Page 62 of Harvest Moon

He wasn’t looking at me when he said that, though.

I rubbed my thumb across the back of his hand and turned to him. “You wanna go home? I can drive you back whenever. I know it’s getting late and all.”

Too fast, he was shaking his head, blinking too quickly. “Not yet.”

“You’re upset.”

All he did was swallow. I heard the click in his throat, and he clung hard to my hand. I held him tight too.

I hated that he felt this bad, especially when we were just starting to see eye to eye on the important things. There’d be more talking to do, sure, but no way was I bringing Alexis up to the top of a barn, having sex with him after a lifetime of never caring much about the whole concept, and then turning my back on him out of some misplaced sense of duty.

If Alexis wanted me, I was there. End of story.

But I wanted to make him happy too.

As much as I wanted to ask if it was something I’d done, that was about him reassuring me that I was doing okay. Right then, nothing needed to be about me and what I needed, because Lex was sad.

That came first.

“You wanna talk about it?”

A little line etched between his brows. Then I saw his lips start to tremble, his eyes go pink and shiny. When he took a breath, it shook and made his chest jump.

I reached for him, my hand cupping the side of his neck. “It’s okay,” I promised, because I wasn’t sure what else to say yet.

Didn’t matter. That alone was enough to get Alexis to fall apart.

“It’s Claudia. She’s—she’s sick. The other week she just... collapsed. Alpha Grove put her on bed rest, but she’s so stubborn. Wants to keep working. And I’ve been treating it like it’s just an inconvenience, you know? Like, she needs to do this thing and she’s just being childish. I wasn’t thinking about what happens if she doesn’t. Or—or if she does, and it doesn’t help.”

The words were coming fast now, tears streaking down his cheeks. The Alexis I’d grown up with never cried, not like this. It wasn’t that a man couldn’t cry, but he was the kind of man who was strong for everybody else.

He didn’t need to be strong for me though.

“She could die,” he rasped.

My thick head, all my doubts, had kept me from being there for Alexis when he needed me. No more of that. I wasn’t going to leave him to shoulder all this on his own.

“Claudia’s not gonna die, Lex. You and Birch are taking great care of her, and she’s stubborn as hell. Little like another omega I know.”

He laughed wetly and tried to wipe his eyes, but the tears kept coming.

I bent forward to nudge his temple with my nose. “World puts challenges in front of us, but—but it’s time for things to start going easier for you and me. So, serious as this is, we’re gonna get through it.”

With a gentle hand at the top of his back, I pulled him in to me. He practically melted as soon as he was near enough to bury his face against my chest. For a while, I held him close with my lips pressing against the top of his head.

Funny, how I could smell him—not just the sweet smell he’d always had, or the scents our bodies made together up in that barn, but he smelled... sad. Hurt.

I couldn’t stand that.

“I’m gonna put my head to the matter,” I promised him. “You and me and Mr. Wilson—we’ll figure it out. Make sure Claudia’s got everything she needs for her and the baby to come out of this happy and healthy. Okay?”

With a broken little sound, he nodded, not lifting his head for a second.

I scratched my fingers gently through the short brown hair at the nape of his neck. No way in hell I was leaving Alexis to carry all this on his own. Maybe I couldn’t do much, but I could look after the people I loved.

35

Alexis

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