Page 107 of Knot Her Beta

The pages are a complete mess of my rambling thoughts. Nothing concise enough to send in a text message or organized enough to give Emily in a letter.

So, when I return to the office, I start putting it in order, ripping pages to separate paragraphs where I jump between timelines and sorting them into chronological stacks, hoping that if I can straighten the tangled mess, it will pull my thoughts into alignment, too.

I fall asleep in the office chair, my head on the desk, and when I wake again, the light through the window is the pale gray of dusk or very early morning.

I have a stack of papers under my cheek and a crick in my neck that takes twenty minutes of slow, careful movement to loosen. My knee locked during the night, the footstool having shifted while I slept, and I straighten it by degrees, bracing my palms on my thigh and waiting out the grinding until it releases.

The coffee cups accumulate on the corner of the desk. Three, then five, then seven, each one cold before I’ve finished it.

My laptop sits open and dark. At some point, I had started to transcribe my messy scribbles into a document.

As I wake it up and pull it closer, I realize, somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to write an apology or an explanation, and I’ve simply been writing about us.

Not just Emily, nor Jared and Leif, but me, too, a Grady written in third person on the page, a separate creature I’m watching from a distance, falling in love with a pack.

It’s messy. Everyone in this story is broken and imperfect. We stumble, we fall in love, but love isn’t a Band-Aid, and we hurt each other. We run away, we hide, we come back.

I pull the laptop closer, my fingers finding the keys once more, needing to know how the story ends.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Emily

Standing on Grady’s porch first thing Monday morning is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

He hadn’t responded to any of our texts over the weekend, which should be answer enough, but the stubbornness in me won’t let things fizzle out like this. I need to apologize, to beg his forgiveness, and to ask him to give me a second chance.

My hand shakes as I raise it and knock twice, wait three seconds, and knock again.

Nothing.

I step to the side to peer through the window. The front of the cabin is dark, but a light shines from the back hall. Is he ignoring me? Or could something have happened when he got back on Saturday?

I remember the way his knee had looked, locked up and in pain. Suddenly, images rise of Grady on the floor, unable to get up.

Could he have not been ignoring us and instead been unable to reach his phone?

Worried now, I grasp the handle, and it turns under my palm. Unlocked. The door swings inward on well-oiled hinges, and the scent of stale coffee hits me before I’m all the way inside.

A plate sits beside the sink with the crusted remains of food, and dirty mugs cluster on the kitchen counter, some with coffee still in them, and the coffeepot is on, burning a ring of sludge into the glass carafe. I unplug it before it causes permanent damage, or worse, catches fire.

“Grady?” I call out, heading for the back hallway. “Are you okay?”

Grady appears from inside the office, and I stop where I stand.

His usually trimmed beard is overgrown, and he still wears the same shirt from Saturday, though it’s now wrinkled past the point of having been slept in. The buttons are done up unevenly, and a stain covers the front.

“Emily?” He blinks blearily and hobbles forward.

His bad leg drags, the knee refusing to bend, and he braces one hand on the doorframe as he steps through. Bloodshot, hazel eyes meet mine, the skin beneath them hollowed and dark.

My chest caves in, and my legs fold, my knees hitting the hardwood floor hard enough, the impact jolting up through my thighs. “I’m sorry.”

Every detail drives the truth home. He’s wrecked, in so much pain he couldn’t look after himself, and tears well up.

“Grady, I’m so sorry.” Regret squeezes my throat tight. “I never should have let the Rut go so far without warning you. That’s all on me.”

His brow furrows, and his mouth opens. Closes. He takes a half-step forward before his knee buckles, and he catches himself on the wall.