During his drive from downtown Memphis to Weldon, our small suburb, he noticed an overturned car and immediatelypulled over. A woman was trying to free her eight-year-old daughter from a malfunctioning seatbelt.
Even if he hadn’t been a father, he’d have noticed someone needed help and wouldn’t have hesitated to act. That was Simon Hayes, the man I loved with my entire heart, and I was so grateful he was mine.
He unbuckled the seatbelt and pushed the little girl out to her mom as the firefighters and cops were arriving on the scene. When he tried to follow her out, the car toppled off the road and down a steep ravine, trapping him inside as the fall battered and tossed him around.
Firefighters eventually got him out, EMTs stabilized him on the scene and rushed him to the hospital, which is when the cops noticed the green Volvo feet away with an open door and a ringing cell phone.
Jessica’s daughter Lucy lived because of Simon, and both came to his funeral.
I don’t know who cried harder: Jessica, thinking it could so easily have been her lowering Lucy into the ground, or me, knowing Simon was gone forever and that I would never see his laughing green eyes again, smell his aspen and pear scent, or feel so loved when he wrapped his arms around me. It felt good to see them. To know that he saved them. To know he died as he lived—helping others.
But it still hurt.
I wanted to crawl into my nest, a small corner of my bedroom I’d covered with cushions and throws. I craved the soft coziness my omega heart needed to find comfort in a world that had battered me. I wanted to live there forever, but I couldn’t. Ben needed me. My son needed a mother who would love him more than ever. Some omegas never heal from losing their alpha. Scent-matched pairings rarely survive. It was as if someone hadcleaved my heart in two and expected me to get up and just keep going.
Everywhere I looked in our small town, I saw Simon. In the home we’d bought when we moved back to my hometown after I had Ben, in the park where Simon taught Ben how to ride his first bike, and at the grocery store where I’d laughingly yell at Simon to stop pushing Ben so fast in the cart or he’d run over someone.
And everywhere I walked, I bled from a wound that never healed. I couldn’t stay in Memphis anymore; my heart was too broken.
“Rose?” Lina says gently.
I shake my head to clear away the pain I ran from in Memphis, brushing tears from my cheeks that I have no memory of falling. “Sorry, I was just…”
Wait a second.
Ben has been entirely too quiet. He has never been a patient child. Not when I was pregnant with him, and he surprised Simon and me by coming three weeks early. Not when he’d be up and screaming at 4 a.m., even on the rare occasion he’d sleep through the night. Silence means danger because I wasn’t watching him as closely as I should have been.
“My son?” I get up as I ask, stepping around Lina, who moves aside to let me out.
Out of my stall, I feel sick for an entirely different reason.
Ben was studying his reflection in the mirrors behind the five sinks when I dropped to my knees to throw up. All the stall doors are open, and he’s not in any of them.
He’s gone.
“It’s okay!” Lina shouts after me as I bolt to the bathroom door and wrench it open.
It isnotokay. My son is missing. He could be hurt, kidnapped, or facing some other terrible fate, while I was too busy worrying about myself.
I have to find him.
Chapter 2
Rose
With my mind full of terrifying images of a stranger stuffing my innocent son into the trunk of their car while I was being a terrible mother, I nearly run past Ben sitting at our booth opposite a large blond man in a navy t-shirt.
My back stiffens. “Get away from my—” Mid-yell, it hits me that Ben is quietly sipping his juice box through a straw, while the man who looks to be in his late twenties gazes out the window.
Two sets of surprised eyes snap to me. Ben’s light-green, and the man’s a darker shade.
Pretty.
The man flashes me an apologetic smile. “Sorry to have scared you. Ben was just sipping his juice box and pointing out red cars while we waited for you.”
“He’s a fireman,” my son announces in the excited tone that warns me I’m going to be hearing about this for weeks to come.
I sink into the booth beside Ben, eyeing the man warily as I pull Ben closer to my side in case I need to grab him and run.
