He nods, looking at Ben. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you. With you.” He shoots me a quick glance. There’s a hesitancy in his expression and his tone that I’m not used to seeing in such a confident alpha. “This is new. Being there for someone. Taking care of someone, not just me. And hell, I sometimes didn’t?—”
I shuffle closer, take his hand, and lean over to brush a kiss across his jaw. “You did fine. Youaredoing fine.” Simon loved me and Ben so much. He would be happy to know we are being taken care of so well. “Just rely on what’s here.” I touch my hand to my heart. “Simon was honest and sweet. That’s part of what made me fall in love with him.”
Murph says nothing for two beats, but the tension slowly leaves his body, and when he draws me a little closer, tucking me against his side, it’s the most natural thing in the world to rest my head on his shoulder and enjoy watching Ben play with Joel.
“You’re talking about Simon. With me.” He sounds shocked by it.
“Yeah. I am.” I glance up at him. “Do you want me to?—”
He kisses my forehead. “Whatever you want to tell me, I’m always ready to listen, sweetheart.”
This isn’t easy, but one thing I learned from talking to my mom was how much it helped. I squeeze Murph’s hand as I look at Joel and Ben, but it isn’t them I’m seeing. It’s Simon. And it’s me. It’s the happy life we built together that ended far too soon.
“We met in California during our sophomore year. I wasn’t interested in bonding with anyone until after college, but that went out the window when we met at a party. By the time we graduated, we’d bonded, were planning our wedding to celebrate with all our family, and I was pregnant with Ben not long after.” My eyes sting, and my smile is bittersweet. “He was the love of my life, and I thought we’d be together forever.”
Murph pulls his hand from mine and wraps his arm around my shoulder, tucking me so close that my head rests against his chest. It grounds me in the present. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The warmth of his skin I feel through the cotton of his shirt. All of it keeps me in the here and now, not drowning in a grief I fled Memphis to escape.
“You lucked out, sweetheart,” he says, burying a kiss in my hair. “Not everyone finds a love like that, especially so young.”
“I know.” I sniff. “We worked in California—Simon as an accountant, me as a teacher—before moving to Memphis so I’d have my family nearby when I had Ben. Our lives were ordinary, but I was so happy. Then, on our sixth anniversary, Simon stopped to help a woman’s daughter after a car accident. He rescued her, but the car flipped while he was in it. Paramedics did everything they could to save him, but he died soon after they got him to the hospital. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.” I drag the back of my hand across my wet face.
Murph pulls back to look down at me. He kisses the next tears away before they can fall, his tenderness making my heart hurt.
“I’m sorry, Rose. For what you lost and for not having a chance to say goodbye. If I could carry that pain for you, I would.”
My smile is small, but after the painful wound I just reopened in telling Murph what happened to Simon, it’s surprisingly genuine. “I know you would. It was the worst day of my life. I thought nothing would ever get better, but then I came here. Ben and I found you. And I learned that there are so many different kinds of love that can happen in a person’s lifetime.” I frame his stubbled jaw, and he leans into my touch. “I don’t want you to be like Simon. What I had with him won’t be what I have with you. And that’s okay.”
He touches his lips to mine in a brief kiss, and we go back to watching Joel and Ben, who match each other in energy. Joel’s been at work all day, yet he has barely stopped running around the backyard, playing tag with Ben, lifting him onto his shoulders to show him something, or giving him more tips to improve his cartwheels. Neither one of them has stood still for longer than a minute.
“I still can’t imagine you being like Ben,” I say wryly. “Joel, I can see it. But you? I still don’t see it.”
He chuckles. “I’m gonna have to introduce you to my mom and the thick album she has under her coffee table of me running wild all over our ranch. Finding a picture without dirt smeared on my face, or my dad gripping my shirt collar to keep me still long enough to take the damn thing, is like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”
I can't help laughing at that. “I’m looking forward to seeing that album.”
He lets out a sigh. “I’m not, but my mom sure will love showing it to you. Joel is like Win. Joel gets energy from being around other people. He’s been like that since before I moved inhere, when I warned him I wasn’t the least bit sociable and never would be.”
I look up at him. “And you, what are you like?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.
He holds my gaze. “I always needed to be alone. Being around people drained me. Being with you, with my pack, and Ben energizes me. You make life worth living.”
I get all misty-eyed. “You’re getting to be pretty damn good at saying things that melt my heart, Murph Owens.”
He looks surprised by my soft admission, then pleased. “Good.”
“Those mornings when you’d spend time with Ben, do you talk as you work on your project? He mentioned it was small, but you were nearly done with it,” I say innocently.
He chuckles and draws me closer again, kissing my forehead. “Nice try, but you’re not that slick, sweetheart. It’s gonna have to stay a surprise for a little longer. And it’s not small.”
“Are you saying it’s not small to throw me off the scent?”
His lip twitches. “Maybe.”
Honestly, I’m shocked Ben hasn’t spilled any details of their secret project yet. Not that I’ve been pushing him to talk, but with Ben you don’t have to. Any secret he has, he’ll run up to the first person he sees and start talking. “So, what does it feel like for a big, gruff cowboy suddenly being all sociable?”
“New.” His eyes go on a slow journey over my face. From the warmth in his expression, he likes what he sees. “I’m used to finding quiet corners to hide in. Going straight to the source of people is… new. But I like it. Like having people to come home to.”
“You have family in Wyoming.”
