“What time were you up?” I ask.
She hesitates.
“Maisie?”
“Two. I just lay there, and I couldn’t shut off my brain. After an hour, I came downstairs to do something useful that would take my mind off Derek.” She glances at her hand that I’m still holding under the cold running water. “I think my hand is okay now.”
It is downrightpainfultaking my left arm from where I have it wrapped around her middle. I switch off the faucet, and after scrutinizing her burn, I nod, pleased that it looks a little less red than it did minutes before.
I release her to snag a cloth from the drawer beside me and pat it dry. “How does it feel?”
“Better.” She says it without thinking.
I notice something I missed about her. “You don’t like people taking care of you.”
She blinks at me. “That isn’t true.”
I don’t believe her.
As a semi-pro surfer who traveled a fair bit even before I changed careers, I’ve met my fair share of omegas. Mostly, I learned to stay away from them. My life was on the road. I liked freedom and craved my independence. Being tied down to an omega meant being tied down to a place. I was never interested in that.
Until Maisie.
For someone afraid and looking to escape an ex on a revenge mission, I thought she’d bite my hand off accepting our help—we all did. But she’s been surprisingly hesitant and more independent than any of us expected. If her ex hadn’t torched her apartment, I have serious doubts that she’d have agreed to stay with us at all, even if it meant she’d be safer with us than staying in town.
And for the month that we’ve been stopping in at the diner, she’s been polite but distant, even though we’d catch the odd lingering glance that told us she was as attracted to us as we were to her.
Asking us to stay with her when she spoke to the sheriff was the first time she’d asked anything of us. And even then, she did it reluctantly. I thought it was because she was embarrassed orshy, and maybe that’s true as well. But maybe it’s because she doesn’t like needing us as much as we need her.
“You don’t want to trust us,” I say, holding her gaze.
“That isn’t true,” she denies.
I cock my brow.
She releases a quiet sigh. “I just don’t want to get attached, that’s all.”
“To us?”
She gestures vaguely with her right hand. “To this. You. This house. The idea of this going anywhere. You won’t be in Rios forever, and neither will I.”
What?
I stiffen. “You’re leaving?”
She shrugs. “I should. The fire made it clear Derek is on a warpath.”
“And we’ll deal with it together. The sheriff knows about him now. You’re safe here, with us, and we’d die before we let anything happen to you.”
Her head lowers, and I barely catch her whispered, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Eyeing her bent head for a beat, I drop talk of the future for now. “Why were you down here making pie?”
She shrugs again. “It was something to do.”
I snort, which prompts her to lift her head and meet my gaze as I tell her, “You could’ve read or watched a movie. Those would have distracted you even more than baking pies would have. Instead, you hunted out pie pans I didn’t know we had and filled the house with baking so good it woke me up.”
Her cheeks flush pink. “You don’t mean that.”
