Cara
The whole town has lost its mind over Valentine’s Day.
I’m not exaggerating. Every storefront on Main Street is drowning in red and pink. Heart-shaped wreaths on doors. Twinkle lights strung between lampposts. The hardware store has a display of “romantic” power tools. Romantic. Power tools.
Banners everywhere announce the Valentine’s Day Charity Fundraiser. The community center needs a new roof, apparently, and Honeyridge Falls has decided the best way to fund it is through a bachelor auction.
A bachelor auction featuring three specific alphas I can’t stop thinking about.
But that’s tonight. Right now, I’m standing outside Ashpine Books, watching Theo Holt load bags of mulch into his truck, trying to remember how to breathe.
It’s been four days since the clinic. Four days of failed attempts to get any of them to talk to me. And I’m running out of ideas.
Just walk over. Say what you practiced. Don’t be a coward.
I force my feet to move.
He’s wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, despite the February cold.
His forearms flex as he lifts another bag, muscles moving under sun-weathered skin.
Even from here, I can smell him—sun-warmed earth and honeysuckle, fainter in the winter air but still achingly familiar.
Still making my chest tight after all this time.
He sees me coming.
I watch his whole body change. Shoulders tensing. Movements speeding up. By the time I reach the truck, he’s already slamming the tailgate shut.
“Theo, wait—”
“Can’t talk.” He’s moving toward the cab, keys already in hand. “Got a job.”
“Please.” I step into his path, which is either brave or stupid. Probably stupid. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
He stops. We’re close enough that I can see the tension in his jaw, the way his hands have curled into fists at his sides. His scent has shifted—the honeysuckle gone bitter, the warmth turned sharp.
“Theo, I know I don’t deserve—”
“Don’t.” His voice cracks on the word. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say what I’m already thinking.” He’s not looking at me, but his hands have uncurled from fists. “You think I don’t know you don’t deserve five minutes? You think I haven’t been telling myself that for a week?”
“Then why—”
“Because it doesn’t help.” He finally looks at me, and oh god, there it is—the hurt underneath the wall he’s been building.
The boy who used to look at me like I hung the moon, still in there somewhere, still bleeding from wounds I inflicted.
“Knowing you don’t deserve it doesn’t make me stop wanting to give it to you anyway. That’s the problem, Cara.”
My heart stutters. “Theo...”
He takes a step toward me. Just one. His hand comes up like he’s going to touch my face, and every cell in my body leans toward him—
Then he stops. Drops his hand. Something shutters in his expression.
“I can’t.” His voice is rough. “We agreed—all three of us. And if I stay here talking to you, I’m going to—” He shakes his head. “I have to go.”
“Theo, please—”
“I’m sorry.” He’s already moving toward the truck, and the worst part is he sounds like he means it. “I can’t do this. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
He drives away.
I stand on the sidewalk, watching his taillights disappear around the corner. His rejection hurts—but at least he talked to me.
He said not yet. He said maybe.
He said he still wants to give me what I don’t deserve.
I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
The next morning, I try Nate.
Another snowstorm. Another appearance of Deputy Thorn and his shovel. I’ve been watching from the kitchen window for twenty minutes, working up the nerve.
His scent drifts up even from here—pine and woodsmoke, sharp and clean. My body responds the way it always does around him, no matter how many suppressants I take.
I know Nate. Knew him, anyway. He’s not like Theo—you can’t chase Nate down and make him talk. He shuts down. Goes cold. The harder you push, the further he retreats.
But I have to try.
I step onto the porch. “Nate.”
He doesn’t stop shoveling. Doesn’t look up. The scrape of metal on concrete is the only response I get.
“Can we talk? Please?”
“Ms. Donovan.” Still not looking. Still shoveling. “You should go inside. It’s cold.”
Ms. Donovan. Like I’m a stranger. Like we didn’t spend two years tangled together in every way possible.
“Nate, I just want to—”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
The words are flat. Final. His scent has gone cold—the woodsmoke turned to ash.
I recognize that tone—the one he used when he was done. When the walls were up and nothing was getting through.
I could push. Could stand here and talk at his back until he’s forced to acknowledge me.
But that’s not how Nate works. It never was. Pushing him only makes him dig in deeper. The only way through Nate’s walls was patience. Time. Letting him come to you when he was ready.
I don’t have that luxury anymore. I used it up ten years ago.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “I’ll go.”
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps shoveling.
I go back inside. Close the door. Lean against it for a moment, pressing my palms to my eyes.
Then I move to the kitchen window and watch.
He finishes the driveway. Every inch of it. The walkway, the porch steps, the path to the mailbox. Thorough and methodical, the way he does everything. When he’s done, he puts the shovel back in his truck, climbs into the cab, and drives away.
He never once looks at the house.
Nate Thorn, who has been shoveling my grandmother’s driveway for ten years. Who never leaves a job unfinished. Who shows love through actions because words have always been hard for him.
He did the work. But he wouldn’t give me anything else.
I stand at the window for a long time after his truck disappears, wondering which would have hurt more—if he’d left the job half-done, or this. The careful, complete silence of a man who’s decided you don’t exist.
Lucas is the hardest to track down.
Not at the grocery store. Not at the Honey Crumb. Not walking down Main Street where I could accidentally-on-purpose run into him. He’s either at the clinic or at home, and I can’t exactly show up at his house.
Which is probably for the best. The clinic visit proved I can’t be trusted around Lucas. One whiff of bergamot and sandalwood and I turned into a mess of slick and want on an exam table. My body doesn’t care that he hates me. My body just remembers what his hands felt like.
So I call instead. Safer that way.
“Honeyridge Family Practice, this is Mary.”
“Hi, Mary. This is Cara Donovan. I was wondering if Dr. Price could call me back when he has a moment? It’s... personal.”
A long pause. I can practically hear Mary’s eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.
“I’ll pass along the message, hon.”
He doesn’t call.
I try again the next day.
“Mary, hi. It’s Cara Donovan again. Did Dr. Price get my message?”
“He did, sweetheart.”
“Is he... going to call me back?”
The pause is longer this time. Heavy with things Mary is too polite to say.
“He’s very busy, Cara. You know how it is.”
I do know how it is. I know exactly how it is.
“Could you just tell him...” I swallow hard. “Tell him I’m sorry. And I’d really like to explain. Whenever he’s ready.”
“I’ll tell him.”
She sounds kind. That almost makes it worse.
So here I am.
Day of the Valentine’s fundraiser. Sitting at the Honey Crumb with my fourth coffee, watching the town transform into an explosion of hearts and flowers through the window.
My laptop is open in front of me. Chapter twelve of the book I’m supposed to be writing—the one my editor has been hounding me about for weeks. A second-chance romance about an omega who returns to her hometown and has to win back the three alphas she left behind.
The irony is not lost on me.
I’ve written three different versions of this chapter. Three different ways for my fictional omega to break through the walls her alphas have built. Grand gestures, heartfelt speeches, dramatic confrontations.
None of them feel right. Because in real life, grand gestures don’t work when the other person won’t even look at you.
“You’re going to burn a hole through that laptop.”
I look up. Maeve is standing beside my table, coffee pot in hand, watching me with those knowing eyes.
“Just working.”
“Mm-hmm.” She tops off my cup without asking and settles into the chair across from me. “How’s the book coming?”
Of course she knows. Everyone knows.
“It’s a second-chance romance,” I say flatly. “Omega returns home. Has to win back the alphas she left behind.”
“Sounds familiar.”
I close the laptop. “The heroine in my book isn’t an idiot who destroyed everything good in her life.”
“Ah.” Maeve nods sagely. “Fiction.”
Despite everything, I almost laugh. “Yeah. Fiction.”
She’s quiet for a moment, studying me. Outside, a crew is stringing more lights across Main Street. The banner for tonight’s fundraiser flutters in the wind.
“You’ve been sitting here for three hours,” Maeve says. “And you’ve looked at that door approximately thirty-two times.”
“I have not.”
“Thirty-three now.”
I slump back in my chair. “They won’t talk to me, Maeve. Any of them. I’ve tried everything. Theo almost reached for me and then drove away. Nate finished shoveling the driveway without looking at me once. And Lucas won’t return my calls.”
“Oh, honey.” Maeve’s voice gentles. “That’s a lot of hurt. On both sides.”
“I know.” I wrap my hands around my mug. “I can’t even blame them. That’s the problem.”
Movement outside catches my eye. A dark-haired woman is making her way down the sidewalk, one hand pressed to her lower back, the other resting on a very pregnant belly. She moves carefully on the icy pavement—the kind of waddle that says she’s close to her due date.
And she looks familiar. Hollywood familiar.