“Your brothers said you were a daddy’s girl,” I tease, trying to change the subject before I get all forlorn.

“Terribly,” she tells me with a laugh. “He used to bring me to jobsites when I was younger. I loved watching him work. He focused more on home renovations back then.” She chuckles softly to herself. “My dad isn’t actually big on the outdoors.”

“That’s surprising somehow,” I state.

“Kind of,” she responds. “Needless to say, this is as close to camping as I’ve ever been.”

She looks down as she says it, which eats at me a little.

“Then I guess I’ll have to give you the full experience.”

I turn my attention to the cans by the fire, grabbing a small towel and folding it lengthwise before wrapping it around one of the cans to bring it over to her. I murmur that she should be careful as I hand it over, leaving and coming back in an instant with a spoon, which I use to open the pull-tab top before relinquishing it to her. I don’t speak while I prepare my own soup, not until I carefully carry it over to the couch to sit down beside her, my shoulder touching hers as I stir the soup without looking at her. The silence in the room is an ever-present reminder of how alone we are, and the heat emanating from her body makes me shift slightly in my seat. Not to mention how her scent fills the space, threatening to suffocate me in a way I would be grateful for.

“So…I get that I don’t know a lot about what you do,” I say. “Or much about any of that stuff, really, but I think it’s easy to tell how much it means to you. I don’t know you as well as your brothers or your parents—hell, I don’t know that much about you at all, if I’m being honest.” I bring my spoon to my lips to blow on it gently, watching from the corner of my eye as she gapes at me with an open mouth. “I think anyone with half a brain can see that you’re passionate about it and that giving up on whatever your life might have been to help your dad is admirable.” I shake my head. “I can’t say that if I had been given the choice, I’d have done the same.”

I hear her small intake of breath, my pulse quickening as her scent blooms deliciously. Something about it makes my skin prickle, but I keep my eyes on the fire as I continue to slowly bring the spoon back and forth between my can and my mouth, mostly because I don’t know what else to say after uttering something so embarrassing. I sense the way she’s still gawking though and give her shoulder a slight nudge.

“Eat your soup before it gets cold.”

She does as I say, her brow wrinkled in thought as she tucks into her food. My mind lingers on what I’ve said, realizing how much truth there is to it. Tess really is passionate about her job, and it’s clear she shares that same passion for her family. It makes me feel like a bit of an ass for the way I treated her when she first showed up here.

“How is your ankle?”

She turns her head to catch me looking down at the bit of her toes that has slipped out from under the blanket and pushes her foot out farther to reveal the ankle in question. “I think it’s a little better,” she tells me. “Ibuprofen must be kicking in.”

She slowly tilts her foot from side to side to show me that it is indeed getting better, and I nod in approval before I take another bite of soup.

“Good.”

I can hear the scrape of her spoon as she stirs it in her can, and when I peek over at her from the side, I can see her white teeth pressed against her soft lower lip.

“What is it?”

“I didn’t thank you for taking care of me last night,” she starts quietly, and I feel my heart begin to pound in my ears a little with nerves. “You know…getting me back here…tucking me in…all that.”

“No reason to thank me,” I answer, turning my face away. “Just the decent thing to do.”

“I told you I’m not used to people fussing over me,” she mumbles.

I smile. “And I told you that you should let people fuss over you more.”

She goes quiet again, and I can practically hear the question on her tongue as she obviously struggles to ask it, my body tensing in preparation for the conversation I knew we would need to have eventually.

“You know…about last night…”

There’s a sound of metal against metal that signals my can is empty, but I continue to absently scrape my spoon around the bottom. “Last night?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she huffs. “Did I misread things? It felt like you…I mean, at least, it seemed like you wanted to—”

“You didn’t,” I say evenly. “Misread things.”

“Then why didn’t you…?”

I experience a familiar panic and the echo of old wounds throbbing deep inside, feeling silly all of a sudden. Like maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it isn’t a big deal to her, and after everything we’ve done, maybe it shouldn’t be a big deal to me. For the life of me, I can’t quite figure out why, but it is, I’m realizing. It feels like the start of something. Something that, deep down, I’m afraid might break me all over again.

“There was a girl back in college,” I start, wincing at the thought of her name. “Chloe.”

Tess is quiet, seeming to sense that I need to get this out all at once, and she nods softly for me to go on.

I drop my spoon into my can and let it rest in my lap, eyes downcast as my jaw works and I consider what to say.

“We met during freshman orientation,” I tell her. “She was an omega, like you, and she was open about it. I’d always felt so…different after discovering I was an alpha when I was just a teenager, but she made me feel…normal. For maybe the first time.”

“Did you…?”

I nod. “We dated. You might have guessed that it got intense between us very quickly because of what we were, but I didn’t care about any of that. I was so gone for her, all I could focus on was how it felt like she was the one. We hadn’t been together long, but I was already planning our future. I wanted to make her my mate.”

I see Tess wince from the corner of my eye, and I imagine it’s strange to hear things like this considering the way I’ve been…helping her lately.

She clears her throat. “What happened?”

“My parents wanted me to come home. We had this tradition…and I…” I shake my head, the memories still too painful after all this time. “I made plans with Chloe’s parents instead. We went to the beach. I was on a beach when they ran their car off the road.”

“Hunter…”

I feel her small hand curl around my forearm, and that gives me courage to keep going. “It felt like my fault. Like maybe, had I been there, they wouldn’t have…”

“Of course it isn’t your fault,” she says firmly. “You weren’t even here.”

“That’s my point,” I tell her. “I should have been here.”

Her lips purse, but she doesn’t comment, asking instead, “So what happened then?”

“I felt like I needed to be back here. I felt like I owed that to them, to make sure this place kept going. They loved it so much, I just…” I let out a sigh. “Regardless, it didn’t fit into Chloe’s plans.”

“She left you?”

“Brutally,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Not only did I find out I wasn’t the only person she was seeing, when she realized I was serious about quitting school to come back home, she told me she wasn’t going to waste her life taking care of some dingy little lodge. She had plans, and I obviously wasn’t meant to be a part of them. I was just…something for her enjoyment. Something to pass the time.”

I don’t miss the way she makes a face at Chloe’s echo of her own word for the lodge, and I can’t bring myself to look at her as I say it.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “What I said when I got here…”

I shake my head. “It’s fine. You didn’t know.” I draw in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I learned back then that sometimes the only person you can rely on is yourself. And I guess I learned that soulmates don’t exist.”