Chapter 3
Spilled Coffee On The Past
~HAZEL~
They should put warning labels on small-town book events: May cause severe psychological trauma, complete loss of dignity, and unwanted Alpha attention.
The Book Nook reeks of desperation masked as festivity.
Fake spider webs drape from every surface like the aftermath of a craft store massacre, foam bats dangle overhead in what can only be described as Halloween's death throes, and the orange-and-black crepe streamers might as well be police tape marking off a crime scene.
The air is thick—pumpkin clove candle fighting a losing battle against the acrid scent of my own fear-sweat soaking through my sleeves. Pathetic. Three years and you still can't control your own fucking pheromones.
Miss Bea, the Beta widow who runs this literary purgatory, has transformed every flat surface into a shrine to seasonal consumerism.
Horror novels stack like tombstones, haunted rom-coms promise love after death, and those glossy "Pumpkin Thrills" magazines look like soft-core porn for the harvest-obsessed.
Why am I here?
Because Reverie Bell commanded it, and when she dangles the promise of exposure for my struggling bakery business, I jump like the well-trained Omega I've always been. Good girl, Hazel. Perform for your treats.
My table squats beneath jack-o'-lantern lights that flicker with manic energy, casting shadows that dance across my "Hazel's Hearth they're fractured honey with dark veins running through, like someone took beauty and broke it on purpose just to see what would happen.
The air bends. Physics stops making sense when Rowan Cambridge enters a room.
My body betrays me instantly, every nerve ending lighting up with cellular recognition.
Cedar floods my senses—real cedar, not the synthetic shit, mixed with smoke and something darker, something that makes my hindbrain scream both danger and safety in the same breath.
He touched you once. Just your temple. Three years ago. Your body still remembers.
It's not fair. Nothing about Rowan has ever been fair. Not the way he carries his firefighter authority like a second skin, not the way he refuses to make himself smaller for anyone's comfort, not the way my omega instincts still catalogue him as protective even though I know better.
He shouldn't be here. He should be wrestling wildfires into submission or pulling people from burning buildings or doing whatever it is that lets Alphas sleep at night knowing they didn't stop the real monsters.
Instead, he's here. At my table. Looking at me like I'm a math problem he's been trying to solve for three years.
My hands—finally steady, finally mine—immediately betray me. The muffin tray tips, sending a pumpkin projectile rolling toward disaster. I catch it, but not before the humiliation registers in every cell.
His eyebrow twitches. Not a smile—Rowan doesn't smile. He does this thing with the corner of his mouth that makes you think you're safe right before he reminds you that Alpha promises are written in water.
He's not here for pastries.
I know it in my bones, in the way his gaze dissects me, cataloguing changes—new freckles, the scar on my wrist I keep hidden, the way I've learned to make myself smaller. His hands are empty. Not even pretending to want the cookies.
He remembers how I used to look at him. Before.
I am catastrophically unprepared. Not physically—my body is already responding, omega biology flooding me with hormones I don't want. Not emotionally—my heart is attempting to exit through my throat. Not even gastrointestinally—my stomach has decided to become a black hole.
This is my ex's best friend. The Alpha I trusted enough to cry in front of. The one who saw the bruises, saw the rope marks on my wrists where—
Stop. Don't go there. Not here.
He saw everything and said nothing because pack loyalty trumps Omega safety every fucking time.
That's not fair to Rowan.
Since when has fairness mattered in this town?
The air between us thickens until I could chew it. I make a sound—part laugh, part death rattle—and thrust a sample plate at him with visibly trembling fingers.
"Pumpkin crème?" My voice comes out high, thin, desperate. "It's mandatory. Town ordinance."
He blinks like I've spoken in ancient tongues. Then—deliberately, slowly, like he's afraid I'll bolt—he takes the plate. Doesn't eat. Just holds it, those fire-gold eyes performing vivisection on my soul.
He sees everything. Every flaw. Every weakness. Every place where I'm still broken.
Three years, and my body still thinks Rowan Cambridge has the right to look at me like this.
He doesn't speak. Rowan never was a talker unless you cornered him about animal rescue or single-malt whiskey or the infrastructure failures that led to the Meadowbrook Avenue fire.
The last time he spoke to me directly, he was telling me I could leave. That it was "safe now." That his pack would "handle the paperwork."
Safe. Like safety is something Alphas can grant instead of something they take away.
He sets the plate down—untouched, because of course—and leans in. Elbows on my table, face suddenly too close. I can see the scar above his left eyebrow I don't remember, the shadow of stubble that would leave marks, the exhaustion carved into the corners of his eyes.
"Need something else?" The question escapes before I can stop it, thinner than tissue paper.
He shakes his head slowly, gestures at the pastries.
"You made these?"
I nod, unable to form words.
"They're good." He hasn't tasted them.
Compliment or accusation? With Alphas, there's no difference.
I look away, rearranging cookies that don't need rearranging, anything to avoid those eyes that see too much, remember too much, want too much.
He lingers. I think he's going to say more—maybe even say it, acknowledge what happened, what he let happen—but Rowan Cambridge is nothing if not consistent. He pulls back with that ghost-quiet step, leaving only cedar smoke and the taste of regret.
I exhale, shaky and thin, fighting the urge to crawl under the table and cease existing.
First customer of the night. Of course it was him. The universe isn't done punishing me yet.
His presence doesn't ask permission—it takes. The air gets heavier, pressurized. My skin becomes hyperaware of everything: every old scar, every place another Alpha marked me, every soft spot that still aches in the rain.
But it's his scent that devastates.
It steamrolls through the bookstore's pumpkin-spice attempts at ambiance.
Deep cedar smoke mixed with bourbon vanilla, cinnamon bark, and that particular smell of firewood after rain.
It sinks into my bones, rewrites my nervous system, tells every omega instinct to wake up, pay attention, remember what you're missing.
For one brutal second, everything else disappears. It's just me, Rowan, the heat flooding my face, and the coffee mug trembling in my traitorous hands.
Look at him. Really look.
Wrecked isn't the right word, but exhausted fits.
Like someone who's been fighting fires with his bare hands and came out victorious but not unscathed.
His hair—dark chestnut, thick and deliberately unkempt—catches the pumpkin lights, that new silver streak at his temple marking time I wasn't there to witness.
The jaw that could cut glass is shadowed with stubble, the kind that would burn against skin, leave marks that last for days.