Knot Yours Yet (Packs of Honeysuckle Grove #1)

Chapter 1

Lo

What. The. Fuck?

Did I just… drive into something?

How tired am I?

The airbag hits me with a punch to the chest, and for a second, all I hear is the high-pitched ring of my own poor life choices. My body snaps forward, then back, seatbelt cutting into my collarbone.

The engine dies with a pathetic cough. Glitter flutters through the air, confetti in a slow-motion nightmare.

I blink.

Outside the cracked windshield is a sea of feathers, fake flowers, and… are those papier maché bees?

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh god no.

I didn’t just hit something.

I hit a float.

A freaking parade float. I shove the door open, stumbling out of the car on wobbly legs. My boots crunch over broken plastic and shredded streamers. It smells of cotton candy and burning rubber.

People are shouting. Somewhere, a band is still playing.

And that’s when it clicks.

I drove straight into the Winterfest Parade.

Voices ring out around me, muddling together in the cold, biting wind that seems to carry the glitter in my direction.

Great. I’ve destroyed a float, and now I’ll be wearing the evidence in my hair for days.

“Oh my god!”

“No, she didn’t.”

“What is she doing here?”

“Is that…”

“Lo Marsh?”

That last voice makes the blood drain from my face.

I look up, bracing for the worst, and there she is.

Sylvia Hammond.

The town’s Beta queen of passive aggression and my mother’s former best friend turned personal hater-in-chief.

Her face twists into something between shock and glee.

“Louisa Marsh?” she says, loud enough to turn a dozen more heads. “You’re back?”

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.

I’m not doing this.

My body moves before my brain catches up. I turn on my heel, ignore the stinging in my knees, and start shoving my way through the stunned crowd.

Faces blur around me. Bright clothes, flashing cameras, wide eyes full of recognition and pity. Maybe even glee.

I spin, disoriented, trying to find a way out. But every street is packed, every sidewalk a minefield of whispers.

“Is that really her?”

“She has some nerve showing her face…”

“She looks awful.”

My breath catches. My skin feels too tight. The burn that was simmering in my chest now claws its way up my spine.

I hear someone laugh. Not with me—at me.

My stomach flips.

Memories long buried, surface without permission:

My father’s office door slamming shut.

My mother’s clipped tone insisting, “We did what we had to.”

Jamie, my younger brother, just trying to keep his head down.

Me, only twenty years old, too angry and too naive, standing in front of the town council with trembling hands and a folder of stolen documents.

I tried to expose them. Tried to tell the truth.

But no one listened.

They turned on me.

All of them.

The Marsh girl.

The ungrateful Omega daughter.

The liar.

I trip on a length of parade bunting and nearly go down. My palm scrapes against pavement as I catch myself.

The ache in my skull pulses, sharp and hot, and I realize, too late, that I must have hit my head when I crashed.

Great. Fantastic. One more thing, on top of everything else.

So much for staying under the radar.

That had been my plan.

Come back to Honeysuckle Grove and slip into the old townhouse my parents haven’t set foot in for years. Home just long enough to figure out my next move.

No one would notice. No one should have noticed. I just needed to exist for five minutes, to hide out somewhere solid for a moment after everything I’ve been through.

I’ve been living out of my car for the past few months, just trying to get by after… well, everything that happened.

So I came back to the one place I swore I never would. Just for a little while.

Ugh.

Now I’ve turned a desperate attempt to hide into a town-wide spectacle. Why does it always seem like I’m the car crash.

I am the parade float.

The disgraced Marsh girl, back in town with glitter in her hair and a target on her back.

I push harder through the crowd, trying to get away, to find somewhere to hide or a hole to fall into. But my head spins and my knees go soft.

I stumble once. Twice.

People gasp, but no one moves. Not that I’d expect anything else. So when strong, steady, searing-hot arms wrap around me just before I hit the pavement.

Everything in me freezes in shock.

Recognition comes unbidden. Because I know this touch.

I know this Alpha scent.

Smoked cedar and vanilla bourbon. Warmth and comfort and everything I once dreamed of.

“Lo?” he breathes.

Beck.

Beck fucking Calloway.

Of course it’s him.

Of course he’s the one who finds me at my worst, catching me like a damsel in distress.

I blink up at him and my vision blurs—whether from the hit to the head or the sudden rush of angry tears I can’t hold in, I don’t know. His scent overwhelms me, and my lungs beg me to draw it in until I drown in him.

He looks down at me with that same furrowed brow, that same unreadable intensity I remember. Still just as stoic and focused. His jaw ticks as his grip tightens. I smell my own scent, acrid with stress, blossoming around us.

I have to get inside…Oh god…I have to get away from so many eyes.

“Dammit, Lo,” he mutters in a low rasp as he adjusts his hold and pulls me fully against him, lifting me with a strength that sets every nerve on fire. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I could say the same.

I could say a lot of things.

But my mouth doesn’t work. My brain’s fogged with confusion and fear and the bone-deep exhaustion of surviving on fumes for much too long.

So instead, I whisper the only thing I can manage.

“I didn’t mean to come back like this.”

And then…

Everything goes black.