Page 3 of A Hutch for Hoover (Omegas of Animals #15)

Hoover

I grabbed my lunch from the counter and headed off to work.

It had been a couple of months since I left my fluffle then moved to the desert. There wasn’t a day I didn’t miss my fluffle mates, my father and brother especially. I still talked to my brother a lot, but my father was still hurt I’d left.

It was hard to grapple with my feelings around that.

And maybe it wasn’t that he was hurt I was gone, as much as disappointed in me, in how everything he worked so hard for all these years as he prepared me for the position was thrown out the window.

And I hated to think of the man in such a cold way, but that was the reality.

He too had been raised to be alpha then was alpha.

His life had always revolved around that position and would until he took his last breath.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. It hurt so bad. But there was nothing I could do to fix it other than play nice on video chats and pretend everything was okay. He was still my father and I loved him, despite how messed up things between us currently were.

Video chatting had proved to be a lifesaver for me. It auto-captioned what they were saying, and it wasn’t perfect—some days, ridiculously off—but it meant I could get a better grasp of the conversations and keep that tie alive.

My bunny missed being part of a community, being around people.

I’d never thought I’d leave there and when I did, moving to the desert wasn’t even a blip on my radar.

I liked living among the trees and the mountains, with the grass and the river.

But as I traveled, wandering aimlessly, trying to find a place I could begin again, something told me this was home, and everything fell into place.

I got a cheap apartment quickly. And by cheap, I meant it was small, falling apart, and pretty shitty.

But even before I got my job, I had enough money to stay there for a couple of years and get settled in.

I didn’t want to go higher-end and deplete my savings when this space would do.

It wasn’t like I was entertaining guests or raising a family in it.

As long as I had a place to sleep, running water and electricity, and four walls, it was good enough.

At first, I tried to get some jobs in tech, but my strength was working on setting up new systems in offices, and that required communicating on a better level than most people thought I could when they saw my huge-ass hearing aids and I said, “what?” a couple times in the interviews.

Either they saw I struggled too much with hearing, or they thought I wasn’t focused.

Neither was good, and I still hadn’t figured out a way to advocate for myself.

Most days, I struggled with even admitting to myself that my hearing was so poor.

I still had an open application at Wolf Enterprises, but aside from that, tech doors had all closed quickly for me. And maybe that was okay, because I ended up finding a job I liked. Who would’ve thought wandering into a store one day would be exactly what I needed.

The overhead light was broken, the landlord citing that it wasn’t a requirement to have one, therefore he didn’t have to fix it. I wasn’t sure that was true, but I didn’t push. With rent that reasonable, I could have some stability, at least for a while. So, I ventured out to find a lamp.

I ended up at a thrift store, wanting to save a few dollars, and I always did like hunting for treasure, so it felt like the perfect option.

The place was great. It was huge and had everything from vintage wonders to modern clothes with tags that somebody must have been too lazy to return when they didn’t fit. A treasure around every corner.

They were looking for someone to work in the back, to sort through the new items and help price them.

And I was given the job on the spot after I was able to pull out some items they had on display that could fetch a pretty penny online—specifically a couple of Bakelite frames that they had priced for fifty cents apiece that morning and a piece of costume jewelry by a very popular designer from back in the day.

I did find a lamp. But also, a purpose. And sure, part of it was having a job and feeling productive. But also, I discovered a hobby.

The rule of thumb while sorting was that if anything was broken beyond repair, it got tossed. I quickly learned they threw out a ton of things. And some were trash—there was no saving them. But others, with a little elbow grease and some energy, could become something great.

The first couple of items I brought home were lamps requiring rewiring and chip repair.

I basically tried to return them to their glory days, nothing special.

But from there, I got creative, moving on to all sorts of projects I marketed as upcycled and sold on the internet.

Stayed away from clothes. I knew nothing about sewing.

But small pieces of furniture, decorations—those I could use, for parts or to revitalize.

After a long day of work, it was exactly what I needed to occupy myself and keep the loneliness at bay.

“There’s a new shipment out back.” My boss, Sam, greeted me at the door with a smile.

“Looks like one of the crates was set down carelessly, and there’s a lot of broken pottery in there.

” He knew the magic I could create with the broken chunks.

I loved to piece it together to become other things or as jewelry. “Should be a good day.”

“Yeah, Sam, it should.” Sam never treated me differently because of my struggles.

He understood that even with my aids, I didn’t always fully understand what was being said and would ask for clarification.

He was patient when I asked him to repeat himself.

Other than that, he treated me like the other staff members. I appreciated it.

I put my lunch in the little room we used for eating and storing our belongings and then went to the back and got lost in the work.

Sam had been right. It was a good day. I came upon some buttons that could be listed online for a really good price, which made my boss happy.

Matching up some random pieces to complete sets of dishes increased their price.

And, as promised, there was a lot of pottery that could be turned into jewelry.

This might not be the life I planned, but, aside from the loneliness, it was turning out to be pretty good.

I needed to take the next step and try to find some friends, possibly some shifters in the area. Connections were important, especially for my bunny.

My poor rabbit. The only time I ever let him out was in the apartment, not trusting myself to be able to keep him safe. Not without my hearing.

A high-pitched chirping in my ear startled me. Almost time to replace my hearing aid batteries. The audiologist tried to talk me into rechargeables, but if I couldn’t remember batteries, how was I going to remember to charge them?

It was perfect timing. I was going home. And, honestly? I was ready for the quiet.