That comparison is terrible. I'm not using it.
Then — a sound. Short, bright, unmistakable. A notification ping from Nicholas's phone, facedown on the table.
Not a text. Not an email. A very specific two-tone chime that I recognize because I've heard it from my own phone, from Jason's phone at two AM before he deleted the app, from half the guys who've passed through this bar over the years.
Grindr. Or one of the others — they all have that same cheerful, trying-too-hard sound.Hey, someone's interested! Aren't you excited?
Nicholas glances at the phone. Doesn't pick it up — just tilts it enough to see the screen. His expression does something complicated. Not embarrassment, not interest. A grimace. Quick and contained, like he tasted something slightly off and decided it wasn't worth mentioning. Then the phone goes facedown again and he's back to his laptop like nothing happened.
Jason, behind the bar, has gone very still. He heard it too. Shifter hearing means we all heard it — the ping, the half-second pause in Nicholas's typing, the slight uptick in his heart rate that could be annoyance or resignation or just the low-grade discomfort of being perceived.
Robin catches my eye. Mouths something I don't need to lip-read to understand.
I give him nothing back. My face is a locked door.
But the information lands, and it rearranges things I wasn't ready to rearrange. The developer in the window booth, with his tailored suits and his leather notebook and his precise routines and his thirty percent tips — is on a dating app. Amen's dating app. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, getting notifications he grimaces at.
That's not someone who's having a good time. That's someone running a system on autopilot because it's what you do when you travel for work and you're alone in every city.
I go back to my receipts. The numbers don't hold my attention the way they should.
* * *
Around three, I'm behind the bar reconciling last week's receipts when Nicholas gets up. This is unusual — he normally works straight through until four or four-thirty, packs his bag in the same order every time, and leaves. But it's three, and he's walking toward the bar.
Toward me.
"Hey, what's your name?"
"Ezra."
He sets his empty glass on the bar. Not pushing it forward for a refill — just returning it. Polite. "I wanted to say — I know this is uncomfortable. Me being here. I'm not trying to make it worse."
"You're a guy drinking beer in a bar. It's not that deep."
"It's a little deep." He says it evenly, no humor, no deflection. "I came here to make an offer your alpha already declined. I'm still here. That's not normal, and I know how it looks."
I lean against the back counter. "How does it look?"
"Like I'm casing the place. Building a file. Waiting for leverage." He meets my eyes. His are dark brown, steady, the kind of direct that most people can't manage with a shifter. "I'mnot. I'm finishing an assessment that I'll submit to my company, and the honest version is that this property doesn't make sense for what they do. I'll tell them that."
"And then?"
"And then I go home."
Something about the way he says it — flat, factual, already packed — hits me wrong. Or right. I can't tell which is worse.
"Where's home?"
"Right now? Pinewood Inn off the highway." The ghost of a smile. "Normally, Portland. I have an apartment with a coffeemaker and a couch I'm never there long enough to sit on."
"Sounds lonely."
It comes out before I can stop it. Too honest, too fast, the kind of thing I'd normally wrap in a joke so it doesn't land this hard. But it's out, and Nicholas looks at me with an expression I haven't seen before — not guarded, not professional. Surprised. Like no one's said that to him in a while, or maybe ever.
"It's efficient," he says after a moment.
"That's not the same thing."
