“How are they worse? They actually fit.”
"They make you look like a professor," he says, tracing my lip more slowly this time. "Like you're about to explain something I didn't ask about and somehow make it interesting."
I let out a soft laugh. "Is that bad?"
He searches my eyes. "No, Nico. It's not bad."
His thumb stills on my lip as he presses his cheek into my palm. Then my voice drops to a whisper. "Will, I need to tell you something. When Sebastian took you from me, I tried to convince myself that what I felt didn't matter. That you were happy. That I was supposed to step back and let you live the life you chose. But I never stopped building a life that had space for you in it. Every apartment I rented, I looked for two bedrooms.Every plan I made, I left room. Five years of leaving room for someone who didn't know the door was open."
I hold his gaze, my fingers pressing gently against his jaw. His mouth opens, and the breath that comes out shakes a little. "I didn't know." His voice cracks. "Nico, I didn't know you were—"
"I know you didn't. I never told you. I never gave you any way to know, because I was too busy being patient and careful and respectful and every other word for coward that sounds better in a sentence."
His hand slides from my face into my hair, fingers gripping the curls at the back of my head. "You're not a coward." He spits the words out and somehow it feels like those words are for the both of us. "You're the least cowardly person I know. Sebastian would have—he would've just taken. He would've shown up, forced it, and called it love. You waited. For five fucking years you waited, because you wanted me to choose." His grip tightens in my hair. "That's not cowardice. That's the bravest thing anyone has ever done for me."
I try to make a sound, but my throat closes around it. His face so close that his breath warms my mouth, every defense stripped, every wall flattened by my weight on his and the dark around us and the hours since that first kiss at the bar.
"I choose you." His whisper barely stirs the air between us. "I don't know what that looks like yet, and I can't promise I won't fuck it up every other day, but I choose you, Nicholas. I chose you on that cooler, and I chose you every time you were in Sebastian's bed, and I chose you the morning I got his teeth ripped out of my neck, and I'm choosing you now."
I drop my forehead against his. A raw sound rips from my chest, pulled from somewhere beneath my ribs that I've kept locked for five years. His hand tightens in my hair; his other hand finds my face, both palms pressing my cheeks, holding me steady as the tremor runs through me.
"Will—"
"I know." I feel his thumbs gather my tears before they slip down to my jaw. "I know, Nico."
I lean in, our mouths meeting in a slow, salt-soaked kiss. His tears mingle with mine on our lips as he threads a hand through my hair, fingers carding through the curls while I deepen the kiss. I settle my weight fully onto him, pinning him to the mattress, and he arches up into me with a sigh that I taste on my tongue.
"Nico…" His voice is fading. "I need to tell you about—when I asked Sebastian—there's something you don't—"
His hand slips from my hair to my shoulder and then goes slack. His breath evens into a slow, steady rhythm, his chest rising and falling beneath me as sleep claims him. His mouth parts, lips still grazing mine. A snore rumbles up from his chest, vibrating against my chest.
I rest my forehead on the pillow beside his head, a sound bubbling up inside me, something between a laugh and a sob, released at last. Sliding an arm under his shoulders, I shift my weight so he can breathe, then press my lips to his temple.
18
Lorenzo
I’ve been watching Wilson let Nicholas finally show his love in public. The brief touches are so small you’d miss them if you blinked, Nicholas’s palm skimming the small of Wilson’s back as they pass each other behind the bar, Wilson’s fingertips catching at Nicholas’ sleeve when he leans over to check the register tape.
I see their shoulders bump together during the staff briefing, Wilson tipping toward the Alpha’s warmth like some magnet his brain still refuses to reject.
They’re terrible at this. Two grown men orbiting each other with the fumbling hesitation of teenagers at a school dance, each brush followed by a micro-retreat, a recalibration, and a quick check to see if the other one noticed. Nicholas reaches for Wilson’s hand during a lull; Wilson lets him hold it for four seconds before yanking away to “adjust” a bottle on the shelf that was fine the second before. Later, Wilson leans into Nicholas’sshoulder while reading the night’s schedule and then springs upright so fast his spine cracks.
However, Oliver is having the time of his life with this, and I have a front-row seat. My Omega’s parked himself behind the bar tonight with a perfect view of every stolen caress, his chin propped on his fist, glitter in his hair flashing every time he tilts his head to follow the show.
When Nicholas passes Wilson a glass of water and their fingers graze on the rim, Oliver’s whole face lights up. When Wilson whispers something that cracks Nicholas up, Oliver clamps onto my arm so hard I can still feel it, and hisses, “Did you see that? Did you fucking see that?” before I can even answer.
As if that weren’t enough, Oliver’s taken it upon himself to wedge into their space at every opportunity. He drapes himself across Nicholas’s back in meetings, chin resting on the Alpha’s shoulder, pretending to care about property-law minutiae while his eyes track Wilson at the other end of the table.
He’s been stealing Wilson’s coffee, swapping in a fresh cup with exactly the amount of sugar Wilson swears he doesn’t use, then planting a quick kiss on Wilson’s cheek before bouncing off so Wilson can’t protest. And yesterday? He hip-checked Wilson right into Nicholas’s chest so blatantly that half the staff saw it and Wilson’s ears burned bright red for a good twenty minutes afterward.
Nicholas handles Oliver’s interference with the patient amusement of a man who recognizes an unstoppable force when he sees one. Wilson handles it by swearing, blushing, and failing to hide how his mouth twitches every time Oliver does something outrageous, which is constantly.
And it just makes everything else more seamless, like starting to build our crazy little pack has somehow righted everything else. The club has been easier to breathe in these past fewdays. The arbitration is holding. The code-violation challenge went through on Thursday without incident. My attorney has Voss’ legal team responding to our filings instead of generating new pressure, which means the boardwalk owner’s machinery is finally running defensive for the first time since we opened.
Voss called once, his voice obviously disappointed that he hadn’t been able to immediately run us into the ground.
“Impressive legal work, Lorenzo. I’m curious where the funding materialized. One moment you’re struggling with lease terms and the next you’ve retained Margaux Chen.”
