Page 155 of Run Wild Omega

“I look like I was just mauled in a truck.”

“Beautifully mauled.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. She’s always smiling now.

The Hartwell house is lit up against the early evening dark. Smoke curls from the chimney, and I can see movement through the kitchen windows. Margaret’s silhouette, Henry’s broad frame, the flicker of what looks like Mara setting the table.

We climb out of the truck. The mountain air hits my face, clean and cold, carrying woodsmoke and pine and the faint trace of roasting chicken. Tess takes my arm, not because she needs to, but because she wants to.

The front door opens before we knock.

“Finally,” Mara says, standing in the doorway with a dish towel over her shoulder. “Mom’s been timing you. She said you’d be twenty minutes late. She was off by three.”

“Traffic,” I say.

Mara looks at Tess’s flushed cheeks, my untucked shirt, the fact that Tess is wearing my jacket because hers is presumably still in the truck. She raises an eyebrow.

“Traffic,” she repeats.

“Don’t start,” Tess mutters, pushing past her.

Mara catches my eye as I follow Tess inside. Her expression is amused, warm, and only slightly judgmental. She leans in.

“Next time, try the pullout behind the ridge,” she whispers. “Daniel and I use it. Nobody can see you from the road.”

“Mara.”

“What? I’m being helpful.”

The kitchen is chaos in the best possible way. Margaret is at the stove, basting a chicken that could feed a small army. Henry is carving bread at the counter, his reading glasses fogged from the steam. Daniel is leaning against the fridge, a beer in his hand, talking to Leo, who is sitting at the table with a stack of papers.

Gray is on the floor, playing with Pip. Tess claimed her months ago, though I’m still the one who feeds her at six every morning while she scales my leg like a tiny, furry mountaineer. The rest of the time, she divides between the three of us.

Pip’s currently batting at Gray’s shoelaces with the intensity of a predator stalking prey.

“She’s getting fat,” Gray says, scooping Pip up. She immediately climbs his arm and perches on his shoulder.

“She’s not fat,” Tess says. “She’s robust.”

“She ate half my bacon this morning,” I say.

“That’s because you left it on the counter.”

“She was on the counter.”

“She’s a cat, Wyatt. They climb.”

Margaret turns from the stove, wiping her hands on her apron. She looks at Tess, then at me, then at the general state of us.

“Traffic, hmm?” she says.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mm-hmm.” She doesn’t push it. She never does. But the face is there, brief and devastating, before she turns back to the chicken. “Dinner in ten. Set the table, please.”

Tess grabs plates. I grab silverware. We move around each other in the kitchen with an ease that still surprises me, a choreography that developed without practice, without planning. She reaches for the glasses just as I reach for the napkins, and our hands brush, and the bond flares with a warmth that makes me pause.

Three months. It’s been three months, and I still can’t believe she’s ours.