Rose
Six weeks later…
“No chocolate cake,” I say firmly.
Ben blinks large green eyes at me from across the table.
Among my son’s tricks, puppy-dog eyes are almost always guaranteed to get him what he wants. He knows this. He is as manipulative as he is adorable.
I lean closer, tucking a strand of shoulder-length brown hair behind my ear when it brushes my cheek. “No. Chocolate. I’m not having you bouncing off the walls instead of going to sleep tonight. What drink do you want with your burger and fries?”
It’s only 3:00 p.m., but if Ben has a soda and a slice of chocolate cake, it’ll be like trying to contain a tornado in a grocery bag. He already had candy when we stopped at a gas station earlier. I told him he could have the candy then or dessert later. He chose candy. I’m holding him to it.
The woman with dark hair, brown eyes, and olive skin, standing next to our booth, says, “We have milk or a juice box on the kids' menu.” Her name tag, pinned to her pink uniform, reads Lina, and she’s our waitress at Nico’s, a cozy diner where we stopped for a late lunch before checking into our motel.
We weren’t supposed to stop here, but my stomach had other ideas. Namely, get to the nearest restroom or spew all over the steering wheel, so we found ourselves in Rios, a tiny Iowa town. The epic cross-country trip from New York to LA was a journey I’d always planned to make with Simon.
Before we had kids.
Before we got married.
Before he died.
Ben sticks out his lip. “But, Mommy…”
I look at him, and I don’t say a word.
In another life, I was a fifth-grade teacher, and ten-year-olds show no mercy to the unwary. Five-year-olds are so adorable they can twist you around their finger before you know what’s happening. I’m an omega, submissive by nature, but I have fought this battle many times before.
Ben folds.
“A juice box,” he tells the patiently waiting waitress.
I could have ordered a drink for him, but he’d whine, poke at the glass, and refuse to drink from it because he didn’t choose it himself.
Ben is shaping up to be an alpha like his dad and not an omega like me, and I am dreading when puberty hits and all those lovely dominant alpha traits assert themselves.
Our waitress laughs and turns to me. “Nice handling of a delicate situation.”
I smile reluctantly. “Thanks. I’m Rose, and this is my son Ben.”
“Well, I’m Lina, and it’s nice to meet you both. Are you sticking around Rios?” she asks.
“We’re just passing through.” I pick up my menu, glance at it for the fifth time since she showed us to our table, and set it back down, pushing it away when my stomach grumbles. And not in a ‘I’m hungry, please feed me’ way. In a, whatever you’re thinking… don’t.
“What are you having? Burgers and fries as well?” Lina asks me, ready to take my order in her small white notebook.
I thought I could handle fries. I should have known better.
Ever since I walked into this diner with its yummy yet overpowering sweet-and-savory smells, the contents of my stomach have been in constant motion.
Like I’m on a boat and the ginger ale I nursed for an hour is sloshing around in my belly.
“Just water.” Swallowing bile rising in my throat, I scoot to the edge of our red booth, the leather squeaking loudly under my jeans. “I, um, will be right back. Ben, the restroom.”
Lina gives me a sympathetic smile and steps aside. I take Ben’s hand and lead him at a fast trot to the restroom on the left side of the diner.
The ladies' bathroom is empty. Thank God. We’re in that in-between period between lunch and dinner, which guaranteed Ben and me a nice table overlooking the pretty streets with pastel-colored mom and pop shops in the heart of downtown Rios.
As the door slams shut behind us, I tug Ben toward one of the five bathroom stalls.
He pouts and pulls on his arm, his expression mulish. “It’s too small,” he complains.
I’m way beyond the point where I have the time or the energy to fight Ben on this. My face feels green. My need to spew cannot be ignored any longer.
“Wait here. Don’t go anywhere,” I warn him between swallows to keep down the meager contents of my stomach: two crackers, a bottle of ginger ale, and one bite of a green apple that I regretted immediately.
Ben nods. “Okay, Mommy.”
Once he’s promised, I relax. Ben likes to wander. If I can wring a promise out of him, he almost always stays put.
I rush into the bathroom stall, fling up the seat, and fall to my knees, wanting to keep the door fully open but not wanting to worry Ben if he sees me throwing up. I leave the door unlocked and partially open, trying to listen for Ben in case he needs me as I heave into the toilet bowl.
I haven’t felt right since we left Simon’s family in upstate New York, then spent a few days in Manhattan before starting our cross-country road trip.
“Mommy!” Ben calls from right outside my door.
Dragging a hand over my mouth, I call out, “Nearly done, baby.”
My stomach says otherwise.
Minutes later, I’m blindly reaching for a tissue when my fingers collide with something. My eyes snap open, and I meet Lina’s concerned brown gaze.
She’s standing just inside my stall, offering me a small glass of water and a wad of tissues with a sympathetic smile. “Here.”
“Thanks.” I take both gratefully. Water to rinse my foul-tasting mouth does wonders.
The tissue is much needed to wipe the tears from my eyes.
Then I flush the toilet, lean my back against the stall wall, and set the unfinished water on the floor beside me.
Tipping my head back, I swallow, relieved that, for now at least, I no longer need to vomit. “God, I really needed that.”
“How far along are you?” Lina asks.
I’m not stupid. Grief blinded me to a lot before. Then it was wishful thinking. Now I’d be downright ignorant if I pretended not to know what this sudden bout of sickness meant.
“How’d you know?” I ask instead of admitting to a truth I hadn’t been willing to face since it first dawned on me that I felt just like this once before, over five years ago.
“I recognize that same exact shade of green from my bathroom mirror when I was pregnant.”
I take another sip of water. When my stomach doesn’t protest, I risk a slightly bigger gulp, needing the fluids.
I’m not brave enough to move away from this toilet bowl yet, even though it means sitting on a public restroom floor for a little longer.
“A little over a month, I think. I had really bad morning sickness with Ben. It didn’t stop until well into my second trimester. ”
She makes a face. “Yikes. You have my sympathy. Mine was a month of nausea, and I never stopped feeling sorry for myself.” She leans against the doorway, arms crossed. “And the dad?” Her eyes dip to the claiming bite on my throat.
The faint bite is years old. A permanent brand marks me as taken, but I’m not taken anymore. This bite is just a mark on my skin, and the ties binding me to my alpha are broken.
“He died,” I whisper, my eyes burning. “It’s just Ben and me now.”
Simon's car wasn’t involved in the accident, which is why it took the first responders so long to notice the dark green Volvo parked a few feet away.
The door was open, and inside, a cell phone was ringing.
It was Simon’s car, and I was the idiot calling, freaking out about losing our table for two to another couple while he was dying.
I will never forgive myself for that.
No one blames me for being annoyed at Simon for being late to our anniversary dinner.
And even though I know deep down that I have no reason to feel guilty, I still am.
Guilt isn’t always rational, and back then, when I was planning a funeral and hugging my son who was sobbing for his daddy, I was too broken to be logical. Too lost to be calm.
During his drive from downtown Memphis to Weldon, our small suburb, he noticed an overturned car and immediately pulled over. A woman was trying to free her eight-year-old daughter from a malfunctioning seatbelt.
Even if he hadn’t been a father, he’d have noticed someone needed help and wouldn’t have hesitated to act. That was Simon Hayes, the man I loved with my entire heart, and I was so grateful he was mine.
He unbuckled the seatbelt and pushed the little girl out to her mom as the firefighters and cops were arriving on the scene. When he tried to follow her out, the car toppled off the road and down a steep ravine, trapping him inside as the fall battered and tossed him around.
Firefighters eventually got him out, EMTs stabilized him on the scene and rushed him to the hospital, which is when the cops noticed the green Volvo feet away with an open door and a ringing cell phone.
Jessica’s daughter Lucy lived because of Simon, and both came to his funeral.
I don’t know who cried harder: Jessica, thinking it could so easily have been her lowering Lucy into the ground, or me, knowing Simon was gone forever and that I would never see his laughing green eyes again, smell his aspen and pear scent, or feel so loved when he wrapped his arms around me.
It felt good to see them. To know that he saved them.
To know he died as he lived—helping others.
But it still hurt.
I wanted to crawl into my nest, a small corner of my bedroom I’d covered with cushions and throws.
I craved the soft coziness my omega heart needed to find comfort in a world that had battered me.
I wanted to live there forever, but I couldn’t.
Ben needed me. My son needed a mother who would love him more than ever.
Some omegas never heal from losing their alpha.
Scent-matched pairings rarely survive. It was as if someone had cleaved my heart in two and expected me to get up and just keep going.
Everywhere I looked in our small town, I saw Simon.
In the home we’d bought when we moved back to my hometown after I had Ben, in the park where Simon taught Ben how to ride his first bike, and at the grocery store where I’d laughingly yell at Simon to stop pushing Ben so fast in the cart or he’d run over someone.
And everywhere I walked, I bled from a wound that never healed. I couldn’t stay in Memphis anymore; my heart was too broken.
“Rose?” Lina says gently.
I shake my head to clear away the pain I ran from in Memphis, brushing tears from my cheeks that I have no memory of falling. “Sorry, I was just…”
Wait a second.
Ben has been entirely too quiet. He has never been a patient child.
Not when I was pregnant with him, and he surprised Simon and me by coming three weeks early.
Not when he’d be up and screaming at 4 a.m., even on the rare occasion he’d sleep through the night.
Silence means danger because I wasn’t watching him as closely as I should have been.
“My son?” I get up as I ask, stepping around Lina, who moves aside to let me out.
Out of my stall, I feel sick for an entirely different reason.
Ben was studying his reflection in the mirrors behind the five sinks when I dropped to my knees to throw up. All the stall doors are open, and he’s not in any of them.
He’s gone.
“It’s okay!” Lina shouts after me as I bolt to the bathroom door and wrench it open.
It is not okay. My son is missing. He could be hurt, kidnapped, or facing some other terrible fate, while I was too busy worrying about myself.
I have to find him.