Page 28 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

She's looking at me with an expression I can't fully read, hope and fear and need and something desperate that makes my chest physically hurt.

"Deklan, I…"

"I'm not done." I close the distance between us. One more step, and I'm right in front of her. Close enough to touch. "Serena told you you're a placeholder. She's wrong. You're not a placeholder, Willow. You're not a function. You're not a warm body filling a gap."

I reach out and cup her face. My hands are steady, they're always steady, the Beta's gift, the strategist's curse, but the contact sends a jolt through me that I wasn't prepared for. Her skin is warm, damp from tears, impossibly soft.

"You're our home," I say.

The words come out rough. Barely recognizable. Not the voice of Deklan Kros, the strategist, the numbers guy, the grumpy Beta who hides behind his laptop. This is the voice of the boy who grew up with nothing, who lost his sister, who's been pretending he's fine for six months while drowning in his own grief.

Willow makes a sound, a small, broken sob, and her forehead drops against my chest. Her hands fist in my shirt, and she cries. Not silently this time. Not the muffled, practiced crying of someone who expects to be ignored. She cries like someone who's finally been given permission to fall apart.

And I hold her.

Not the way Knox would, with whispered filth and wandering hands and the promise of pleasure. Not the way JD would, with iron strength and protective authority and the weight of an Alpha's claim.

I hold her the way I held Mara when we were kids, and she'd wake up screaming from nightmares. The way I held Lily the first night she was ours, screaming for a mother who would never come back. Steady. Solid. Unmovable.

I wrap my arms around Willow and press my mouth to her hair and breathe her in, and I let her cry until the sobs turn to shudders, and the shudders turn to sniffles, and the sniffles turn to silence.

"You're not a placeholder," I say again, against her hair. "You're not a gap-filler. You're not a function."

"Then what am I?" Her voice is muffled against my chest.

I pull back just enough to look at her face. Blotchy. Tear-streaked. Swollen-eyed. Beautiful.

"You're the person who checked the baby food labels and noticed Lily doesn't like sweet potato," I say. "You're the person who sang to her during a diaper change. You're the person who sat in the rocking chair and let her fall asleep holding your finger. You're the person who walks into a room and makes it warmer just by being there."

My thumb traces the curve of her cheekbone, wiping away a tear.

"You're the person who made me feel something for the first time in six months. And I am terrified of that, Willow. Terrified. Because the last person I loved died, and I can't, I can't…"

My voice cracks. I press my lips together, hard, and look away. My glasses are fogged. I take them off and set them on the dresser with a shaking hand.

When I look back at her, her expression has changed. The fear is still there, but it's been joined by something else. Something fierce.

"Deklan."

"Willow."

"Look at me."

I do. Without my glasses, the world is softer, blurred at the edges, impressionistic. But she's close enough that I can see her clearly. The gold flecks in her brown eyes. The curve of her upper lip. The mole on her neck that I've been trying not to stare at since she arrived.

"I'm not going to die," she says. "I'm not Mara. I'm not going to disappear."

"You can't promise that."

"I can." She lifts her hand and places it over my heart. Her palm is warm through the fabric of my shirt. "I'm not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to."

I cover her hand with mine. Our fingers lace together, and the contact is so simple, so human, so right that something in my chest unlocks.

"Willow." Her name comes out like a prayer. "I need you to understand something."

"What?"

"I'm not good at this." I gesture vaguely between us. "I'm not smooth like Knox. I'm not commanding like JD. I'm a Beta who hides behind spreadsheets because feelings are unpredictable and I can't model them in Excel."