I stare at the screen. All the salsa? Does she mean... gossip? Chisme? Is she trying to say "tea"?
I'm about to text back asking for clarification when I look up and my entire brain short-circuits.
Because across the street, parked in front of Cristina's Florist with its window full of poinsettias and winter arrangements, is a truck I'd recognize anywhere. Navy blue with white lettering: Negrorio Carpentry. The bed is filled with wood shavings and what looks like a partially finished cabinet. Tool bags sit neatly organized along the side rails.
And leaning against the hood, arms crossed over his chest, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, is Carlos.
My heart stops.
Then starts again, triple time, hammering against my ribs like it's trying to escape my chest entirely and make a run for it.
Oh no.
He looks the same and completely different all at once, and my brain is struggling to reconcile the two. Six years have carved definition into his jaw, added lines around his eyes that make him look less like the boy I remember and more like a man who's seen things. Lived things. Built things with those hands.
His sandy brown hair is longer now, curling slightly where it escapes from under a worn Negrorio Carpentry baseball cap. Stubble shadows his jaw, darker than his hair, giving him an edge he didn't have before. An edge that makes my omega sit up and pay very close attention.
He's wearing work clothes. Faded jeans covered in a fine layer of sawdust, the denim molded to thick thighs from years of physical labor. A dark green flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing forearms that are frankly obscene. Thick with muscle. Dusted with golden hair. Marked with a few pale scars that tell stories of hammers and saw blades and wood that fights back.
A white t-shirt underneath hugs his chest in ways that should be illegal, showing the breadth of his shoulders, the solid wall of his torso.
And the tool belt. Oh God, the tool belt.
It hangs low on his hips. Really low. The kind of low that draws the eye down, makes you notice the leather which sits just below his waist, the weight of the tools pulls it to one side, revealing the edge of that white t-shirt where it's tucked into his jeans.
When did tool belts become attractive? When did I start having feelings about a man's work clothes? When did forearms become a thing that makes my knees weak?
Since about three weeks ago, apparently. Thanks, omega hormones. Really appreciate you turning me into a walking puddle of hormones over a carpenter in a flannel shirt.
And then the scent hits me.
It cuts through the cold December air like a physical thing, like it has weight and substance and purpose. Sandalwood and sawdust, warm and woodsy and earthy. It wraps around me, fills my lungs, sinks into my skin, and my new omega senses catalog it immediately with alarming enthusiasm.
Important. Essential. Home. Mine.
The last thought makes me stumble, actually stumble, like my feet forgot how to work.
Not mine. Can't be mine. Shouldn't be thinking about mine when I just ran from a wedding three days ago and my life is a complete disaster and I have no idea what I'm doing with anything, let alone with feelings about a man I haven't seen in years.
But my omega doesn't care about logic. My omega is purring, a sound I didn't know I could make vibrating in my chest like I've swallowed a very satisfied cat.
Shut up, I tell my omega. We're having a crisis. Multiple crises. This is not the time.
My omega ignores me completely and purrs louder.
Carlos is watching me. Has probably been watching me since I walked out of the clinic, which means he saw me see him and then freeze like a deer in headlights. Those blue eyes, blue like summer sky, blue like deep water, tracking my every move, making my heart race and my omega do a little happy dance.
The memory floods back without permission, sharp and vivid and entirely unwelcome.
The kiss. At a party six years ago, when I was still dating Callum. One moment that changed everything and made me run.
Carlos pushes off the hood of his truck in one fluid movement. The action is smooth, easy, the kind of grace that comes from a body that knows how to move. How to work. How to use its strength without thinking about it.
My mouth goes dry.
He takes a step toward me. Then another. Moving into the street, those work boots solid on the pavement, eating up the distance between us.
My omega instincts scream at me to go to him. To close the distance, but my brain screams at me to run. Yet, I stand frozen on the sidewalk like a complete idiot, caught between want and terror, clutching my prescription slip so hard the paper crinkles and nearly tears in my fist.
