Page 2 of Harvest Moon

No. No, I looked good. I’d spent hours picking this outfit. It showed off every physical asset I had, and I damn well knew it.

“Hey, Ridge. Good to see you.” I tried to keep my voice low and husky, the way that had always made his eyes darken and his breath catch back in high school. The way that got me the most super gross, inappropriate messages on my podcast’s email account. Needless to say, I tried not to do it on the podcast too much.

He turned back to stare at the ground so fast I was afraid he’d dropped something. But no, he just went back to digging, shoving his little trowel into the dirt so hard I was worried he’d snap it in half.

After a silence so long I’d half convinced myself he was going to ignore me, he answered in a mumble. “Hey, Alexis.”

What fresh hell was this? Five years apart, and all I got was “hey, Alexis”? What next, was he going to ask if it was hot enough out for me? What I thought about some local sports team?

Hell, I didn’t even know if therewasa local sports team.

Fine, okay, if that was how he wanted it, I could fake small talk. “Going to get the fields going again? I think your parents have only been working the garden the last few years.”

One corner of his mouth turned down and he sat back, sighing. “Yeah, that’s what they said. Apparently the tractor broke, and instead of fixing it, they just... stopped.”

There was frustration in his voice. He’d always been the guy who fixed things when they went wrong around the farm, so he probably felt like it was his responsibility, somehow. Like his parents weren’t adults capable of getting someone to fix their tractor. On the other hand, as a guy with his own parents who sometimes acted like helpless children, I could feel his frustration.

I couldn’t count the number of time’s I’d had to change the settings on Dad’s phone or reset the clock on the DVD player because Mom “teehee, just couldn’t figure it out.”

I always assumed it was an excuse to be lazy and make someone else do it.

While I wouldn’t say it to Ridge, I wondered if, with his parents, it hadn’t been more that they couldn’t afford the parts or labor to fix it. Even before he’d gone off to school, things had been tight for the Patersons. That’s why he’d been so determined—something needed to change, he said, and he wanted an education to help him figure it out. Maybe things would get easier for them now that he was home.

There was a little thunk as his shovel hit something, and he pulled away and dropped it, sifting his hand through the dirt until he found what he’d run up against. Holding it up to the light, he cocked his head and looked at the dirty object for a moment, then gave a little smile. Without looking at me, he tossed it over.

I held it up to look at it too, and for a moment, I was stumped. Then—“Wait, is this quartz? How did it get there?”

“Pretty common,” he said, in that quiet, even tone of his. It was the way that told me a thing was important, but he wasn’t going to say so in words.

So I did what I had spent a decade doing. I brushed off the dirt, smiled at it, and stuffed it in my pocket. It would go well with the multiple shelves of rocks and arrowheads and sea glass I had at home already. Ridge had always liked finding things, and as often as not when he found something, he handed it to me. Who was I to get rid of a single piece of his collection?

When I looked back up at him, he was staring at my hand in my pocket, a tiny smile on his face. But of course, when he saw me looking, he turned back to the dirt.

I decided to prod, since he’d gone quiet again. This time, I wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “So. Now that you’re all done with college”—I didn’t miss the way he flinched at the words, but I had no idea what that flinch meant—“what’s next?”

He didn’t look up at me again. Instead, he shrugged and picked the trowel back up. “You know. Work the land. Try to get things up and running again.”

I was pretty sure his parents had sold off the broken tractor, and wasn’t sure how he was going to get the farm working again without it, but I didn’t say that out loud. He was an alpha, and even one as steady and sweet as Ridge didn’t want to hear that kind of skepticism about his plans. Well, I doubted anyone at all did, alpha or not.

On the other hand, I didn’t think he was going to be able to till and plant the whole farm by hand. It seemed like a lot for one man, even one big, strong, muscular alpha, with shoulders so broad I could probably ride them...

Okay, no. Not that.

“Anything else?” I prompted. “I mean, you’ll have time when you’re not working. Right?”

He glanced around the huge empty field, and back at his tiny trowel, and, well, good point. I didn’t think he was trying to till the soil with that tiny shovel, but I didn’t know what he was doing, either, so I decided not to ask and make myself look ridiculous. “Maybe,” he finally answered. “But not for a while.”

It was all I could do to hold back a groan. “What about dinner?” He had to eat, right? I tried to ignore the fact that I was practically asking him out, and probably starting to sound desperate. It was common in human society for any person to ask someone else out, almost to the point of people thinking werewolves stuffy and backward for doing things a certain way.

But, well, an alpha needed to bond an omega who calmed their more feral instincts, and however much they might like a person, if the omega didn’t do that for them, then they couldn’t bond. It wasn’t about finding the person friendly or attractive or anything like that.

Alphas spent their lives trying to deal with their baser instincts, and they needed mates who helped with that.

Ridge shrugged, but he didn’t look back up at me.

And that had to be it. Ridge had always been kind. Talked to me more than he talked to anyone else. Given me all those damn rocks. But that had been all it was. Kindness to a lonely kid who followed him around like a damn puppy.

Ridge had never been planning to come back and woo me, and mate me, and...

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