I’ll wait.
I think about him standing in the cabin doorway, those steady golden-brown eyes holding mine while I ran away with Nate. Two words. That’s all he said. And somehow those two words have been rattling around in my head ever since.
Tessa:I’ll be there.
Elijah:Good.
That’s it. No emoji, no elaboration. Justgood.
I spend way too long deciding what to wear, which is ridiculous because I’m going to a woodworking shop. But thisisn’t really about the shop, is it? The blue dress from my date with Milo feels too formal. Jeans and my ratty comfort sweater—the gray one with the hole in the sleeve that Milo somehow noticed—feel too casual for what this obviously is.
I settle on dark jeans that actually fit well and a soft cream sweater that’s nicer than my usual workwear. I leave my hair down because apparently that’s what I do now. Because when Milo tucked that strand behind my ear on Saturday night, something in me loosened and stayed that way.
God, I’m becoming one of those women. The ones who primp for dates and think about hair placement. Three weeks ago I would have judged me.
Three weeks ago I hadn’t spent four days in a cabin with three alphas who ruined me for normal life.
The drive to Elijah’s takes twelve minutes. I know because I time it, the same way I time everything, the same way I’ve organized my entire life into neat little boxes with schedules and contingency plans.
Except there’s no contingency plan for this. For three alphas who’ve somehow slipped past every wall I’ve built. For the way my body responds to their scents even without the suppressants. I still haven’t taken since the cabin. For the ache that isn’t heat—it’s justwanting.
Elijah’s workshop is glowing when I pull into the gravel driveway.
Not the usual overhead lights—something softer. Warmer. Golden and flickering through the windows, and my pulse picks up before I even cut the engine.
I park next to his truck and sit there for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel. The heater is blasting but I can already feel the cold creeping in through the windows, frost feathering at the edges of the glass. The air inside my car still carries traces of Ben’s scent from when he drove it back to me—leather and musk, faint but present. And underneath that, my own scent, which has been doing strange things lately. More lavender than citrus. Softer. Like my body knows something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet.
This is Elijah. Quiet, steady, notices-everything Elijah who makes beautiful things with his hands and barely says ten words in a conversation. The same Elijah who delivered thirty-six hand-carved heart vases to my office and caught me when I slipped on the ice. Who took me to lunch at Maeve’s and lit up from the inside when he talked about wood grain and oil finishes.
The same Elijah who touched me during my heat like I was something precious. Who read my body without needing words. Who looked at me after, when I was coming back to myself, with an expression that made me feel seen in a way I’ve never felt before.
I get out of the car before I can overthink it any more.
The February air hits me like a slap—that cold that seeps straight through your coat and settles in your bones. My boots crunch through the layer of snow covering the gravel driveway, and my breath fogs in front of my face. The workshop doors are cracked open despite the temperature, warm air and golden light spilling out into the frozen night. I can smell him already—cedarwood and honey cutting through the sharp scent of winter, rich and grounding, wrapping around me like coming home.
I push through the door and stop dead.
The warmth hits me first—a wall of heat after the biting cold outside. Then the smell: cedar and honey and woodsmoke and something savory. And then I actuallylook, and my breath catches.
He’s transformed the space.
The overhead fluorescents are off. Instead, candles are everywhere—pillar candles on the workbenches, tea lights liningthe windowsills, a cluster of tapers on what I realize is a table set up in the center of the room. Not a workbench pressed into service—an actual table, one of his pieces, the wooden legs gleaming warm in the candlelight. It’s draped with a dark cloth and set with two places. Real plates. Wine glasses. Cloth napkins folded into neat triangles.
The sawdust has been swept away, the floor clean enough that I don’t feel guilty about my snow-dusted boots. A wood stove in the corner is putting out enough heat to make the space almost cozy, and the air smells like cedar and honey and something savory—food, actual food, warming on a camp stove he’s set up nearby.
And Elijah is standing by the table, watching me take it all in.
He’s wearing dark jeans and a forest green henley that makes his eyes look like warm whiskey in the candlelight. His hair is damp, like he showered recently, and there’s no sawdust anywhere on him for once. He looks—god, he looksgood. He always looks good in that quiet, unassuming way of his, but tonight he looks like he’s trying. Like he wants to impress me.
Heat curls low in my stomach.
“You came,” he says.
“You asked.”
Something flickers across his face. Almost a smile. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Why not?”
