Murph
The downtown office of Reimagine Rios is quiet this mid-afternoon.
The four co-owners of the construction company, Wyatt Comeaux, Elias Gallo, Hunter Bailey, and Knox Winter, are sorting through bids they’re considering, so we’ve yet to start any building projects.
We’re a new construction company formed shortly after completing the condo down the street. That’s how I met them—or rather, how they met me.
They met on a previous project and became pack mates.
Before we came to Rios several months ago, we were all traveling construction workers.
Like most who enjoy this kind of work, settling down wasn’t a priority for any of us.
But they met Maisie, an omega who was, for a short time, a waitress at the diner, and settled.
When we finished the condo, I had another big, well-paying job in Florida lined up. There was no reason I shouldn’t take it, except that voice in my head telling me I wasn’t finished in Rios yet. I didn’t know what that voice was until I ran into Rose Hayes.
It was the universe whispering for me to stay put, or I would have missed out on something most people could only ever dream of finding: their scent match.
“Heard you have a pretty woman moved into your house,” Wyatt says in a Southern drawl.
I look up from plans for a custom farmhouse, a proposal we’re costing for the client. It’s just one potential job, and we have a stack of bids to review, so there’s no need to rush. The people looking to hire us know how we work, that we’re good, and have decades of experience between us.
Four men stare at me from the large, rough-hewn table.
There’s little else in this office yet, just tools we’ve accumulated over the years in a couple of storage rooms, another smaller room that will probably be where Wyatt, as the de facto CEO, meets with prospective clients, a small bathroom, and this big central room with two large filing cabinets and a wall of frosted glass that looks out onto downtown Main Street.
By the front door is a small wooden desk and chair, where Maisie, their bonded omega, will work in the mornings when we go out to view a site.
The chair is empty today. She’s at their home, a large farmhouse about thirty minutes outside of town, probably busy baking one of the pies that she and Nico’s Diner are known for.
One of the biggest perks of this job, other than working with guys I like and respect, is the pies they bring into work several times a week.
Knowing it would be pointless to lie, I let out the weary sigh of a man who sees no way out of a conversation he’d been desperate to avoid. “I hate small towns,” I grumble.
Hunter, a former semi-pro surfer from California, grins at me. “Who's the girl?”
I consider lying, but I figure, what’s the point? All small towns are the same: everyone is a little too concerned with your business, and hoping to keep any secret for long is like wishing for a snowball fight in the Sahara Desert. Mission in-fucking-possible.
“My scent match,” I quietly admit.
Clearly not quietly enough, because Elias Gallo, who’s sitting farthest away from me, narrows his eyes at me. “Your what now?”
“You heard me.” I set my pen down. They won’t let me work until they’re done dragging out all the information they want to know about Rose and me.
“So that’s why you stayed in Rios instead of taking the Florida job,” Knox says, scratching his jaw. “And you rushed back from Wyoming pretty fast when we told you there was no need to.”
I was supposed to be in Wyoming helping at the ranch for three days. After two days, I had a desperate urge to come back to Rios, so I hit the road and drove practically all night. My brothers thought I was insane. For a hot second, I thought I was too.
Raking a hand through my hair, I lean back in my seat as my wooden chair creaks beneath me. “I didn’t know she was coming here. It just felt like I had unfinished business in town.”
“Unfinished business?” Wyatt’s lips twitch. “You sound like a ghost.”
“Fuck you.” I ball up a piece of scrap paper and toss it at him. He catches it and redirects it to the trash can beside the table.
“So…” Hunter drawls.
I give him a long look, pretending I don’t understand where he’s going with this when in reality I know exactly what this is about. Just because I work in construction, usually with more men than women, doesn’t mean they don’t like to gossip.
He wants me to spill when I’m still navigating my feelings after going from being a loner to having a pack and a mate with nearly two kids.
I like being alone.
People have expectations, and they like small talk more than I ever will. But since Rose and Ben moved into the house, there’s been more laughter and conversation than I thought I’d ever be comfortable with. Surreal in the best way possible.
“I’m not talking about it,” I tell Hunter pointedly.
“You didn’t need to rush back to work, you know?” Wyatt says, gesturing toward the table littered with papers and floor plans. “We’d have handled these bids without you.”
Flying would have made the journey to Wyoming faster and easier, but the only thing I hate more than crowds is sitting in a big metal object that can fall out of the sky. Give me a thirteen-hour road trip over a five-hour-long plane ride any day of the week.
“They didn’t need me anymore.” But that isn’t quite true.
The guilt is ever present whenever I go home. Ranching is hard work. All hands on deck. Losing me hurt them, though they never asked me to stay or reconsider.
My brothers were happy to stay ranching. I love my family, love the ranch and my hometown, but I felt trapped at sixteen, and that feeling grew year after year.
I was eighteen when I went looking for work that wasn’t on a cattle ranch in the middle of fucking nowhere.
I don’t regret it, but over ten years later, that guilt still hasn’t gone away, even though I’ve finally accepted that this is my life; you only get one, and you can’t waste it doing something you hate.
“If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have been here for Rose. ”
She hasn’t mentioned going back to Memphis, but every time I walk out the front door, my chest gets tight, and I have the most vivid, terrifying fear that she’ll leave and I’ll lose her.
I’ve never felt this level of terror about anything—not even that one time my older brother, Rowan, convinced me to go for a weekend in Las Vegas, and I lasted ten minutes in my seat before I walked off the plane and promptly threw up in the nearest trash can.
“It gets easier,” Wyatt says.
My eyes snap to him. “What gets easier?”
He gives me a small, reassuring smile. “The fear. When Maisie’s ex-husband grabbed her, and we couldn’t find her, I thought I was going to have a coronary.”
Knox, Elias, and Hunter nod and hum their agreement.
“Maisie isn’t our scent match, so I can’t imagine everything you’re feeling,” Elias says.
Opening up has never been easy, but if anyone is going to understand, at least about this, it’s these guys.
“On my family’s ranch, if something is broken, I fix it.
If an animal is hurt, we get the vet out.
There’s always a solution. This is the first time I’ve learned that helping someone requires restraint.
I tried to give her a nest, but she didn’t want one.
She lost her alpha before she came here, and she’s pregnant with his kid and has this adorable five-year-old that you can’t help but fall in love with.
Yet she never asks for help. Not ever. Her alpha, Simon, died saving someone, and I don’t know how I can compete with that. ”
“Easy,” Knox says calmly.
“Easy?” I raise my eyebrow at him.
“You can’t compete, and you shouldn’t be trying to because there’s no competition.
Even if Maisie’s ex weren’t a piece of shit, the relationship we have with Maisie would never have been the same as what she had with him,” Wyatt says, watching me closely.
“I know we’re your bosses now, but we were friends first. You ever want to talk about this, you know we’re always here, right? ”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering how I went from a freelance construction worker who traveled alone for years to being settled in a small Iowa town with a pack, a scent match, a kid I love more with each passing day, and a group of guys who have my back.
I turn at the knock on the door, and Rose and Ben step in.
Happily surprised, I’m up out of my chair, bending to pick up Ben as he sprints toward me.
“Murph!” he grins, with chocolate ice cream around his mouth and a half-demolished chocolate ice cream in his hand.
I smile. “Hey, little guy, what’s up?”
Rose is beautiful in a light purple sundress with spaghetti straps, white sandals, and her chestnut brown hair loose around her face. Her skin is golden from the sun, and she’s holding two ice cream cones. One looks to be banana or vanilla, and the other mint.
“Hi, I hope we’re not interrupting. We were out on a walk, and Ben wanted to see where you work,” she says shyly, glancing at the four men at the table doing nothing to hide their curiosity.
“Not at all. We’re just doing boring paperwork,” I say.
“We brought you ice cream.” Ben turns to Rose. “Mommy, you can give it to him now, or it will melt.”
Rose hands me the green ice cream cone. “We remembered you like mint choc chip.”
What did I do in another life to deserve all this sweetness?
We were talking about our favorite ice cream flavors during Ben and Rose’s first dinner at the house. Never in a million years did I think they’d not just remember, but surprise me by bringing me an ice cream cone at work.
I cough to clear the lump in my throat. “I do. Thanks. Let me introduce everyone to you. Guys, this is Rose and Ben. That’s Wyatt, Knox, Elias, and Hunter.”