Page 3 of Harvest Moon

No. He was just a nice guy who’d given a desperate omega a little attention, and I’d blown it all out of proportion in my mind. Thought we were going to be together. Thought Ridge wanted me.

I almost sat down right there in the dirt.

I’d been waiting five years for a man who didn’t actually want me. I took one shallow breath, then another, and it wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t going to be able to calm down. Not with him, the embodiment of everything I wanted in life, sitting there, five feet from me but a universe away.

“I, um, I’ve,” I stuttered, struggling to get enough breath to say what I needed to say. “Gotta go. See you ’round, Ridge.”

I could only hope I was out of scent distance before the tears started.

2

Ridge

Idamn well couldn’t stand that lingering scent of sharp disappointment, sweaty palms, and salt tears in the air. Alexis was a good ways away before I risked sitting back on my heels in the dirt to watch him go.

The years had been good to him—his shoulders broader, his arms stronger, and damn, that ass. I’d never been much for thinking about asses before, but Alexis’s was something special, and there I was like the dullest tool in the shed, letting him walk away from me.

What else could I do? All this time, I’d been away, thinking I was going to make some kind of life for myself. In my dreams, it’d been the kind of life that had a spot for him in it—a house I built with my two hands, a bed for Banjo, and Alexis right there by the fireplace in the winter, a soft, sweet smile for me every time I came in from the fields.

Okay, I knew life wasn’t like that. Pa’d been sure to tell me that life wasn’t always perfect. He and Ma fought plenty, and even if I could claim Alexis for my own, it wasn’t like we’d never get on each other’s nerves. Mind, we never had before, and we’d been close all through school, coming up together so tight knit that Ma’d started buying wedding magazines before we’d even graduated.

We got along perfect, most days, Alexis glad to be outdoors with me, and me just glad to be with him. But I didn’t want to be an even bigger chowderhead about the whole thing and assume that just ’cause we got on as kids, we wouldn’t have problems as men.

Hell, I already had problems. I’d gone off to school, and according to Pa, damn ruined my life and all my prospects in the process.

My parents had inherited the farm from Pa’s parents, and so on for a while back. It’d never been much to speak of, mostly for growing veg and grain to sell at farmer’s markets, but we got by. Except I could see clear as day that those times were coming to a close. More and more people got their food at the supermarket, and our business was dwindling. So when I’d gotten out of high school, I’d determined to get myself the kind of education that’d put everything back on track. We could go bigger, we could industrialize, just a bit, but I couldn’t give up the farm. It was all I knew, the only thing I’d ever been good for.

Only I’d been gone for nigh on half a decade, and in that time, everything’d fallen apart. The night I’d packed my truck to go, me and Pa’d gotten in a damn big fight, shouting and growling in the yard. He’d warned if I left, the farm wouldn’t be there when I got back. I’d said it wouldn’t survive if I stayed.

Then, he’d snarled, thrown his dusty, faded ball cap on the ground, and told me not to come back till I got my head out of my ass. All my ties to home had snapped then, and I was still struggling to pick up the frayed ends.

Four and a half years later, I returned to Virginia with eighty-whole-thousand dollars in student debt, despite getting a little scholarship money from the ag club in Grovetown and working at Southern States all through school. No way I could come home over breaks most years, when I was stuck working down in Raleigh, shuffling my part-time job with an apprenticeship at one of the local farms down there. If I had visited, where would I stay when Pa and I couldn’t even look each other in the eyes?

I’d come back to find my parents had let the tractor go. In fact, as far as I could tell, the only thing they had managed to do was keep Banjo fed and happy. I guessed I was grateful for that, at least.

But, you see, there was no damn way I could strap a man like Alexis to a mess like me before I got matters settled. I needed a working farm, my ties to my family back. I had to be able to provide. Before I asked him to be mine, I had to make sure I could provide like an alpha was supposed to. His Ma’d been worried about it ever since I’d started sniffing around her boy—that I wouldn’t take the right kind of care of him, that I’d push him too far too fast or make him sad if we wound up together.

Hell, even my ma had asked, with one of those worried, sympathetic little smiles of hers, if Icouldwait. Just till we were a bit older and less likely to get ourselves into trouble.

I hadn’t understood then, that most alphas were driven by their impulses—most acutely, those impulses to bite and fuck and fight.

I’d never felt like that, definitely not about Alexis. It made my chest warm when he smiled at me, when he took the things I gave him and rubbed his thumb over the surface and gave them their due concern before slipping them into his pocket.

I thought about kissing him—hell, I thought about kissing him a lot. And the way he’d feel in my arms. Sometimes, I even thought about more, but it’d come on late for me, and it was just with him. Waiting had never been the issue. I could wait forever for him.

If I was ever gonna be worthy of Alexis Mena, I needed to prove myself more of a help than a burden, and right then, there was just no way. So even if he didn’t understand, I had to let him walk away across the dry, cloddy earth. I couldn’t ask him to stay and take care of me when I owed him so much better than that.

I stared till he was clear across the field, swallowing down the urge to howl and stop him in his tracks, barrel after him and take him up in my arms and tell him how goddamn much I’d missed him.

Only when I couldn’t see him anymore did I duck my head and dig down. The fields were overgrown with weeds. The dirt needed turning. There was a cowherd a couple miles away. I’d buy some manure from him. He was all too happy to have someone whisk away his shit.

There was still some time to plant in the year. Now that I saw the state of things, I regretted staying in North Carolina to finish out my apprenticeship. But if I hit the ground running, I could still get some crops out of the ground—spinach, kale, turnips, collards, and carrots. That was plenty to start.

Maybe once I felt better about my prospects, got some seeds germinating, I could take Alexis up on his offer of dinner. I had a handful of pocket change to pay for it, but there’d be something I could do for cash in the meanwhile. I’d figure it all out.

I heard Ma slip across the porch, her light footsteps and the rustle of her long skirt. She came around the house, out into the field, and when I looked up at her, she was frowning.

“Alexis already gone?”

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