Chapter 8
Lucy
I was trapped in a romance novel.
A dramatic mountain rescue followed by going home with a rough, hot-as-sin mountain man?
Romance. Novel.
I was curled up in an armchair by the woodstove, covered with a quilt that smelled of smoke, pine, and leather, just like the alpha sitting stiffly on the couch.
His eyes were fixed straight ahead, giving me a chance to admire him.
His dark hair was tied up in a bun and his firm jaw was lined with a beard.
He was huge, probably the biggest alpha I’d ever seen.
Tall and broad, with muscular arms and thighs, a wide chest, and a thick torso.
I wanted to crawl over and curl up in his lap with his huge hands spanning my hips and waist, moving me wherever he wanted me…
The only issue was that Wilder seemed distinctly uninterested in me.
He wasn’t unkind, but his grunts, stony silence, and the fact he was sitting as far away from me as possible in the small living room made it clear he would prefer I wasn’t here.
My chest clenched with the familiar feeling of being a nuisance.
Lucy distracts other students by talking too much in class.
Lucy needs to work harder to apply herself.
Lucy struggles with codependence.
Finally, the silence stretched on so long that I couldn’t hold myself back. “How did you get into firefighting?”
Wilder jumped, his eyes meeting mine like he was shocked I was still here.
Very flattering.
“Uh, I went to trade school and tried out a couple of things but none of them felt right. I saw a recruitment ad from the fire department in the paper. There was a big signing bonus—more money than I’d ever seen. I figured I’d give it a try. That was fourteen years ago.”
“You must be good at it if you’ve stuck with it that long. Where are you from?”
“Western Mass. Did a short stint in Boston, but city life doesn’t suit me. When the fire chief here retired, a guy I used to work with recommended me for the job. Still not sure why they hired me.”
My brow furrowed. Most of the alphas I knew tended to be overconfident, but Wilder seemed almost down on himself. “Why shouldn’t they hire you? You’re clearly great at what you do.”
A little thrill ran through my chest when his cheeks flushed. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess they were desperate.”
“Do you like it here?” I leaned in, anxious for his response. For reasons I wasn’t quite ready to examine, I wanted him to love Starlight Grove.
“I like being close to the ocean and living in the mountains.”
Maybe not the glowing review I was hoping for, but liking the geography was a good start.
“How’d you get into sewing?” He wasn’t looking at me when he asked the question, but I was thrilled he was keeping the conversation going.
“My mormor—grandma—taught me how to sew. She had this huge room with six different sewing machines and any supplies you could possibly dream of. She left them all to me when she passed away.”
“Is that what you always wanted to do?”
I shrugged. “I liked sewing stuff for my friends and moms, but I didn’t think it could be an actual business.
I’d planned to enroll in community college after I graduated, but I didn’t like school and didn’t get great grades.
When a storefront became available on Main Street a week after I graduated, I just went for it. ”
I braced myself for his judgment.
“Sounds like you made it work.”
I swallowed hard, a smile tugging at my lips. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You still like it?”
The standard answer I always gave was on the tip of my tongue, but that’s not what came out. “I don’t know.”
He arched an eyebrow, prompting me to continue. “At first, I wanted to focus on custom clothes, but tailoring seemed like a safer and more straightforward way to earn money.”
He frowned. “But it’s not what you want?”
I shrugged, my chest tight. “I’m not really sure what I want anymore. I should have figured out my life by now, but I’m still just living in my hometown and running my small shop.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he grunted, and it filled me with warmth. My cheeks grew even more heated when his gruff words made me perfume.
A low growl rumbled through his chest but was quickly cut off. He got up and moved to the window…to get away from my scent? The rain was still coming down hard and the pattering on the roof created a calm, soothing rhythm.
“I didn’t even know it was supposed to storm today,” I said.
He turned to face me. “Why were you out on the mountain without checking the forecast?”
I shrank back in my seat, fixing my eyes on the frayed edge of the quilt. If he had a needle and thread, I could reinforce the edge so it didn’t fray further.
Wilder sat down again, but this time he was on the side of the couch closest to me. “Sorry. That was too harsh.”
“Harsh but true. I should have paid more attention.”
He sighed as he fluffed the pillows supporting my leg and adjusted the placement of the ice pack. My ankle barely hurt anymore, but I would happily sprain it again if it meant he would keep taking care of me.
“You could have gotten seriously injured if I hadn’t come along. Did you spend the night on the mountain?”
“Yeah. I left yesterday morning and camped overnight.”
“Why were you camping? Doesn’t exactly seem like your thing.”
“You’re going to think I’m stupid.”
“Try me.”
I chewed my lip. Was I really going to tell this stranger what I hadn’t told my friends and family? Maybe I would regret it, but I just wanted someone to know.
“I just turned twenty-nine and my life isn’t what I thought it would be.
I feel kind of lost.” I shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but the bitter edge to my scent gave me away.
I hadn’t brought my scent blocker with me camping since I didn’t anticipate the whole sexy mountain alpha rescue, but I wished I had.
Growing up, I’d loved the idea that my alphas would be able to sense my emotions through my scent, but in practice, it was pretty embarrassing.
Especially since Wilder wasn’t my alpha.
“I saw an omega online talk about hiking and it seemed so empowering. I’ve never gone camping before, but I thought connecting with nature could help me, you know, find myself.”
God, it sounded so ridiculous when I said it out loud.
After a miserable, sleepless night, I’d crawled out of my half-collapsed tent—the tent I’d abandoned on the mountain when the storm intensified.
I’d tried to refold it to get it into my backpack, but after fifteen minutes of battle in the downpour, I’d given up.
I’d slipped down the mountain, growing colder and more drenched as I went.
“I guess I should have known I’d fail. Even without the unexpected weather, camping and hiking probably isn’t my thing.”
“I think it’s brave.”
My jaw dropped as my head snapped up. I searched Wilder’s face to see if he was mocking me, but all I was met with was his steady, nonjudgmental gaze.
“What?”
“You went out of your comfort zone to try something new. That’s brave.”
This was the second time someone had called me brave in the past few days, and I fought the urge to burst into tears.
For a long time, I’d felt like nobody really saw me.
I had no reason to complain about my life—I had friends and family who loved me and were proud of me, which was more than a lot of people had—but it still hurt to feel invisible.
I wanted to be chosen. Prioritized. And to not be constantly terrified of losing people’s love and approval once they got to know the real me.
Wilder wasn’t offering me anything. I wouldn’t delude myself that this was the start of some big romance. But it still felt nice.
“Thanks,” I whispered. “That’s really kind.”
“Not often described as kind,” he grunted, which made me smile. Big tough alpha.
I leaned back in my chair, my omega feeling much more settled. “So, what do you do up here for entertainment?” The small living room was conspicuously lacking a TV or board games or…much of everything, really.
At his blank stare and silence, I let out an indignant noise. “You cannot possibly tell me that you sit up here for days straight and just, what? Grunt and chop wood?”
He crossed his thick arms, jaw set. “Fine. I will not tell you that.”
I sat forward and the movement knocked the ice pack off my ankle. Wilder frowned. “Be careful.” He moved it back, his fingers brushing my calf.
I perfumed again, and this time there was no ignoring it.
My scent saturated the room like my omega was waving a bright red flag and shouting, “Take me, alpha!” I was about to apologize when Wilder abruptly got up and stalked out of the room.
The back door slammed and my heart sank.
Had my scent seriously driven him out into the middle of the storm?
“Well, I don’t like your scent, either,” I muttered.
I pulled the quilt more firmly over my body as I slumped in the chair. And I definitely did not breathe in more deeply to catch his scent off the fabric.