Page 68 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

I urge to argue is overwhelming. But Wes’s hand remains at my back, and Roman stands at my other side, and for a moment, I let myself stay bracketed between them. I’m held in place by two people who showed up this morning without being asked and have stayed every hour since.

Safe. Wanted. Terrifying. In that order.

We step outside to festival banners snapping in the humid breeze. There are six days until the Month of Heart. And now half of Sweetheart Haven has watched me name the break before anyone else understood what they were witnessing.

The town doesn’t need proof to decide what I am. It never has.

Chapter 16

Scarlet Sage

During the drive from Sweet Tooth, my omega decides survival looks a lot like sitting between them. I should feel terrible after the bakery. I was accused in public, watched a bonded omega nearly tear herself apart from fear, and heard the word bondbreaker crawl through a room full of people who have known me since I wore crooked pigtails and stole peach slices from festival booths.

Instead, tucked in Wes’s SUV with the engine humming beneath my boots, I feel grounded and entirely too aware of the men beside me. Wes’s cedar wraps through the air every time he shifts behind the wheel, and Roman’s spice settles warm at my other side, because I refused the passenger seat and climbed into the back with him.

My hand rests on his thigh. I put it there five minutes ago, when a truck slowed beside us and the driver stared too long. Roman covered my fingers with his for a moment before returning to his sketchbook.

My body remembers Roman’s mouth from this morning and the way Wes’s hand felt at my back when the bakery turned against me. That should make being near them feel easier but it raises the stakes. Before, I could pretend I only wanted relief from the depleted ache beneath my skin. Now I know what it feels like when these men take care of me.

Given my history, I have no business letting a pack become the place my body reaches for when the world turns ugly. Around me, love always breaks, and I don’t want them to suffer my fate.

Wes turns onto my dirt road, and the swamp closes around us in familiar green walls. Moss hangs from the trees like old lace, and water flashes dark through the cypress knees. An osprey rises from the ditch, all wings and offended grace.

Roman’s thumb brushes once over my knuckles. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’m composing an angry letter to the town’s hospitality committee.”

“Strong opening?”

“It has footnotes.”

Wes pulls into my driveway before Roman can encourage me further.

The first thing I notice is the greenhouse, then the paint. My breath leaves me in a thin, ugly rush. Red letters slash across the glass wall in wet, uneven lines.

Bondbreaker

Below the word, someone painted a pair of crude eyes. My marigolds are destroyed beneath it, every flower in the bed ripped up and crushed into the mud. Orange petals cling to the path, and black soil is streaked across the porch steps. The spray paint smell carries through the heat, chemical sharp over crushed stems and swamp water.

For a few seconds, I can’t move. It takes everything I have to keep from letting panic take me under. A whine builds in my throat, and I force it back down.

My grandmother planted marigolds there every spring because she said the house deserved cheerful things even when the world had poor manners.

Wes is out of the truck before I fully process that he has parked. Roman releases my hand only to open my door. He follows, quieter now, the humor gone from his face.

My boots sink into the soggy dirt. “Well,” I say, because apparently my mouth doesn’t have an off switch. “Today could have gone better.”

Neither man laughs.

Wes walks toward the greenhouse and crouches near the ruined bed. His gaze moves over the ground with steady focus, taking in the paint, footprints, broken latch, and flattened grass near the side yard.

Roman stops beside me. “Did you touch anything?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Don’t be fooled. I was busy having a tiny murder fantasy.”