Page 64 of Harvest Moon

Banjo didn’t approve the cessation of petting, so he wriggled under our twined fingers, meowing his demands. Ridge chuckled, and complied, petting both my hand and the cat’s head with his enormous rough palm.

I hated to admit it, but Banjo and I were definitely of the same mind in this. I was also willing to go boneless beneath Ridge’s firm hands, arching into his touch and shamelessly begging for more.

What would he say if I asked him to spend my heat with me? Was it too soon for that? Was it too forward for me to be the one? Oh hell no. It wasn’t like he was ever going to ask.

Me waiting for him to declare himself had been half our problem before. I was done waiting for him to become better at communicating.

Still, it was a bit of a leap from not waiting for him to ask, and asking myself. So when we pulled into the driveway, I jumped out of the truck and dragged him into Claud and Birch’s house, hoping that my courage would find itself.

I could hear the TV playing quietly from their room, but mine was all the way on the other side of the house. Not that I was bringing Ridge in for a booty call. Ridge wasn’t the kind of guy who did that.

Would he be the kind of guy who agreed to spend my heat with me? It was the same thing as a booty call in some ways, wasn’t it? But no. Heats were a fact of life, and Ridge wasn’t the kind of person who would make that into something dirty or shameful for me.

It wasn’t until I flipped on the bedroom light that I realized my folly in bringing him there.

Catching the light from every previously empty surface was my collection. I’d never been able to put it up in my childhood room, under my mother’s sharp gaze and with no spare shelves. Now? Every single shiny thing Ridge had ever dug out of the ground and handed me was sitting there, cleaned, polished, and set out, like some desperate display, begging him to love me.

Next to me, his breath caught, as he caught sight of the hundreds of pieces of concrete proof of my feelings for him.

36

Ridge

Every single piece.

Alexis had kept it all.

From afar, it looked like a bunch of old junk—rocks and rusty tools I’d found in the ground. If you looked close, you’d see a couple more interesting pieces, like arrowheads and geodes, a shiny dried out June bug.

It was everything I’d ever picked out of the dirt and handed to him. When I did it, I’d never imagined he’d keep them. Frankly, I hadn’t thought much about what he’d do with all the curiosities I tossed his way. I’d thought they were neat.

Deep down, I guessed I’d wanted to give him something, and all I had was what I could find digging up the fields. It wasn’t much, but it’d satisfied that wolfish hind brain to hand him something and feel like I’d provided.

If I didn’t think too hard about it, it didn’t even matter that what I’d provided wasn’t worth much.

“You kept it,” I whispered, running my hands over the trinkets on the shelf. I pressed my fingertip into the point of a piece of quartz—one I’d just given him when he’d come across the field to see me right when I’d gotten back. “All of it.”

When I looked back at him, his eyes were wide, even a little scared. All this, keeping it, made him vulnerable.

Vulnerable because of how much he cared. Even if I couldn’t give him anything worth much, he still valued it. He’d always valued me, even when I felt like a shit who couldn’t give him a fraction of what he deserved.

I couldn’t have him looking nervous like that, unsure that I returned all his feelings.

I hadn’t known it was like this, and now, I felt thick as concrete for not realizing. Alexis wasn’t waiting for an alpha to make his life perfect. He’d been waiting for me.

And I wasn’t going to make him wait another second.

I turned away from his collection. Banjo mewled and jumped up onto a shelf by the window, knocking off something so he could sit comfortably and look outside. I didn’t spare it a single glance, just stepped in and touched Alexis’s face.

I held his cheeks with light fingertips. He stared up at me, his eyes shining bright in gold and green and brown. Just looking at him made me smile.

“I love you, Lex.”

As sorry as I was for not seeing how much I meant to him too, I didn’t want to apologize for what was done. I wanted to look toward what was next, with him.

“I’ve loved you since we were kids, and I’ll keep loving you. Be here long as you want me, ’kay? No more funny business. Just you and me, together.”

Alexis didn’t say a word, but he whined, his hands grappling with my shirt, tugging it up and undoing the buttons in no particular order.

---