Thankfully it was not packed, which meant we did not have to shout over the chaos of a crowded dining room or compete for the waitstaff's attention. We had time. Real, unhurried, luxurious time to sample the appetizers and debate over the main courses and steal bites from each other's plates with the shamelessness of two people who have stopped pretending they are not comfortable around one another.
Etienne ordered the seared salmon with a citrus glaze and a side of roasted vegetables that smelled so incredible I nearly abandoned my own butternut squash risotto to steal his entire plate. He let me try a forkful without me even asking, holding it across the table with the kind of quiet attentiveness that makes my chest do funny acrobatic stunts.
His scent was warm the whole time. That cedar and fresh pine and ink on parchment fragrance that wraps around me like a weighted blanket every time we are close enough for me to catch it. Calm. Grounding. The olfactory equivalent of a hand on the small of your back guiding you through a crowded room. It mixed with the aroma of the food and the faint vanilla candle on our table until the entire experience became this sensory cocoon I never wanted to leave.
People noticed us.
They always do when you are sitting across from an Alpha who looks like Etienne. He has the kind of face that people do double takes at, the sharp jaw and dark curls and those deep brown eyes that hold more depth than most novels I have read. A couple at a nearby booth kept sneaking glances, whispering behind their menus, and at one point I caught a girl at the bar squinting at him like she was running facial recognition software in her brain.
"Is that Bastian Morel?" she muttered to her friend, loud enough for my Omega hearing to pick up across the restaurant.
I nearly choked on my risotto.
Bastian. They thought Etienne was Bastian. And I suppose I understand the confusion if you are looking at them from twenty feet away through dim lighting after a couple of cocktails, because the Morel bone structure is a genetic masterpiece that apparently runs in the family. But to me, the differences are glaring. Etienne's features are softer, his expressions more guarded, his energy quieter and more deliberate. Bastian is a bonfire. Etienne is a hearth. Anyone paying attention for longer than three seconds would see that, but people rarely pay attention for longer than three seconds.
Etienne did not seem to mind.
He did not stiffen or withdraw or let the whispers sour his mood the way I expected them to. He just reached across the table, repositioned the candle so the flickering light caught the amber tones in his irises, and asked me if I wanted to try the chocolate lava cake for dessert or if I was saving room for a surprise.
The surprise turned out to be this dessert shop.
We did a bit of window shopping after dinner, strolling along the storefronts with their displays lit up against the darkening sky, pointing at things neither of us could afford and makingup elaborate backstories for the mannequins in the boutique windows. Etienne has a dry humor that sneaks up on you, the kind that is delivered so deadpan you almost miss the joke entirely until it hits you three seconds later and you are doubled over laughing on the sidewalk while he watches with that barely-there smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Then we passed this place.
A tiny storefront with a chalkboard sign advertising artisan soft serve in flavors that sounded like they were invented by someone who got high and raided an international grocery store. Matcha strawberry ube. Black sesame honey lavender. Thai tea coconut mango. The line was short, the interior was pastel pink and mint green, and the smell drifting through the propped-open door was sweet enough to stop us both mid-stride.
"Pit stop?" Etienne asked, glancing at me with an eyebrow raised.
I was already through the door before he finished the question.
Which brings me to this moment. Standing on the sidewalk in the cold, clutching a waffle cone stacked with three spiraling layers of matcha, strawberry, and ube soft serve, moaning like I have lost all sense of public decorum.
"I could come here every single day," I declare, savoring the final swirl with the kind of focus I usually reserve for exam prep. "Every. Day. This place is my new personality. Forget figure skating. Forget academics. I am a soft serve girl now. That is my entire identity."
I practically inhale the rest of the cone.
Which is probably why Etienne is gawking at me.
His brown eyes are wide, his lips slightly parted, his waffle cone hovering forgotten in his hand while he stares at me with an expression that is caught somewhere between fascination and genuine alarm. Like he has just witnessed a nature documentarymoment, one of those scenes where a predator consumes its prey in a single devastating motion and the narrator whispers something reverent about the brutality of the natural world.
I giggle nervously.
"Oops." I wipe a smudge of ube from the corner of my mouth with my thumb. "Am I being weird?"
He blinks. A flush creeps up his neck, painting the skin beneath his jaw a warm shade of rose that I find entirely too endearing on a man his size.
"No," he manages, though the word comes out strangled. "Just... you cannot be moaning like that."
My face ignites.
Not a gentle warmth. A full combustion event that starts at my collarbones and rockets upward until my ears are burning and my freckles are probably glowing like tiny individual heat lamps. Etienne is blushing too, his gaze darting sideways at the couple walking past us on the sidewalk, and the shared embarrassment makes the moment ten times more charged than it needs to be.
He clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand in that way he does when he is flustered, the gesture so characteristically him that my stomach flips.
"Not like it does not sound nice," he adds, quieter now, the words tumbling out before he can catch them. "Or uh..."
He groans, pinching the bridge of his nose.
