Murph looks toward the staircase. “Are you coming downstairs? We could make popcorn and watch a movie. Win will probably join us once he’s done helping Nico with his office.”
“Not yet. I have to make a call, and I don’t know how long it will take.” Rising onto my tiptoes, I press a soft kiss on Murph’s lips. His breathing stops, then quickens as he fists the back of my hair and extends the kiss for a couple more seconds.
“We’ll hold off on the movie until you come down,” he says, gunmetal gray eyes heated when I step back.
“This call might be a while,” I warn.
“Then it takes a while.” Murph gives me another kiss, glances at Joel, then walks away.
Joel flashes me a grin and starts to join him.
“Wait a second,” I call after him.
He stops, frowning. “Something wrong?”
I grip the front of his shirt and tug him back. “Not wrong. Something is very right.” I kiss him too, smiling as he wraps his arms around me and lifts me a couple of inches off the floor, then sets me back down. “That was fun.”
“Take your time with the call.” He kisses my forehead. “We’ll chat a bit while we wait for you.”
Knowing I’m facing a losing battle, I smile. “Okay.”
As Joel follows Murph down the stairs, I head for my bedroom, pulling my cell phone from my back pocket. I nudge the door shut and walk over to my bed, sitting on the edge to make this call. I spend little to no time in this room, other than to put away laundry or occasionally charge my cell phone on the nightstand. Because of that, it’s almost always tidy, with the bed made and the drapes open until I close them, usually right before I go brush my teeth and get into my pajamas.
Since it’s a little after 7, my mom and dads like to eat dinner around 6, watch TV in the living room, or wind down for the evening on the back porch. I find my mom’s name in my contacts and hit dial. Mom takes a while to answer, which isn’t unusual. She probably set her phone down somewhere and had to go look for it.
“Hi, Rosie.”
My mom’s voice will always make me smile. She’s an omega, like me, and the easiest person in the world to love. As a florist, she would come home smelling amazing. Even thinking of her brings to mind lavender, roses, and floral sweetness from when she’d hug me.
On weekends and during school breaks, I’d sit in the back of her flower shop, hunched over doing homework or clearing cuttings from her worktable and the floor. Putting together floral arrangements was her magic. Mom always knew what someone would love. I helped her until I went to college, but I always wanted to be a teacher.
“Hi, Mom. You have a minute to talk?”
“I always have time for you, Rosie,” she says, a warm hug of a smile in her greeting. “Let me get myself set up on the porch. I was just finishing up cleaning the kitchen after dinner while your dads get a little housework done before we settle down for the evening.”
Footsteps sound down the phone. A door opens, then snicks shut. Wood creaks, and Mom lets out a sigh of contentment as she sinks into the rocking chair that Sam made for her on the back porch, overlooking our backyard.
“Now, what did you want to talk to me about, honey?” she asks once she’s settled.
My fingers tighten around my cell phone, and I let out a barely audible sigh. “I haven’t been completely honest about the last few days.”
And that’s an understatement.
Every time Ben has gotten on the phone with my parents they were the most stressful minutes of my life. A five-year-old cannot keep a secret to save their life. The second he starts to blurt out that I’m pregnant, I snatch the phone out of his hand and start babbling about a movie we watched.
I’m open about most things, and it isn’t like me to keep secrets like this, but I’m an only child on this supposedly epic cross-country road trip. The second they learn I’m pregnant, I’ve met my scent match, and I’m living with his pack, all three of my loving, super-protective parents will descend on Rios in a veritable storm of concern, love, and suspicion that Joel, Murph, and Win are secretly serial killers they have to protect me from.
They will mean well, but I don’t need them to do that. And I don’t want to return to Memphis to live with Simon’s ghost, which only breaks a little more of my heart when I have precious little left whole.
Clearing my throat, I brace myself for the fallout. “I met someone,” I admit. “He’s, uh, my scent match.”
Mom chuckles. “I had a feeling something special was keeping you in that town so long. Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
I lift my feet off the floor and scoot back on the bed, leaning my head against the headboard as I ponder how to answer. “I was scared.”
“About?” The distant rumble of cars is barely audible. There’s a soft squeak, and it’s easy to picture Mom gently rocking on the back porch with an iced tea close by. Eventually, one or both of my dads will figure out I’m on the phone, and then all hell will break loose. That’s why I called Mom. She’s the mediator and less likely to jump on the first plane to Iowa with a list of invasive personal questions for Win, Joel, and Murph to answer.
“Of what would happen. Bryan and Trey worry, and they’d want me to come home, or they’d come to Rios and interrogate Murph for six hours before eventually deciding he wasn’t good enough for me and strangling him.”
