I worry Mila has filed me there too.
The thing is, the reputation isn't the whole truth. The whole truth is that I haven't encountered an Omega in a long time who made me want to be the serious option. And I'm standing on a cobblestone street in a small town I didn't know existed thirty-six hours ago, holding a hand that belongs to a woman who named her scent suppressor's failure with a sneezing fit and a resigned acceptance——who told three strangers she'd just met that she was expecting punishment before dessert—who has spent fourteen months being competent and exhausted and quietly building a dream she hasn't told anyone, and I find myself thinking about what it would be like to be the person she tells things to.
That's new.
She stops.
The shop in front of us has a display in the window that I'll admit I might have subconsciously navigated toward—phone models propped on stands, a few laptop packages, the LED signage of a technology retailer that has positioned itself as the practical alternative to the city chains. Smaller footprint, curated stock, the kind of place that exists because the nearest Apple store is forty minutes away and some things can't wait.
She's looking at the display with the specific expression of someone running calculations about whether they're allowed to want something.
"Do you want to go in?"
She turns, and the expression pivots immediately toward the version she keeps ready when she's about to decline something on principle. "We have the registry appointment?—"
"Not for another hour and a half."
"We could be?—"
"Mila." I squeeze her hand once. "We have time. Whatever you want to do with it."
"Whatever I want," she repeats, with the specific quality of someone encountering a phrase that doesn't have a familiar reference point.
"You and me and this town and ninety minutes. The other two—" I glance ahead where Rowan has stopped to read a plaque on the wall of something that's apparently worth pausing for, and behind where Declan is still working through the phone situation with the focused expression of a man executing a detailed mental flowchart. "—are doing their thing. So. What do you want to do?"
She looks at the shop window again.
"Rowan's a fast one," I tell her, because she deserves the context. "Already been through this town a few times for business. He's an online cart-and-checkout man—he identifies what he needs, acquires it, moves on. Declan doesn't really register clothing as a category unless it stops functioning. He owns approximately six white shirts and five pairs of the same dark trousers and considers this a solved problem."
She giggles.
I like the sound of it. More than is professionally advisable for someone in a provisional twenty-day arrangement.
"What about underwear?" she says, which is a callback to the dress shop that I respect enormously.
"That's a journey you're going to have to discover on your own, Lucky Girl. What I can tell you is that I personally do not have holes in mine, which I understand is a higher bar than it sounds right now."
"Well," she says, "now I have a full set of new ones, so I suppose you're all going to have to do your own discovering first."
I feel the blood reach my face before I've finished processing the sentence.
She says it so easily—so casually, with the small lift at the corner of her mouth that I'm learning is the warning sign that something is about to land—and the effect is immediate and thorough. I clear my throat.
"Don't tempt me with a good time," I say, and lean in, close enough that she'll catch the bourbon-and-orange of my scent at the proximity, and let my lips brush the edge of her earlobe as I say quietly: "I'm not like those two. I'm a shark who knows how to catch what he's after."
She doesn't startle.
The side glance she gives me from this angle is—something. The corner of her lips. The specific, controlled amusement of a woman who has assessed the move and is deciding on her response with more thought than the casualness of it projects.
"Then I'd best get swimming," she says, barely above a murmur, "or I'll get caught."
She winks.
I whistle low before I can stop it.
My heart is doing something at an elevated rate and my lower half has opinions about this conversation that I am firmly redirecting toward a technology retail store because we are inpublic and there are objectives to accomplish. I squeeze her hand.
"Let's go inside, Lucky."
