He tilts his head.
The curious, open-angled motion that I’m starting to recognize as the Oakley Torres version oftell me more—the physical expression of a man whose interest is genuine and whose patience is structural.
“When I was with Roman,” I say, and a laugh escapes—not the controlled, strategic laugh that I deploy to manage social situations, but something more real, carrying the specific, rueful amusement of a woman looking back at a dynamic that was absurd and knowing it was absurd and having been in it anyway. “We didn’t date. God, no. Me and Roman’s…thing…was not what you’d call a relationship.”
I shake my head.
“It was rivalry on crack. We competed over everything. Scores, rankings, physical assessments, who could eat more in the cafeteria, who could stay awake longer during night drills. The only difference between those two personalities and alcohol is an extremely bad combination, because the moment we’d drink we’d just become two horny assholes.”
The laugh deepens.
Genuine. The kind that makes my shoulders shake and my eyes crinkle and the monitoring apparatus that I usually run on social interactions completely disengage.
“Practically fuck standing,” I continue, because apparently the combination of a diner booth and a man whose scent makes me feel safe is enough to dissolve the filter I typically apply to personal disclosures. “And finally admit we have a thing for each other. And then by morning, when we’re sober, we realize we hate each other’s guts and move right back to the scheduled program.”
Oakley smirks.
The expression is warm—amused, but warm. Carrying the particular fondness of a man who is hearing about his packmate’s history with the woman he’s interested in and is not threatened but delighted.
“Aww,” he says. “You’re madly in love. Romantic.”
I laugh.
“Fuck off.”
“If that’s love,” he continues, his smirk widening, the hazel eyes bright with the mischief that lives beneath every serious thing he says, “then this is clearly marriage.”
The word lands in the booth like a dropped match.
Marriage.
I feel the blush before I can prevent it—the rapid, capillary-level heat rushing to my face with the speed of a woman whose brain has just processed an implication it wasn’t prepared for.
“What—you’d marry?”
The question comes out before my filter recovers. Half-formed. Incredulous. The vocal equivalent of a woman who has tripped over a word and hasn’t regained her balance.
Oakley doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t backpedal.
He meets my eyes with the steady, unhesitating gaze of a man who said what he meant and meant what he said and considers the question an opportunity rather than a trap.
“If it’s important to you, yes,” he says. Simply. Like the answer was always there and just needed to be asked. “You’ve never thought about marriage?”
I think about it.
Not the social construct. Not the institutional framework—the licenses and the ceremonies and the legal architecture that the government uses to classify partnership for tax purposes. The other thing. The real thing. The image that the wordconjures when it’s spoken by someone who means it in a diner booth in October with his arm around your shoulders and his scent in your hair.
“Not really,” I whisper.
Because who would marry you, Hazel?
That’s the thought that lives behind the answer. The quiet, corroded belief that has been sitting in the foundation of my self-concept since my former pack installed it there. Who would marry the Omega who’s too competitive, too muscular, too independent, too old, too damaged, too everything-that-men-don’t-want and not enough of everything-they-do?
Who would marry the woman with the six-month countdown and the corkboard full of missing persons and the scars beneath the constellation tattoos?
Oakley moves his hand.
