Chapter 33 Levi
LEVI
Three days later…
No response from Eros.
The numbers swam before my eyes, columns of expenses and income blurring together like watercolors left in the rain.
I'd been staring at the same ledger for over an hour, my coffee gone cold beside me, the lamp casting long shadows across the cramped office.
Outside, the ranch had settled into nighttime quiet hours ago—everyone asleep except for me and my restless thoughts.
The pencil in my hand tapped an irregular rhythm against the desk, matching the erratic pattern of my concentration.
Focus, Levi. The ranch needs you to focus.
But my mind refused to obey, drifting like a boat cut loose from its mooring.
The figures that normally anchored me—neat rows of digits that told the story of our livelihood—couldn't compete with the memory of copper hair catching sunlight, of hesitant steps across our property, of a woman who'd crashed into our lives against her will making the best of a shit situation.
Nelly. Even her name in my thoughts sent a ripple through me.
Had it really only been five days going on six since she arrived?
"I'm giving you a chance, but I'm still leaving when Eros responds,” she’d claimed at lunch the other day, making my gut clench. I’d barely been able to eat after that.
And, since then, I’d had trouble sleeping at night. So, I was just piling caffeine into my system and hoping for a heart attack.
I rubbed my eyes, forcing my attention back to the quarterly expenses. The cattle feed costs were higher than projected. Veterinary expenses from the calving season had hit us hard. The new tractor parts—
My mind slipped sideways again.
The sky rioting with color and Nelly standing at the edge of the east pasture, arms wrapped around herself against the evening’s chill as she watched the sun dip below Wyoming mountains.
I’d been on my way back from inventorying our supply of calf milk replacer—the two babies on the bottle were going through it fast—and I’d seen her.
I could have kept walking, I didn’t have to disturb her, but I couldn’t stop myself.
She’d startled when she heard me approaching, but she didn’t leave.
“I didn’t realize how many stars there were,” she said, not looking at me. “In the city, you can only see the brightest ones.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there like an idiot. Her profile was blurring in the fading light, her expression unreadable.
"It is beautiful here," she admitted, words coming slow, as if against her will. “Not sure I could live so far from a mall, but great for a vacation.
What she said stung. She couldn’t imagine living here. We couldn’t exactly snap our fingers and bring the city onto Sagebrush land.
“You get used to it,” I offered, “Eventually the peace and quiet grows on you.”
“I feel like constant peace and quiet would get boring eventually.”
More stinging, her words were hornets.
The memory made my lips curve despite my frustration. She was so determined to keep her walls intact, even as cracks formed in their foundation.
I forced my attention back to the ledger, but immediately another memory surfaced.
Cooper and Boone trying to get Nelly on Ghost for the first time. They hadn’t succeeded.
"You want to try the saddle?" Cooper pressed, unable to help himself.
"No," Nelly said firmly. Then, after a moment: "But can I brush her?”
I watched from the doorway as Cooper showed her how to groom the mare. The way my pack mate’s hand pressed against Nelly’s, showing her how to skim the brush in the hair’s natural direction, made envy twist in my chest, wringing out my heart, pushing the blood from the organ.
The pencil in my hand snapped, bringing me back to the present. I stared down at the broken halves, annoyed at my lack of control. I dropped it carelessly, one busted end rolling off the desk.
I'd been a mess all week, breaking things, dropping things, losing my train of thought mid-sentence. I mean, I was always snapping pencils and pens, but it had reached a fever pitch now—all because a stubborn and stunning woman upended all my careful planning, all my facts and figures, all the solutions I’d devised to complete our lives.
How many times had I imagined our Omega?
How many times had I carefully constructed them in my mind, beginning with the golden ratio of features, then slowly modifying fractional shifts and details.
The eyes a centimeter too far apart to be conventionally beautiful.
A spattering of freckles that darkened in summer.
Maybe their eyebrows were desperately in need of maintenance.
Whatever imaginary person I eventually painted in my mind always had one thing in common—they loved me, and my pack, without reservation or ego.
Had I ever pictured Nelly’s copper hair?
Had I ever pictured that wounded weariness in her gaze?
Had I ever imagined our Omega would be so full of unquenchable fire?
Like this afternoon just past lunch, when Boone discovered yet another giant patch of larkspur growing in the north pasture.
Nelly was sitting on the sofa when he’d walked into the rambler, face grim.
Our pack immediately pushed into gear; we couldn’t leave that poisonous shit around the cattle.
We hadn’t expected Nelly to join us, hadn’t even offered it as a possibility.
Yet she’d stood up from the sofa, donning a borrowed plaid button-down and dripped jeans, looking uncertain but determined.
She’d walked swiftly toward the wall we hung our hats on, to the much smaller pair of boots—the ones that made our own boots looks so damn big—and shoved into them.
She hadn’t cringed in discomfort; her feet were much better now.
“This is rough work, Nelly. We’ll be back in a bit,” Wyatt told her, and I wondered if he was full of fear at the idea of leaving her alone in the house. Would she run away again? My heart was in my throat. Her dangerous journey into the night was too recent to ignore.
"I want to help," she said, chin lifted in that defiant way she had, as if daring us to refuse her. I wasn’t too big of a man to admit that the way she looked right now would always get an automatic ‘yes,’ from me, regardless of the situation.
I was wrapped around her Omega finger, no hope of unfurling.
We moved out as a unit, as a real pack, making our way to the UTVs.
We took two, though the Polaris was technically made for six passengers, we were too big to fit more than two on the bench seats.
Shovels and bags were already in the back of the vehicles.
Cooper hummed as he drove me and Boone. I stared daggers at Wyatt and Wade’s back; they drew the lucky straw and were riding with Nelly.
When we arrived, everyone tumbled out and stared at the improbable crop of rich blue flowers.
“They’re so pretty,” Nelly breathed out, “It’s a shame to rip them out.”
“They’re as deadly as they are beautiful,” Wade said, handing her gloves that swallowed her smaller hands.
"Careful of the roots," Boone warned, getting closer to Nelly now. He pulled two hair ties from his pocket and slipped one over each hand, pulling them up to the glove’s edge to safeguard her wrists better. "Don't get the sap on your skin."
His fingers lingered longer than necessary on her wrists, tugging and repositioning the hairbands. Watching him touch her made me burn with jealousy.
I watched her throughout the afternoon, methodically digging alongside us, her pale skin flushing in the sun. Did she have any sunscreen on? Hell, did we own any sunscreen? I made a mental note to add it to my next purchase order.
She worked without complaint, even when I could see blisters forming on her palms. When Wyatt suggested she take a break, she gave him a withering look.
"I'm not delicate," she said, plunging her shovel back into the dirt with enough force to make her point. She rocked the handle up and down, pushing the blade’s point deeper before stepping on its top ridge and lifting the larkspur from its home.
Her blisters were bleeding by the time we finished. Wade took the shovel from her, driving it into the ground to stay upright on its own, and then he checked over her hands. My heart thumped when she didn’t pull away from my pack brother.
My mind traveled back to the ‘now’. To the makeshift office, to the tasks I was meant to be doing right now.
But nothing could capture my attention the way Nelly did.
She was somehow the answer to every accounting issue, each error that kept me from balancing the books.
She made me want to slough off my responsibility and give into the fact I was merely a figurehead now.
Between Cooper’s inheritance, his portfolio manager, and that damn phone app which showed balance fluctuations and trade results in real time, there was nothing important left for me.
I redundantly ran numbers. I processed inventory orders that were nearly always the same—I quickly wrote ‘add sunscreen to order’ when my thoughts were interrupted by my mental note from earlier—and I tried to make myself useful.
I performed my trained tasks like a wind-up monkey with cymbals.
Crash.
Crash.
Crash.
Metal disks slapping together and making a lot of noise.
Maybe I needed to move on. Maybe I needed to find something else I was good at so that I mattered here at Sagebrush. I’d loved photography once. I could pick that up again.
Nelly once again took over my brain.
I could take a million pictures of her and never be satisfied with the outcome. I knew that already, yet I was ready to try. I’d wanted to take a photo of her so damn badly tonight.