I didn't say no either.