Page 73 of Cold Foot Revenge
“You don’t want to be here, do you?” Wreck asked from where he sat on the bank.
“No, no, it’s not that. Look how at peace he is. How could I not want to be where he smiles like this,” she said softly. “Dylan has his brother here, his family, his Crew.”
“We aren’t his Crew,” Wreck murmured, watching Dylan hand Breah to Garret. “I asked him. He said he needed time before he gives me an answer.”
“Whoa, you gave him the official invite?” Raynah asked.
Wreck nodded, eyes on where Dylan was diving into the water to go deeper into Raynah’s Lake. “I asked him as soon as you two came back here.”
Huh.
“Well, what’s his hold up?” Katrina asked. “Maybe that’s why you feel unsettled here. Your mate hasn’t allowed you to bond with this place.”
“Oh, he’s been amazing,” Roxy said. “Maybe he’s just waiting for me to catch up.”
“Can you?” Wreck asked, looking over his shoulder at her.
She considered it. He wasn’t asking it in a cruel way. She’d learned that the Alpha of the Cold Foot Crew was direct, but he always had a reason for his questions.
She swallowed hard. “I don’t come from a lot, and it’s been really hard for a long time. And I always dreamed of this, you know? Some version of this kind of life. I dreamed of my fate changing, and my life doing a one-eighty, and I wanted my life to look nothing like it did before. That’s what made sense to me when I was dreaming of a home like this. A mate who loved me, friends, family, and babies around to watch grow up. A home. A better job. Hope. And then I got it, right? I thought I would diein my old life, and all of a sudden I’m here, in the paradise you have built. But now it feels like coming from this tiny home I had no control over, and being given access to a turn-key ready home that’s all paid off, and all the decorations are already in there, and now what do I do? How do I bond to a place that wasn’t built by myself, or my mate?”
A slow smile stretched Wreck’s lips.
“What?” she asked.
“You want to go back, don’t you.”
“I…” She was going to lie for a second. She was going to say something that didn’t hold truth, but really, she had to second-guess her answer and make sure of the truth because she hadn’t said it aloud before. “I sometimes want to go back. I want to build a life like this with Dylan. I just don’t know if I can settle into a ready-made life like this one.”
“Why haven’t you said this before?” Timber asked. “That’s completely understandable.”
“Because how can I take Dylan away from this.”
“Dylan walked away from this looking for something more,” Garret said, holding Breah on his hip as he dragged his feet through the shallows toward the shore. So, the Hoffman brothers could hear her from where they had been standing. “He found you. Wreck and I know why he hasn’t accepted a place in the Cold Foot Crew. You should go talk to him.”
“What?” she asked in a small voice.
Garret cocked his head, and his eyes were so full of emotion. “I’m not losing him, Roxy. We just gained you. Whether he’s here putting down roots in the life I built or not, we will always be brothers.”
She didn’t understand.
Wreck was just watching her face. “Go talk to him. It’s time, I think.”
Raynah reached over and squeezed her hand comfortingly, and Roxy squeezed back. She truly appreciated the shifters in Wreck’s Mountains. She loved them. This was the example of a Crew that others should aspire to be.
Down the beach, the guys had been throwing a football in the shallows, but they were watching her now, dragging her feet through the water toward Dylan. He was standing in water up to his chest, facing the sunset. She smiled at Reed, and King, Tawk, and Cash, offered a little wave and made her way to where Dylan stood.
He turned when she was close and pulled her in, took them deeper and spun them in a slow circle. “I heard,” he said softly.
She hugged his neck. “I’m so sorry. I seem so ungrateful. Maybe I just need more time to adjust.”
“I want to build a life with you too.”
Roxy froze, then eased back to look him in the eyes. They were glowing slightly orange. “What?”
“I got a call a couple of weeks ago that I’ve been keeping quiet about, because I wanted to see what you needed first.”
“What I needed?” she repeated, not understanding.
