Rose
Sitting on the back-porch steps with my arms wrapped around my knees, I soak up the last of the afternoon sun warming my bare shoulders.
My toes curl in the soft, warm grass, and I smile as Joel chases Ben across the backyard. Ben shrieks with laughter when Joel catches him and tickles him mercilessly.
I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling since I left the doctor’s office.
Although I was anxious about my appointment, Ben was never forgotten.
Murph kept him happy, entertained, and distracted until I finished at the doctor’s office.
Afterward, I picked up a prescription for prenatal vitamins from the pharmacy before going to get Ben, who would have happily stayed with Murph for the rest of the day if I’d let him.
On our way home, we dropped Win at the diner, and Joel found us in the backyard, gave me a sweet kiss hello, and promptly started a game of tag with Ben that will hopefully burn off more of his energy before dinner.
I grew up learning how a pack bonds. About alphas who are drawn to submissive omegas, enough to share them with other alphas, and scentless betas who are sometimes part of a pack and sometimes not.
But living through a pack bonding is not the same as hearing about it.
There’s a magic to it that’s so special and warming; no one could have explained it to me.
“I’d warn you that your face will stick like that,” a gruff voice says from behind me, “but I’m not sure I’d mind if it did.”
I look at Murph as he settles beside me, his face tired and worn. He’s in his customary blue jeans and flannel shirt, but he must have taken his boots off at the front door because he’s barefoot.
Ben is a lot of work. In a new environment, soon after inhaling a chocolate shake, he was probably bouncing off the walls.
“Thanks for today,” I say. “Ben is my heart, and I didn’t have to worry at all when he was with you.”
He nods, looking at Ben. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you.
With you.” He shoots me a quick glance. There’s a hesitancy in his expression and his tone that I’m not used to seeing in such a confident alpha.
“This is new. Being there for someone. Taking care of someone, not just me. And hell, I sometimes didn’t—”
I shuffle closer, take his hand, and lean over to brush a kiss across his jaw.
“You did fine. You are doing fine.” Simon loved me and Ben so much.
He would be happy to know we are being taken care of so well.
“Just rely on what’s here.” I touch my hand to my heart.
“Simon was honest and sweet. That’s part of what made me fall in love with him. ”
Murph says nothing for two beats, but the tension slowly leaves his body, and when he draws me a little closer, tucking me against his side, it’s the most natural thing in the world to rest my head on his shoulder and enjoy watching Ben play with Joel.
“You’re talking about Simon. With me.” He sounds shocked by it.
“Yeah. I am.” I glance up at him. “Do you want me to—”
He kisses my forehead. “Whatever you want to tell me, I’m always ready to listen, sweetheart.”
This isn’t easy, but one thing I learned from talking to my mom was how much it helped. I squeeze Murph’s hand as I look at Joel and Ben, but it isn’t them I’m seeing. It’s Simon. And it’s me. It’s the happy life we built together that ended far too soon.
“We met in California during our sophomore year. I wasn’t interested in bonding with anyone until after college, but that went out the window when we met at a party.
By the time we graduated, we’d bonded, were planning our wedding to celebrate with all our family, and I was pregnant with Ben not long after.
” My eyes sting, and my smile is bittersweet.
“He was the love of my life, and I thought we’d be together forever. ”
Murph pulls his hand from mine and wraps his arm around my shoulder, tucking me so close that my head rests against his chest. It grounds me in the present.
The steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The warmth of his skin I feel through the cotton of his shirt.
All of it keeps me in the here and now, not drowning in a grief I fled Memphis to escape.
“You lucked out, sweetheart,” he says, burying a kiss in my hair. “Not everyone finds a love like that, especially so young.”
“I know.” I sniff. “We worked in California—Simon as an accountant, me as a teacher—before moving to Memphis so I’d have my family nearby when I had Ben.
Our lives were ordinary, but I was so happy.
Then, on our sixth anniversary, Simon stopped to help a woman’s daughter after a car accident.
He rescued her, but the car flipped while he was in it.
Paramedics did everything they could to save him, but he died soon after they got him to the hospital.
I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
” I drag the back of my hand across my wet face.
Murph pulls back to look down at me. He kisses the next tears away before they can fall, his tenderness making my heart hurt.
“I’m sorry, Rose. For what you lost and for not having a chance to say goodbye. If I could carry that pain for you, I would.”
My smile is small, but after the painful wound I just reopened in telling Murph what happened to Simon, it’s surprisingly genuine.
“I know you would. It was the worst day of my life. I thought nothing would ever get better, but then I came here. Ben and I found you. And I learned that there are so many different kinds of love that can happen in a person’s lifetime.
” I frame his stubbled jaw, and he leans into my touch.
“I don’t want you to be like Simon. What I had with him won’t be what I have with you. And that’s okay.”
He touches his lips to mine in a brief kiss, and we go back to watching Joel and Ben, who match each other in energy.
Joel’s been at work all day, yet he has barely stopped running around the backyard, playing tag with Ben, lifting him onto his shoulders to show him something, or giving him more tips to improve his cartwheels.
Neither one of them has stood still for longer than a minute.
“I still can’t imagine you being like Ben,” I say wryly. “Joel, I can see it. But you? I still don’t see it.”
He chuckles. “I’m gonna have to introduce you to my mom and the thick album she has under her coffee table of me running wild all over our ranch.
Finding a picture without dirt smeared on my face, or my dad gripping my shirt collar to keep me still long enough to take the damn thing, is like hunting for a needle in a haystack. ”
I can't help laughing at that. “I’m looking forward to seeing that album.”
He lets out a sigh. “I’m not, but my mom sure will love showing it to you. Joel is like Win. Joel gets energy from being around other people. He’s been like that since before I moved in here, when I warned him I wasn’t the least bit sociable and never would be.”
I look up at him. “And you, what are you like?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.
He holds my gaze. “I always needed to be alone. Being around people drained me. Being with you, with my pack, and Ben energizes me. You make life worth living.”
I get all misty-eyed. “You’re getting to be pretty damn good at saying things that melt my heart, Murph Owens.”
He looks surprised by my soft admission, then pleased. “Good.”
“Those mornings when you’d spend time with Ben, do you talk as you work on your project? He mentioned it was small, but you were nearly done with it,” I say innocently.
He chuckles and draws me closer again, kissing my forehead. “Nice try, but you’re not that slick, sweetheart. It’s gonna have to stay a surprise for a little longer. And it’s not small.”
“Are you saying it’s not small to throw me off the scent?”
His lip twitches. “Maybe.”
Honestly, I’m shocked Ben hasn’t spilled any details of their secret project yet.
Not that I’ve been pushing him to talk, but with Ben you don’t have to.
Any secret he has, he’ll run up to the first person he sees and start talking.
“So, what does it feel like for a big, gruff cowboy suddenly being all sociable?”
“New.” His eyes go on a slow journey over my face. From the warmth in his expression, he likes what he sees. “I’m used to finding quiet corners to hide in. Going straight to the source of people is… new. But I like it. Like having people to come home to.”
“You have family in Wyoming.”
“This is different.” He gets to his feet and offers me his hand. “Want to go join ’em?”
There’s a playful Murph beneath that gruff, serious demeanor?
My eyebrow shoots up. “You want to play?” My eyes flick to Joel and Ben. They’re racing, and Joel is definitely letting Ben win.
“Win keeps trying to introduce me to the idea of fun.” He rolls his eyes as if Win were doing him a great injustice, but his mouth twitches, betraying the smile he’s hiding from me.
“So you’re doing it for him?” I get to my feet, though I make no move to walk down the last step of the porch.
“Nope. For Ben. For me. Maybe a little bit for you, too. I might be a gruff former rancher who likes to hide in quiet corners, but I used to know how to have fun. I’ll race you.”
“Race?” I shake my head, giving the grass a wary look. “I’m not sure about that.”
His concerned gaze flicks to my belly. “Because of—”
Tearing my hand from his, I leap down the porch steps and sprint away, taking full advantage of his distraction to build a nice, big lead. “Gotcha!”
I hear his muffled curse, his chuckle, and pounding footsteps. Suddenly, I’m in the race of my life, sprinting toward Ben and Joel, who turn at the sound of my laughter.
Murph passes me as if I’m standing still.
“Hey!” I shout after him.
He salutes me as he sprints past with humiliating ease. “Grew up on a ranch, sweetheart. I can run circles around you.”
I pick up the pace, but he’s so much faster than I thought he’d be. He scoops up Ben and speeds past Joel, who chuckles, and Ben, who roars with laughter and orders him to go faster.
“That was a cruel trick you played on the man.” Joel grins.
With no chance of catching up to Murph, I stop beside him to catch my breath. “I did no such thing.” I sniff, playing coy.
Murph warned me that he ran wild on his family’s ranch. Multiple times. Clearly, I wasn’t listening because if I had been, I’d have known I'd lost that race before it started.
Joel bounces his shoulder against mine. “I saw you sprinting away from Murph and the look on his face while you were laughing.” He chuckles. “You jumped the poor guy.”
“Maybe,” I concede.
His smile fades. “It’s good to see you laughing. Today must have been hell.”
Win called him right after we left the appointment to reassure him that everything went well, but from the sigh of relief I heard over the phone, he’d been worried while waiting for news.
“You all made it better.” I wrap my arm around his waist, snuggling in as I breathe in the scent of cherry and wood smoke. “I would not have been laughing at all if I didn’t have you.”
He kisses my forehead.
“Given up on catching us?” Murph shouts from near the bottom of the yard.
Ben is sitting on Murph’s shoulders.
Joel hums and his eyes narrow. “They are far too smug for my liking. Wanna team up and take ’em down?” He takes his arm from around my shoulders and rolls his neck as if getting ready for battle.
That is very true. Both are smirking, and I expect they’ll be rubbing their victory in our faces for the rest of the day.
I can definitely see Ben crowing about it when I give him his bath later.
I gauge the distance between us. “Murph can’t run fast with Ben on his shoulders, and putting him down gives us a chance to close the gap. We can catch them.”
Murph must sense what we’re planning because his eyes narrow and he starts backing away.
“Ready?” Joel asks, glancing at me.
“I’m—”
Joel takes off, leaving me in his dust. Maybe I should have seen it coming, given I did the same thing to Murph, but I didn’t expect the universe to serve up karma quite that fast.
Laughing, I cup my hands around my mouth and shout after him. “Seriously! We were supposed to be a team.”
“Tomorrow, baby. Today, victory is mine,” Joel laughingly yells back, closing in on Murph, who turns around and takes off as Ben laughs and clings onto Murph’s head.
Murph is surprisingly fast, even with Ben on his shoulders.
I suspect Joel being so slow has more to do with wanting to make Ben laugh than with not being fast enough to catch up to them.
Me? I’m as bad a runner as I’ve always been, and have more fun watching and cheering Joel on than trying to beat anyone.
We’re still out in the backyard when Win gets home from work at 4:30, just as I’m getting ready to head inside and throw together an easy dinner.
“Hey! I thought you were working late today,” I call out to him as he jogs down the porch steps, a large brown paper bag in one hand and a rolled orange blanket in the other.
He greets me with a hug and seems surprised at the kiss I give him, then lifts the takeout bag. “Nico told me to get home and enjoy the rest of the afternoon with an easy dinner. Absolutely nothing in here is healthy or green. It’s burgers, fries, sodas, and apple pie for dessert.”
Murph sets Ben on his feet, and they all hurry toward us.
“Win!” Ben grins when he sees him, telling him almost too fast to be understood all about the race he and Murph won.
Joel and I look at each other and shake our heads. The crowing has already begun.
Win grins back. “Hey, little man. I saw! That’s awesome.”
“You brought food!” Joel takes the bag from Win and sticks his nose in, inhaling loudly. “Smells good. I’m starving.”
“I thought we could eat out here,” Win suggests.
We have a few hours before it gets dark, so there’s no reason not to enjoy the nice, mild weather and eat outside.
“Sounds good to me,” I say. “And here is fine.”
Murph takes the blanket from Win and lays it out on the grass. “Do I need to grab napkins or anything else from the kitchen?”
Win shakes his head, and we all settle on the blanket as Joel pulls food from the bag. “There are napkins, and the soda is in cans, so unless anyone wants a glass with ice, we have everything we need.”
“No dishes mean no washing. I can live with that,” I say.
“You and me both,” Win agrees, toasting me with his can of soda.
Joel rubs his hands together. “Then let’s eat.”