To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

Weeks ago, cities across America and Canada…

“I think it’s up in Washington now, in America.”

“Really, you do? Have you seen it?”

“Not myself, but I know people who have.”

“Is the wolf friendly? Could it...I mean do you think...could it help me?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Present day, Atwood Territory...

Gray finds herself sitting in between Slate and Sara, one hand in each of theirs. Sara has just dozed off, having slipped into a fitful sleep that slowly becomes more peaceful as Gray and Slate drain away her discomforts. At this point, she is over halfway through her pregnancy and uncomfortable almost all the time barring the hour or two Gray and Slate spend with her actively healing her and the following four or five hours that the effects last until the lingering pains start to surface again.

Gray would like to come twice or even three times a day to give the poor woman some peace and comfort as her body grows and revolts against the thing she wants most in the world. The only thing is that she knows Slate doesn’t want her to take all the pain herself, but he’s so busy that Gray is afraid to ask any more of him; he’s under enough pressure as it is. With Sara slowly taking less and less of a role in the family business and the pack as her pregnancy progresses, Slate is picking up a lot of slack. She knows it’s already something of a struggle to be over here as often as he is. Sara says he was over all the time even before Gray ever entered the picture, but that it was always either early in the morning for breakfast, or after work hours had ended. If Gray had her way, she would just come by herself a time or two throughout the day and have Slate join her for a nighttime session after work, but he seems determined to stop her from ever having to heal by herself.

That, among other things, is a conversation that needs to be had soon.

Now though, she is hesitant to interrupt the tranquil aura that has descended over the house. While Sara slumbers on her left, Slate rests lightly on her right, eyes closed and unoccupied arm behind his head, pillowing it on his forearm and bicep...both of which are ample and strong, she can’t help but notice.

Gray isn’t attracted to Slate only because of his outer casing, but it certainly helps, she thinks to herself. When she thinks of Slate, she doesn’t think of muscle definition or tan skin or a sharp jawline, she thinks about the way he is with his siblings, his calm and patience, his intensity--but still, she can’t help but find herself admiring the way he fills out his shirts or the way his skin glows in the sunlight. She reminds herself these are completely appropriate and normal things for a twenty-three year old woman to feel about a man she likes, but she still feels guilty because she knows what people say about him.

Gray has heard a bit of what the girls around here think about Slate Atwood, and it seems like the female population agrees almost unanimously that he is hot and sexy, but totally undateable. And frankly undesirable as a serious love interest. In other words, he’s something that’s nice to look at and fantasize about, but too much trouble to try to get to know. Supposedly he has dated a few women in the past, but not often and not for very long. Apparently Sienna Ashby, a pack member who lives in town with a few friends, went out with him for a few months a little over a year ago and doesn’t necessarily have favorable things to say about it.

Aria says that at the time, all she would tell anyone was how much more attractive he was up close and how firm his muscles were and that his eyes weren’t nearly as off putting as people claimed when they were shining with love and care. She said all that along with a strong implication of how generous he was as a lover.

When Aria had related all these things to her, they’d both rolled their eyes hard enough to move their whole heads in tandem. And then of course after Sienna and Slate split, the story changed to what a neglectful boyfriend he was and that he might look pretty, but in reality he was just as creepy as he seemed.

As for the rest, Gray has some doubts about exactly how much experience Sienna has with Slate in the bedroom. She has a hard time picturing Slate taking a girl home at all, knowing how private he is, and especially not after only two or three months of dating. A matter of months might seem a long time to wait before being intimate with a lover for some, but Gray can attest to how patient Slate can be on top of how hard it is to gain his trust.

And of course, now that his face looks significantly different than it did a few months ago, the rumor mill is newly aglow with whispers and gossip about Slate Atwood. From what she has gleaned, it seems as though opinions are pretty split. Some people think he’s still stunning, just with a sharper edge than before. Others think it’s a shame that such a pretty face has been ruined by gruesome and ugly scarring. Others still think he should be actively avoided, that he’s dangerous and unstable.

Gray thinks this goes to show how shallow people can be, yes, but also just how separate he has made himself from his community. People are so far removed from who he is as a person that they can’t see that while he is obviously more than capable of exercising his strength and ferocity on their enemies, he would sooner take a bullet for a pack member than he would even say a negative word about them.

Either way, people see his body or his face and immediately put him into a box, and generally try to keep that box as far away as it can get as long as they can still look at it.

Gray can’t lie and say that she hasn’t thought about what it would be like to take their relationship to a more physical level, but the thought scares and excites her in ever fluctuating proportions. Based on their past experiences and landmines of trauma, she’s happy with how they are right now. She’s more than happy to keep being able to hold his hand in hers and be wrapped up in warm, tender hugs every now and then. Slow and steady is fine with her as long as it’s with him.

She takes a moment to just look at him while his eyes are closed. His beat up sneaker-clad feet are planted flat on the ground and his strong legs are covered by equally distressed and weathered jeans. The shirt he wears is so typical for him, Gray thinks with amusement, plain and unassuming as ever. The dark gray heathered crew neck stretches snugly around his broad shoulders and flatters his chest. His face is slack and relaxed, but his shoulders are hunched just enough to show that he’s not unaffected by the pain he and Gray are siphoning from his sister.

She wonders for the millionth time how exactly he’s able to share this with her. She wonders if he has found a way to manage how much of the burden he’s bearing and that’s why it seems to affect him more than her sometimes. It would be so like him to take as much pain as he possibly could to take the pressure off of her without mentioning it at all. She wonders if she could do anything to monitor the split between them, somehow.

So much about moon gifts in general is unknown and unlikely to ever be clarified. The scientist and scholar in her wants to take a microscope to it all and analyze it until the moon’s secrets are unraveled, but the wolf in her is content just to know that there’s a higher power watching out for her and be grateful for all it has given her.

Either way, she will thank the moon for the rest of her life for him and all the things Slate has done for her. She never thought she’d be able to have someone to share this with, someone to understand. She’d resigned herself to being the worst kind of one-in-a-million and suffering the blessing and curse of it all by herself. Now she gets to share both the pain and the joy of healing with someone else, someone she’s coming to love.

It’s priceless.

Nonetheless, there are complications that come with sharing her gifts with him. She squeezes his hand gently to get his attention to discuss one such complication. He squeezes her hand back and hums in response with his eyes still closed. “Hmm?”

Gray can’t help but smile at him, though he can’t see it. “Your dad called me earlier today,” she says quietly.

He cracks one eye open at that and tilts his head, rolling it on the arm behind his head slightly. “Yeah?”

Gray nods and turns her body slightly more towards him while still maintaining contact with Sara. She wants to be able to take in his full reaction to what she has to say. “Yeah. He said...he said he’s been getting messages from people who have heard about me. Who want my help.”

He opens both eyes and gives her full attention then. She has only recently stopped being slightly overwhelmed by moments like these. She has never known anyone else as intense as him. “Okay,” he says, blinking, succinct as always. He searches the ceiling with his eyes for a moment, seeming to be trying to clear his mind of any drowsiness he’d fallen into. “What do you think?”

Gray sighs and searches his eyes for answers. All she sees is a beautiful kaleidoscope of green and blue. “I think...I want to do it,” she says hesitantly. “I want to help.”

He nods thoughtfully before quirking a quiet little smirk at her. “When do we go?”

Gray can’t help but laugh brilliantly at him. She wonders if she’ll ever stop being surprised by him in the best ways. Still though, she has to make something clear. “Slate,” she says with a lingering smile and sincere eyes. “You don’t have to come with me. I’ve been doing this my whole life on my own and I know you’re busy.” Then her smile turns wry with a tinge of concern that she tries to hide. “Sleep is a thing, you know. Healthy people tend to do it sometimes.”

He huffs a laugh at her and sinks deeper into the couch, moving his free arm from behind his head to rest on his stomach so he can slump fully into the deeply loved cushions. It’s becoming more and more common that this air of somnolence will take over him during these sessions in the Sara and Jason Kelley household. On one hand, she’s grateful and somewhat proud to be able to contribute to a calm, steady, lulling climate where he feels safe to let his guard down. On the other, it shows how slowly but surely he’s breaking down.

She thinks it’s quite telling that he feels most comfortable with letting his guard down with a low grade thrum of pain burning beneath his skin as they heal his sister.

His body language is usually inscrutable, but there are flashes of moments where his face, muscles, skin stretching over bone, all come together to reveal the beautiful, dolorous sculpture of the brokenness living inside him that he tries so hard to guard from the world--or maybe the other way around. Right now, his irises are just as intense and near to lucent as always, but the whites around them are bloodshot with fatigue. The drooping, purple half moons underneath his eyes have become as good as etched into the marble of his usually golden tan face. And the scars…

There are days where she hardly notices them, prevalent though they are--and then there are days like today where she can still smell the fresh, coppery blood and hear his awful, wet inhale as he tried to hold his pain inside while razor-claws dragged mercilessly through his flesh. She’ll never forget the way he looked that day, blood running in rivers down his face, covering gore and white bone. Skin paler than she’d ever seen it, eyes raw and pained but so powerful.

She’ll never forget the way he straightened, still breathing heavily, but standing tall and broad and strong. He pulled himself to his full height and pulled his attacker close with a gentle but firm hand on the back of his neck, a close imitation of the way he handles his ever-so-precious younger brothers.

The boy, David, was trembling, tears dripping down his face from anger and grief and confusion, with his right hand dripping with blood. Mouth quivering, he let himself be guided easily by the man whose life he had changed forever. The man he hated, but who was willingly letting him mutilate his face. It was so far from any man he’d ever known in his life, so far from the father he was trying to avenge. The mercy of it all was almost cruel, in that it allowed him no spite, there was none of the castigation he’d felt the burning need to inflict. It was supposed to be justice taken. It was not supposed to be mercy offered.

For David, this night would be one that would be burned in his brain and played back daily for many years. He wouldn’t understand all the layers of what had gone down maybe ever, he realized in his later maturity, but he would try.

Slate had bent his head and touched their foreheads together, his chest still moving with heavy breaths while his younger counterpart inhaled shuddery, hitching ones.

“David,” Slate had said quietly with strain in his voice. “You are not your father. You are better.”

David was now fully shuddering under the weight of what he had done, what he had lost, what he was gaining, what he had left to lose. Like he knew there was no other answer, he forced his voice to come out steadily when he responded back, “I will be.”

And then Slate released him and David walked off with his family, having changed lives forever and been changed forever.

Gray thinks those moments will probably stay with her the same way she’ll never forget her father’s bloody clinic and the three bodies she left behind her. So much blood has been spilled between the two of them, Slate and Gray. More than most will see in a lifetime.

As all these thoughts swirl around her mind, Slate exhales deeply and gives her hand a squeeze, bringing her back to the present. “I don’t need much to get by,” he says with a subtle tilt of his mouth, tired amusement.

It takes Gray a moment to realize he’s responding to her allegations about his poor sleeping habits. She barely refrains from rolling her eyes at his dismissive comment. It’s just so typical--and becoming increasingly frustrating.

“Okay, Slate,” she huffs somewhat sardonically. He flashes a grin at her, catching her sarcasm and frustration and essentially washing his hands of it. It’s her problem, not his. She rolls her eyes with what she reluctantly acknowledges is fondness and decides to steer the conversation to a tangentially related topic. “Sara has been getting worse,” she starts, trying to gauge him, “and I think I’d like to start dropping by in the morning and maybe at night, too. For shorter sessions, probably.”

Slate hums and mulls this over for a moment. Ostensibly, he’s nonplussed, but because Gray has the advantage of knowing how much pressure he’s under, she knows what to look for. His shoulders roll back ever so slightly, like he’s unconsciously preparing for battle. His eyes narrow a fraction in a manner that he can usually pass off as considering, but because she’s looking, she can see that it’s more so a reaction of stress than reflection.

Her natural instinct is to jump in to reassure him that it’s not incumbent upon him as her True Mate, her friend, her partner in healing, or any other label he takes responsibility for to never let her heal by herself again. The reason she stops herself is because she has learned from him that it’s okay to let the silence sit for a moment and that the most true answer will almost always be elicited by a silence, by not putting words in someone’s mouth or preemptively making judgements based on what you predict they will say. Or should say.

So though the silence itches at her, it’s less grating than it would be with anyone else, and she stays still and silent--impartial.

When he finally opens his mouth, it’s to lay out very slowly, “If you think it’s best, I will make it work.”

Gray sighs and tries to work out the frustration she’s feeling and where it’s coming from. Slate’s answer should be a satisfying one, but it’s leaving her feeling oddly irked. “Slate…” she begins and trails off almost immediately. “I think…” she tries again, and fails again.

In the end, Gray just looks at Slate helplessly. His eyes smile with fondness and his lips twitch minutely, but he ends up just coming off as weary. “Just think it through,” he murmurs lowly. “I’ll still be here.”

Gray waits until he closes his eyes again to pout childishly. Sometimes it really annoys her that he can’t just make a few guesses at least. He always makes her do the hard work.

She takes a moment to think that, though her childhood was not the beautiful, warm experience she wanted it to be, it was...easy in some ways, though it grates to think of it that way. Her father made most decisions for her, and the rest were decided by circumstance: she couldn’t go out with friends because she had to stay home with Alexander and Aria; she couldn’t listen to loud music because her mother was not to be disturbed; she couldn’t take joy rides because she had homework to do for all the advanced courses she was taking.

Now though, she has a whole new world of options open to her at any given time. At first, it was gratifying to have so much free time to just relax the way one cannot in the depths of nature where food isn’t always in the pantry and animals aren’t sweet and domesticated, easy to put in a cage. She now had time to bond with people, create and foster healthy relationships with the Atwoods and her siblings.

But now that she’s had that time to ride out the emotional/mental hangover from the last three years of life, she’s left feeling adrift, listless. By nature, she’s a doer, a fixer. With so few things to do and without power to fix all but one thing, she finds herself feeling more melancholy, lost. It leaves her with too much time to think. She has her first therapy appointment in two days. Perhaps that will be one of the things they talk about.

She hopes it is, at least. Of all the things to talk about, that would certainly be a lot less painful than several alternatives.

But Slate, he offers no easy ways out. She always has to do the work, think for herself, wrangle her natural indecisiveness into submission. It’s annoying, but it’s probably what she needs.

She mulls over what exactly she needs to communicate to him right now. It feels like they’ve arrived at an important junction, perhaps one they’d been drifting toward for a long time. While Gray is profoundly grateful to share her moon gift with Slate, there is something about it that rankles her. It’s like he feels some sort of...right to her abilities. Like she shouldn’t be allowed to use them without him.

Gray knows it comes from a good place. She knows it’s just because he doesn’t want her hurting, but it feels like he’s trying to take control of the one thing in Gray’s life that she has always felt gives her purpose. The one thing that could only be hers. It feels like...her father.

At that realization, Gray has to close her eyes against the barrage of emotion and memory that washes over her. She still remembers vividly how it felt to live under her father’s thumb, how oppressive it was. The memory is even more grating now that she knows what true freedom feels like. The concept of having no one to answer to is still novel to Gray, still feels fresh and cleansing and like relief.

And now someone else is trying to place limits on her.

Good intentions or not, Gray shouldn’t have to wait on Slate to help her best friend through her discomforts. She shouldn’t have to worry about what he’d think every time she itches to go heal someone alone.

In the past, Gray had a hard time even realizing she felt these things, this oppression. She feels some victory in achieving step one, recognition. Step two is addressing the issue out loud, which is...proving to be a difficult task.

Gray has never known Slate to be emotionally sensitive or easy to offend, but he’s even harder to gauge these days than ever before. And he’s tired right now, letting his guard down just a little to be able to sit here with her and relax his body.

She hates to interrupt that. But should she protect his peace of mind before her own? In the past she would say with certainty, yes. She can wait until the timing is better. But will there ever be a better time? Right now she’s alone with Slate, they have privacy, she won’t be interrupting work.

“Slate,” she says, barely above a whisper.

He frowns at her tone, cracks an eye open. Her discomfort must be written all over her face, because he immediately opens both eyes, blinking hard to dispel lethargy. He sits up and gives her his full attention. “Yes?”

Gray can’t help but shrink even more under the weight of his gaze. She takes a deep breath and tries to calm her anxiety. These days, she’s better at exercising independence and asserting her opinion, but she’d had twenty years of conditioning training her to defer to powerful men.

“I think we need to discuss something,” she eventually broaches. When Slate observes her for another moment and nods slowly, she squares her shoulders and looks him in the eye. She decides to carefully probe, “I would like to start healing Sara more throughout the day.”

When his shoulders drop half an inch and his face carefully blanks itself, she knows he’s trying to find a way to accommodate both her and his work and coming up with very little. Knowing him, he’d probably figure it out eventually but it might kill him in the process. Quickly, she adds, “By myself.”

At that, his eyebrows raise. “Can I ask why?” he asks slowly.

Gray takes another deep breath and takes courage from the fact that he’s not reacting at all the way her father would if she’d tried to have this conversation with him. It removes her from the mindset of her youth and brings her deeper into the present, where she’s sitting in front of a man she cares about and trusts deeply. This is Slate, not her father. This is safety, not danger; love, not control.

“I want…” she thinks, “the freedom to come and go when I want, to work on my own timeline, to choose when and where I want to use my gift.”

Slate watches her carefully as she speaks. He no doubt notices the careful usage of the words “freedom” and “choose” and “my gift”. His jaw clenches and he takes a deep breath before admitting, “I don’t like this.”

When he doesn’t continue, Gray kind of shrugs in a, what can you do? sort of manner. It might seem a bit flippant, but her confidence seems to have returned in full and she doesn’t feel altogether too guilty. She realizes and accepts that it’s not her responsibility to cater to his sensibilities. It’s a pleasing development. “You don’t have to like it,” she says gently. “But I need you to respect it.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks.

Gray just nods.

He stares for another moment before dragging a hand down his face and sighing. “Okay. Okay,” he repeats, seeming to try to come to terms with the idea. Otherwise, he’s impassive. “I don’t like it. But I respect it.”

Gray smiles softly, recognizing the significance of the gesture. This is something that, by his own admission, he is reluctant to compromise with and yet did it so easily. Well, maybe not easily. It can’t have been easy to bend his own will for Gray’s when his views are so different, but he did it remarkably quickly.

“Gray.” Slate catches her eyes with a soft glint to his own blue-greens. “I hope you know that I only want to make this easier for you.”

Gray smiles at him, sweet man. She nods. “I know, Slate, I know. And I--” Gray bites down on her tongue. She had been about to say, and I love you for it. Blinking rapidly at her startling inner dialogue, Gray rushes to fill the gap, “I appreciate that. But I need to be able to make my own choices about what I do or don’t do with my body and mind. I’m so glad you’ve been able to share this with me,” she wants to impress that on him, “and I’m not saying I never want you to be here with me again, just that I need to be able to answer to myself only, no one else.”

Slate exhales, looking like he’s still trying to get used to the whole shift in paradigm about what being able to heal means to Gray, and nods consideringly. “Can I continue to help you with Sara after work?” It looks like it pains him to even hint at the idea that she might refuse.

Gray nods back reassuringly. “I would like that.”

Slate’s brow furrows and he folds his arms across his chest. The posture may be misconstrued as expressing anger or frustration, but to Gray it looks like more of a self soothing gesture than anything else. He’s caught off guard by this conversation and isn’t happy about where they’ve ended up. As the conversation progresses, he seems to be breaking down more and more, becoming less filtered. He usually doesn’t project so much with his body language, especially discomfort.

“Gray,” he sighs, “I don’t like this.”

The fact that he’s repeated the phrase goes to show much the situation has affected him.

He continues, “You’re sure you don’t just want me to come around with you more often?”

Gray sighs and puts a gentle hand on his arm. “I love the idea of that, but it’s not practical.” When he opens his mouth to argue, Gray cuts him off, though the simple concept of forcing him to keep more words to himself pains her. “It’s not, Slate, and we both know that. Could you accommodate me and meet me here three or more times a day? Sure,” she answers her own questions truthfully, “but your other work would suffer, and I know you don’t want that.”

His jaw works, frustrated. “I wouldn’t let it affect the pack or the business.”

Gray sighs at his bullheadedness. He probably has some grounds for his reasoning in the most literal application of the words, but that doesn’t preclude him missing the entire point. She tries to express as much. “Okay, you’re right. I know you wouldn’t let your work suffer, but Slate,” she squeezes his arm, “if that’s true, the only remaining option is for you to suffer and you know it. Something has to give, there’s just not enough hours in the day.” She mutters with a tired shake of her head, “I swear you’d kill yourself before feeling like you’ve let someone down.”

She’d said the last sentence glibly, but it’s all too true. She can hardly imagine what it would feel like to live inside his head. She can understand how a person could be so dedicated to his people that he would do everything he could for them, but that’s miles behind what Slate would do. What she has a hard time fathoming is that she doesn’t doubt Slate has the self discipline to actually run himself into the ground in the process. Most people would have to admit defeat after too long, collapsing in on themselves in epic fashion and having to sleep for a week, but Gray believes that if Slate felt like he had to meet a commitment for someone, he’d push his body until it gave out against his will.

Slate’s body isn’t necessarily more capable than anyone else’s, it’s his mind that’s made of steel. Gray has no doubt his mind could outlast his body by miles. Years.

Slate reaches up to rub his forehead and obscure his face from view for a moment, and when he drops it, he’s stone. He rolls his shoulders the way he does when he’s trying to get them to untense. “I can take a lot, Gray,” he says with an edge. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Gray narrows her eyes at him. If he wants to be a stone man, fine. She knows how to use a chisel. Matching the strength of his voice, she turns her body to face his, hitching one leg up onto the couch between them. She meets his gaze and enunciates each word carefully, “And what kind of True Mate would I be if I didn’t worry?”

His face never moves, but he swallows and his eyes go stormy. The silence stretches on. Gray doesn’t know if it’s because he’s been rendered speechless, still trying to process, or because he just doesn’t care to respond, but in any case, Gray is happy to let it sit. If he can be patient, so can she.

If may have been a bit of a low blow to invoke the name of “True Mates”, since the two of them have never discussed it before--in fact, she doesn’t think either of them has ever said the words in the presence of the other--but Gray has been getting progressively more tired with being a passenger in her own life and if she wants to talk about this, why should she wait for him to bring it up first? Even if he drops the subject altogether, Gray doesn’t care. She’s said the words and won’t take them back.

After several breaths, Slate sighs and melts into the back of the couch, weary. He tilts his head back to search the ceiling with eyes pinched at the corners and mouth slightly downturned. The tension is gone from his body, but not in a way that speaks of relaxation–rather, exhaustion. Gray’s heart hurts for him. Such a strong man, who life has taught to put his strength in the hands of others and keep none for himself.

Like the words pain him to say, he rolls his head slightly and looks at Gray out of the corner of his eye, almost half lidded, and murmurs, “Thank you.”

The words warm Gray on the inside. She is certain the gratitude is an acknowledgement that her being concerned is a way of expressing that she cares about him and not because he’s actually glad she worries about him, but she has to wonder if there’s a part of him that is relieved to know that someone sees him, worries over him. Surely he has to know his family worries sometimes, but Gray thinks they all know better than to tell him they do. They know it will just pile more guilt on him and make him hide his distress more rather than alleviate any of it.

While Gray thinks that’s true, the context is all too different with her. Slate’s relationship with his siblings and even his father is complicated, has probably been a bit twisted for a long time.

Slate isn’t just an older brother, he’s a caretaker, protector, guardian, confidant, and so many other things. Gray thinks of Alexander and Aria, realizes it’s almost laughable to consider the role Alexander plays for his younger sibling compared to the role Slate plays for his. The depth and width of the vast ocean between the two of them seems too cruel for someone to bear.

But Gray...she’s different for Slate, just as he is for her. The bond between the two of them is fresher, more delicate, but also based on a firm foundation of mutual respect and affection. There are no years of history, no shared trauma, neither of them has authority over the other. The role they play in each other’s lives is unlike any other person they’ve known. Gray is learning that...maybe that means they make the rules. She makes the rules. And no one else has to understand but them.

And if he still wants to be a stone man, well, she’ll keep track of that chisel.