I plug in my phone, turn off the light, and stare at the ceiling.
Two months ago, I moved home feeling broken. Like I'd failed at something fundamental.
But now? Now I'm lying here with the scent of three alphas clinging to my skin and the promise of more tomorrows stretching ahead.
Maybe I wasn't broken. Maybe I was just waiting for the right pack to find me.
I fall asleep smiling, already dreaming about next time.
Chapter 18
River
The fastener wall doesn't need reorganizing.
I've sorted the bins twice already this week—once by size, once by type—but here I am at seven-thirty on a Tuesday morning, arranging three-inch deck screws like my life depends on getting them in perfect ascending order from Phillips head to square drive.
It doesn't depend on that. What it depends on is whether I can keep myself from walking across the store to Aisle 3, where Bea's restocking paint supplies and smelling like cinnamon-apple pie gone dangerously, impossibly sweet.
She's been working here four days a week for exactly seven days now. I'm losing my goddamn mind.
Not that she's not great at the job—she is. Quick learner, good with customers, doesn't flinch when old Joe Henderson tries to explain plumbing to her for the third time like she's never heard of a P-trap. She just smiles that sharp smile and says, "Fascinating, Joe. Tell me again about that drainage issue?"
But that's not why I'm losing it.
In one week, she's transformed my business. Tommy Peterson—the high school kid I hired last Wednesday because I literally couldn't keep up—texted me at six this morning asking for extra hours. On a Tuesday. We're never busy on Tuesdays.
Except now we are. Because Bea set up TikTok. Posted a video called "Satisfying hardware store sounds" featuring me cutting lumber and organizing fasteners. Fifty thousand views in two days.
My phone hasn't stopped buzzing with order notifications.
She calls it "multi-platform strategy." I call it witchcraft.
And when she's here, surrounded by sawdust and wood oil and paint fumes, smelling like cinnamon-apple pie that's getting richer, sweeter, moredangerousby the hour, I can barely focus on inventory counts.
The December morning light slants through the front windows, catching dust motes from the sawdust bins. Everything smells like wood and coffee from the pot I made at six and something else—something warm and sweet that shouldn't be making my mouth water this early in the morning.
But it is. It's her. It's always her.
I abandon the fastener wall—for the fourth time this week—and head toward Aisle 3.
"You know those are already sorted, right?" Bea calls without looking up from the paint cans she's arranging by color.
"Just making sure."
"Uh-huh." She glances over her shoulder, amusement dancing in her green eyes. "You reorganized the screws yesterday. And the nails the day before that."
"Customer service efficiency."
"That what we're calling it?" She straightens, turning to face me fully, and the movement sends her scent rolling toward me in a wave—warmer today, richer, like someone added brown sugar and melted butter to her usual cinnamon-apple. Mymouth waters. Instinct locks onto it immediately, cataloging the change.
Something's different. Sweeter. More intense.
My stomach does an uncomfortable flip. Is this—? Could she be?—?
No. I'm probably imagining it. Reading too much into a scent change that could mean anything. Stress. Arousal. The fact that she's standing close to me.
But what if it's not nothing?
