“No. He’s not.”
“Ox.”
“He’s not here. But that doesn’t matter to me. Maybe one day, it will. But not now.”
“I just—I just wanted—”
I said, “Hey. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s okay. It happens.”
He was getting frustrated. “You’re my friend,” he said. “And my Alpha. I just… I want to be something. For you. I know you had Jessie… before. And I thought… maybe I could be after. If there could be an after.”
“You already are something to me.” I reached out and hooked my fingers under his chin to tilt his head up. “You’re more than I could have hoped for.”
He gave me a pained smile. “But not enough.”
“It’s not about being enough,” I said. “It’s about what’s right. I’m not right for you because I’m right for someone else. You’ll feel the same one day. When you meet them.”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “Maybe. But….” He shook his head. “No one has believed in me like you have. I don’t know if I want to feel any different.”
“You’re my friend,” I told him quietly. “And that is good enough for me. I hope it can be good enough for you.”
He nodded, and I dropped my hand.
We continued walking through the trees.
After a while, he said, “You must really love him. To do what you’ve done.”
“He’d do the same for me,” I said, knowing it was true. No matter how else I felt, I believed that with everything I had.
And we walked on.
THAT NIGHT, I dreamt of
him.
He was waiting for me on the dirt road, the sun filtering through the leaves, little splashes of light on the ground like puddles of rippling water. He smiled so brightly as I reached my hand for his, our fingers curling together like they always had.
We walked slowly toward the house at the end of the lane.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t have to.
It was enough just to be.
ROBBIE WAS awkward around me for a few weeks after that. He stammered and blushed and avoided me when he could.
Elizabeth smiled and said it happened every now and then.
“He’d be very lucky,” she said to me as we sat on the porch watching the sunset. “Both of you would.”
“I belong to someone else,” I said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad for that.”