Their Lost Omega (Sweet & Spicy Omegaverse #2)

1. Bea

BEA

I 've been calling it a road trip. That's the story I'm running with.

Road trip implies intention—a destination, maybe a playlist. What I actually have is a car pointed away from everything I used to own, a vague northward lean, and a talent for not stopping that I'm beginning to think is less a personality trait and more a coping mechanism with excellent branding.

The official version: I'm figuring things out.

I've been figuring things out for twenty-four days. I'll let you know when I figure something out.

The GPS rerouted me onto a mountain road two hours ago—flooding on the highway, which I learned forty minutes up the mountain, well past the point where turning around was a real option.

So: onward. The situation becomes clear and it's already too late.

So you go forward. You tell yourself you'd have chosen it anyway. That's basically the whole story.

The rain started twenty minutes after the reroute. I turned my wipers to max. My wipers are losing.

Mountain roads don't have shoulders so much as suggestions.

The centerline's been theoretical for the last ten minutes.

My headlights find the edge of the asphalt and then immediately, with no transition whatsoever: pine trees going straight down.

The white line on my right is somewhere under an inch of moving water.

There's a limit to what forward momentum is worth. I have reached it. I pull into the first driveway my headlights find.

Gravel. A wooden sign I can't read in the dark. A building at the end that looks like it's been on this hillside since before roads were a concept. I park. Kill the engine.

I wait for the rain to stop.

Four minutes pass. The rain does not stop. The rain has more rain behind it. It's committed.

I get out.

My jacket—not a rain jacket, a fact I've known and done nothing about for two weeks—expresses an opinion about my choices. I ignore it. Sprint to the covered porch. Knock on a door that looks like it takes weather personally.

The man who opens it fills the frame.

Not the way people fill doorways when they're doing it on purpose. He's large the way certain things are large—old trees, walls built to last. Dark hair, flannel rolled to the elbows, hands that belong to someone who uses them for actual work. He looks at me.

Then the smell arrives.

Pine resin and fresh sawdust. Not a candle. Not a product. The real thing—the forest, shaped by hands. My suppressants have been running at half-dose all week to stretch what's left, and they do absolutely nothing with it.

My chest does something I'm going to ignore. I press on.

We are standing in a doorway , I remind myself. In the rain. This is a weather situation and I am a grown woman.

"I'm so sorry to bother you." I'm soaked. My hair has its own agenda. "I pulled in because the road—I couldn't see the line. I need to wait out the rain. I don't need a room or anything, I can stay in my car, I only knocked because?—"

Someone appears over his shoulder.

Tea towel over one arm like he'd stepped away from the stove to see what was happening.

He smells like cardamom, warm butter, something real cooking on a real stove.

His expression finds me, does a quick read, and arrives at project in about two seconds.

I want to tell him that's not necessary, I'm not a project, I'm fine, I've been fine for twenty-four days.

He looks at me like he knows exactly how fine I am.

"You're soaked," he says, already moving.

"I'm fine." The reflexes are really holding up.

From a hallway on the right: footsteps. Third man—a little shorter than the first, built like someone who's been outdoors his whole life and has the shoulders to prove it. Clean rain and cold stone. His eyes take me in quickly—not rude, just thorough, taking stock—and his face settles.

He's safe before I finish the thought.

That hasn't happened in a while—a stranger filling a doorway, and no part of me bracing. My shoulders come down from around my ears without my telling them to.

I look back at the first man. He still hasn't spoken. He's been watching me the whole time with an expression I can't quite place—patient and certain, like he already knows where this goes and isn't worried about it.

Then I look up.

At the top of the stairs: a fourth man.

Not coming down. Not going back up. He's at the landing with one hand on the newel post, looking at me, and something in his expression is—controlled. Very deliberately controlled. His jaw is tight in the way of someone who has decided something and is working at holding it.

Dark roast and oak. Something underneath that I'd need a full dose to process. I've got three pills left. I'm not spending them in a stranger's doorway. Doesn't matter—it settles at the back of my throat before I can do anything about it.

He doesn't look away when I meet his eyes.

I look at him and feel something I don't have a name for. The closest I can find is recognized. Like I'm a word someone's been trying to remember.

Then he turns. Gone. A door closes quietly upstairs.

I blink. Look back at Ronan—I'll know his name in about forty seconds. He'd been watching the staircase too. He looks at me. Says nothing.

Four scents. All at once. All completely different. My suppressants do exactly nothing with any of them.

It's like being in a quiet room and someone opening all four windows at once.

"I need to wait out the rain," I say. Mostly to myself.

The first man steps back.

"Come in," he says. What's happening next.

I come in.

The lodge is warm—fireplace, old wood floors, high ceilings, low light. It smells like fire and pine and four men who've been here long enough to become part of what it's made of. Someone built this place because they meant it. Not as a project. As a place.

I stand in the entryway dripping on the good floors and I think: oh.

I haven't thought oh about anything in a while.

The rain-and-stone man produces a towel from somewhere and hands it over without making it a moment. The first man says: "Ronan." Like he's answering a question.

"Bea."

"Fletcher." From the kitchen. Not looking up.

"Cory." The rain man, settling against the far wall. He's found the spot in the room where he can see all the exits, and he's positioned himself there without announcing it.

My eyes go to the stairs. Empty. The fourth man went back up while I was orienting.

His scent is still in the air. Dark roast and oak. I keep finding it under everything else.

Fletcher comes back with a bowl. Real soup—amber, deep, the kind that was thought about before I showed up. He hands it over like declining isn't a scenario he's considered. I sit. I eat.

It's really good soup.

It's the best thing I've had in three weeks. If I think about that too hard I'm going to embarrass myself. I eat it and don't say a word. Focus on the bowl. My eyes want to do something. I don't let them.

Fletcher refills before I decide whether to ask. I eat that too. God, it's good.

The rain stays loud. The fire does its job.

At some point I become aware that there are four people in this room—or three, the fourth is upstairs—and I'm not anxious about any of it.

Ronan's at the edge of things, steady and quiet.

Cory's at the far wall. Fletcher moves between the kitchen and the table.

None of them are trying to be anything. They're just here. Solid. Like the walls.

I haven't felt like this in a while. Safe, I mean. I haven't felt safe in a while, and I'm not ready to say that out loud, even in my own head, so I'm going to call it comfortable and move on.

Very smooth, Bea. Nailed it.

At some point Ronan goes to the front window, looks out, comes back.

"Road's flooded."

I glance down at my empty bowl.

"Flooded like?—"

"Out." Same tone as come in . "You're not going anywhere tonight."

I take in the fire. The walls. This solid, warm, cedar-and-pine-smelling place.

I almost argue. My car, the backseat, twenty-four days of independence. "Thank you," I hear myself say, and I mean it a little too much.

"It's nothing," Fletcher says.

Cory, from the wall: "Get some sleep."

I head down the hall.

I stop in the doorway. Not turning around—stopping, because I haven't finished a thought.

The fire's dying down. Fletcher's kitchen is dark. Ronan's somewhere in the back of the lodge, moving the way he moves through this place—careful, deliberate. The sound of someone who takes responsibility for a building all the way to the end of a night.

The staircase. A man who came to the top of it before he knew why. Who looked at me. Turned around. Went back.

I can think about it in the morning. From my car. When the road's clear and I'm going the direction I've been going.

I go to bed.

The guest room is warm. Sheets that smell like cedar, a lamp with decent light, rain on the window.

I sit on the edge of the bed.

My hand finds my throat—I didn't tell it to, it just goes. I press my fingers there, against my pulse.

Ronan's scent is still in the room with me. Not on me, exactly—I didn't touch him. I walked through the lodge and carried some of it in. Now it's just here, settled. Pine and sawdust. My body keeps finding it.

I don't think about the other three.

I especially don't think about the fourth one. The dark-roast-and-oak man at the top of the stairs, holding himself still like staying there was an active decision. Who looked at me like I was something he recognized.

It's just one night , I tell myself. Road'll clear by morning. I've had twenty-four days of forward momentum and a flooded road is not a reason to stop.

I lie down in my clothes.

The sheets smell like cedar. Someone made this bed up with a real blanket and a real pillow.

I've been sleeping in my car for the better part of a month, and someone made the bed.

I close my eyes before I can be weird about it.

At the top of the house: a silence that has a person in it.

I'm asleep before I finish not thinking about that.