Page 20 of All Packed Up

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said, catching her gaze. His amber eyes held pools of worry and guilt.

“Sit,” she said, nodding her head at the bed.

Nic chose the very end, keeping distance between them. It made her want to smile that he was so… careful with her.

“It wasn’t you,” she said, voice raspy from unshed tears. She cleared her throat. “I just… remembered something. Something I don’t wanna talk about,” she clarified at his expression.

“Does it have to do with whoever put that bond mark on you?”

Absently, she wrapped her hand around that side of her neck, hiding it. “The pack, yeah.”

Nic’s gaze darkened, and she laid her head back down.

God, if she hadn’t found out sooner…

Her stomach churned.

“Do you wanna shower?” Nic asked. “Or a bath? Hell, tell me, and I’ll order a fucking jacuzzi.”

Wendy chuckled and turned her gaze to Nic.

His expression wilted. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to cry.”

That was all it took for the first tear to spill over, and then the floodgates opened.

“It’s not you,” she blubbered at Nic’s concerned expression.

He hesitated, preparing like he was about to stand up and leave, but she reached a hand out for him. Nic, this six-foot-four giant, let her pull him across the bed and bury her head into his chest and use his shirt as a snot rag.

His heart pounded against her cheek, but her hiccupping breaths overlapped it, and she tried to get herself under control. “Sorry, I—”

“Don’t apologize,” he bit out. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

That only made more tears well, and she bit her lip to keep her sobs quiet.

“Wendy,” Nic said, and from the tone of his voice, she wondered how many times he’d called to her.

She leaned back, unable to talk because if she did, she’d lose it all over again.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said, and slowly, so slowly, to give her a chance to knock him away, he lifted his hand and thumbed her lip out from the grip of her teeth.

She jerked her head to the side as a sob spilled out, and he pulled her close again.

Wendy finally gave in.

Wrapping her arms around his back, she crawled in his lap and buried her face in his neck and breathed in his scent and cried.

And cried some more.

Wendy cried every tear she hadn’t felt safe enough to let out in the past year. And Nic’s shirt absorbed most of them as he ran his hands over her back and stroked her hair and spoke softly to her and curled the blanket around her so she wasn’t exposed.

He didn’t understand, clothes or not, that this was the most exposed she’d ever been with anyone.

At some point, even Knuckles grew concerned and visited them on the bed, and goddammit if Nic didn’t scoop up the fur ball and hand him right over to Wendy, who plopped him in her lap, which was technically Nic’s lap, and cried into his fur too.