Good girl, Sunshine.
“Knox, this is…”
I look back over at her. “We can come up here anytime you want.”
She looks at me. “Yeah?”
I reach out and tuck a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. Anytime. You just let me know when you want me to come get you, Sunshine.”
I love it when she blushes.
We sit together in a comfortable silence as we watch the sun climb high into the sky. Its presence erases all of the beautiful colors, and soon the sound of cars and people milling about reaches our ears.
It doesn’t deter us, though. She doesn’t tell me that she’s ready to go, so I keep silently filling her plate with food. I keep pouring hot water over her tea bag, just to make sure she gets all of it that she can into her system.
If we sat here until her date with Walker, I wouldn’t care.
Just being in her presence is an honor.
“Did you know about Honeysuckle Grove before you hitchhiked here?” she asks.
Her green eyes find me and I shake my head. “I’d like to think this place found me. When I hitchhiked into it, I told myself I’d stay here long enough to drum up enough money to buy me a bus ticket.”
“Obviously, you’ve made a good life for yourself here. What made you stay?”
I shrug and turn my gaze back toward the sunlit sky. “I don’t know, really. After working on Bea’s fence, jobs just sort of kept coming. Before I knew it, I had enough money for the bus ticket, but my schedule was filled with odd jobs. So, I told myself I’dwork until no more work came in.” I chuckle as the memories flood me. “That was fifteen years ago.”
She giggles. “That’s a lot of work.”
I take a sip of hot chocolate I made with some of the leftover hot water. “A question for a question?”
“Shoot,” she says before popping a grape into her mouth.
“Why did things end with your last pack?”
Her chewing slows, and I wonder if I’ve ruined our morning together. I’m so curious, though. Curious as to why someone would give her up. Curious as to why a pack of Alphas felt like their only choice was to walk away from the one Omega that lights up my world every time she’s in it.
I can’t wrap my head around it.
“We didn’t end badly or anything,” she says with a soft shrug. She picks up another piece of cheese and chews. “Not exactly, anyway. We just weren’t right for one another. I was much too independent for them. They wanted an Omega to stay in the nest, make them a home, and bear them children. I’m just not a traditional Omega in that regard.”
“I’m sorry, Lia.”
She just shrugs. “I’m not. They weren’t for me, and even though I’ll have to deal with my ARS for the rest of my life, I still wouldn’t change things. I want more than just kids and a nest, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
God, what a woman she is. “Nothing wrong with that at all.”
She fires another question right back at me. “Is it true that you guys have a group chat about me?”
I almost swallow my tongue. “Who told you that?”
She grins. “Eli sort of spilled the beans.”
I prepare for damage control. “We’re just worried about you. Especially after everything that?—”
She holds up her hand and shakes her head. “It’s fine, really. I don’t actually mind it, I don’t think.”
“You don’t think?”
