God, I’m so screwed.
Chapter 6
Elijah
The last vase is finished.
I turn it in my hands, checking the grain one more time. Curly maple, same as the others. Three coats of oil, cured overnight between each one. The morning light from the workshop skylights catches the figure, makes it ripple like water.
Good. It’s good.
I set it in the crate with the others and start wrapping them in canvas. Thirty-six vases. Each one carved, sanded, finished by hand. Three weeks of work, ready to be filled with flowers and set on tables where people will barely notice them.
That’s fine. That’s the job. Make something beautiful, let it go.
My workshop is quiet this early. Just the creak of old wood settling, the distant sound of a truck on the main road. The house behind me is quiet too—has been since Levi moved out last spring. Before that it was Dean. Our grandparents left the place to me and Levi, and for a while it was full of life. Three alphas sharing a house that was too big for any of us alone.
Now Dean’s with Lila and her pack. Levi’s with Sadie—signed his share of the house over to me before he moved out. Said he didn’t need it anymore. Said he’d found his home.
And I’m here, rattling around in all these empty rooms, wondering when it’ll be my turn.
Some nights the quiet gets too loud, and I end up out here until dawn, making things I don’t have anyone to give to.
The bench in the corner catches my eye.
Ben’s bench—finished yesterday, ready to deliver to his cabin this weekend. I pull off the drop cloth and look at it again, even though I’ve looked at it a hundred times already.
Black walnut frame, dark as good coffee. Cream cushioning, thick and soft. Cedar-lined compartments in the sides, because cedar holds scent better than anything else. The curve of the arms sweeps up and inward, creating a protected hollow. A cocoon. A place to curl up and feel safe.
A nesting bench. That’s what Ben asked for. “For the future,” he said, like he was embarrassed to want it. Like hoping for an omega to share his life with was something to be ashamed of.
I didn’t ask questions. Just built him the best one I could.
I wonder if he knows why I built it the way I did. If he can see what I was thinking when I added the compartments, when I made the arms curve just so, when I lined everything in cedar so it would hold scent.
I wasn’t thinking about anyone specific. I never do.
But if I’m honest—and I try to be, at least with myself—there’s been someone in the back of my mind every time I build something soft. Something meant to comfort. Someone with lavender in her scent and exhaustion in her eyes and a stubbornness that won’t let her slow down long enough to take care of herself.
Tessa Lang.
I cover the bench back up and turn away.
The January cold bites when I load the crate of vases into my truck. Three weeks until Valentine’s Day. Tessa will want to see the finished pieces, confirm everything’s on track. She alwaysdoes. Color-coded spreadsheets. Backup plans for the backup plans. That woman could organize a military invasion and still have time to worry about the centerpieces.
The thought of her makes my chest tight. It’s been doing that for three years now, ever since she moved to town and started running every event like a general commanding troops. I’ve watched her at town meetings, at festivals, at the bar when she doesn’t know anyone’s looking.
She never stops. Never slows down. Never lets anyone take care of her.
I wonder what it would be like to try.
I wonder if she’d let me.
Tessa’s officeis in the old brick building on Main Street, her apartment right above it. TESSA LANG, EVENT PLANNING is printed on the frosted glass door in neat letters.
The door is propped open. She’s at her desk, surrounded by paper and sticky notes, phone pressed to her ear. Her hair is escaping from its ponytail, and there’s a pen tucked behind her ear that she’s probably forgotten about. She’s wearing a soft gray sweater that’s slipping off one shoulder, and she keeps pushing it back up while she talks, an unconscious gesture that does something to my chest.
She looks exhausted. Beautiful, but exhausted. There are shadows under her eyes that weren’t there last week.
