Chapter 29: Marcus Comes Back
1278 Words
NORA POV
Two knocks. Not Conrad’s knock. Lighter.
“Come in”
Marcus opened the door.
He looked rough. Not the kind of rough that came from one bad night. The kind that had been building for a while and was finally visible because he had stopped trying to hide it. His jacket was creased, his eyes were low, and he stood in the doorway for a second like he wasn’t sure he had the right to come further in.
“Can we talk?” he said.
I looked at him for a moment. Then I pushed the chair on the other side of my desk out with my foot. “Sit down.”
He came in. Closed the door behind him. Sat.
For a second neither of us said anything.
He was the one who broke it. “I want to tell you the full version.”
“Okay.”
“Not the version I told Rhett.” He looked at his hands on his knees. “The actual one.”
“I’m listening.”
He breathed in once. Then he started.
“The first message from Dana came three weeks after the wedding.” He kept his eyes down. “She sent it to my personal number. I don’t know how she got it. I almost didn’t respond.” He paused. “I did respond.”
I waited.
“She said she was okay. That was it, the whole message. I’m okay. And I wrote back asking where she was and she said somewhere safe and that was the whole conversation.” He looked up briefly. “I told myself it was nothing. Just making sure she was alive. One time thing.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No.” He looked back at his hands. “Two months later she messaged again. Just checking in. And again I answered. And then it was every few months and then it was more often and I kept telling myself it was just contact, just making sure she was okay, nothing more than that.”
“But you knew it was more.”
He was quiet.
“Marcus.”
“Yeah” he said. “I knew.”
He said it quietly. Not ashamed exactly. Just tired of the weight of it.
“She was scared when she ran” he said. “She didn’t have anyone. She didn’t tell me why she ran at first. Just that she couldn’t go back. And I couldn’t…” He stopped. Rubbed the back of his neck. “I couldn’t leave her alone out there.”
I looked at him across the desk. The creased jacket. The eyes that hadn’t slept. The hands that couldn’t sit still on his knees.
Five years this man had sat across meeting tables from me. Had walked into rooms I was in and known I wasn’t who the pack thought I was and said nothing. Not to protect himself. Not to collect leverage. Just because he was carrying his own impossible thing and understood the shape of carrying it.
“Tell me the rest” I said.
He looked up. “The rest?”
“You said you love her.”
He held my eyes for a second. Then he said it. Flat and plain. No dressing around it. “I love her. Yes.”
It landed in the office the way he had probably known it would. Heavy. The kind of thing that changed the air in a room.
“How long?” I said.
“Longer than I let myself admit.” He didn’t look away. “Before the wedding. I didn’t say anything because she was about to marry Rhett and it wasn’t my place and I thought…” He stopped. “I thought it would pass.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
I sat back in my chair. The morning light was coming through the window behind me and hitting the side of his face and he looked genuinely worn down. Not performing it. Just worn.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness” he said. “I know what I did. I know what it means for my position.” He kept his voice level. “I just need to know what Rhett is going to do.”
I looked at him.
“That’s it?” I said. “That’s what you came here for?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward slightly. “Because if he is going to remove me from the Beta position I need to know. And if he is going to do something else I need to know that too.” His jaw was tight. “I would rather know than wait.”
I understood that. The waiting was its own kind of brutal.
“What are you afraid he’ll do?” I said.
Marcus was quiet for a second. “I don’t know. That is the problem.” He looked at me steadily. “You have lived with him for five years. You know how he thinks. What he does when someone he trusted makes a choice this size.” He paused. “I need to know what I am walking into when I go to him.”
I opened my mouth.
And then I stopped.
Because I was sitting there with five years of Rhett in my head. Every morning. Every meeting. Every conversation in that study. The way he thought through problems and held his face and made decisions that other men would have made with heat and he made with that quiet control.
And I realised I did not know.
I genuinely did not know what he was going to do with Marcus.
I knew Rhett would not be cruel about it. I knew he would be direct. I knew he would hear it the same way he heard everything, without flinching. But what came after that direct conversation, what Rhett’s answer actually was, whether it was the Beta position or something else or something I had not thought of?
Five years. I had memorised the rhythm of this man’s mornings and I still could not tell Marcus what was coming.
“You’re not sure” Marcus said. He read it on my face before I said anything.
“No” I said. “I’m not.”
He nodded. Once. Slow. Like that answer was both the worst and somehow also a kind of relief. Like at least the uncertainty was shared.
“He’ll be fair” I said. Because I believed that. “Whatever he decides, he’ll be fair.”
“Fair doesn’t mean I keep the position.”
“No” I said. “It doesn’t.”
The office was quiet. Outside in the corridor someone walked past and kept going and the sound faded.
Marcus looked at the desk between us. “You kept it together for five years” he said. “In case that means anything coming from me.” He stood up. “You did it well.”
He went to the door.
“Marcus.”
He stopped. Turned.
“Go to him today” I said. “Don’t wait.”
He stood there for a second. Nodded.
Then he left.
I sat in my office after the door closed and looked at the wall and thought about a man who had hidden a woman he loved for five years and called it just checking in.
And I thought about how that was the most human thing I had heard since this whole thing started falling apart.
- Writer
