He nodded, considering. “This is good.”
“Thanks.”
He wiped his mouth, then gestured at the map in my notebook, which I’d left on the counter. “You always plan out your days like that?”
I blinked, thrown by the question. “Not really. I just like to see what’s coming.”
He grinned, quick and sharp. “You and me both.”
There was a comfort in it, the parallel. I let myself relax a little, even as the nerves under my skin hummed with awareness of him—his scent, his size, the way he filled the room like an electric field.
I reached for the salt, and Rawley reached at the same time. Our fingers brushed, skin to skin, and neither of us moved to pull away. The touch lingered, warm and solid, for a heartbeat that stretched into two, then three.
He let go first, but there was something in his eyes when he looked at me—something raw and unfinished. I stared at my plate, willing the heat in my cheeks to go away.
The rest of dinner went quick. We finished, then washed up together, Rawley drying while I scrubbed. It was easy, the way we moved around each other. Like we’d been doing it for years, not days.
When we finished, he leaned against the counter and looked at me, really looked, eyes steady and unblinking. “You did good today.”
I wanted to say something back, something clever or grateful or even just normal, but the words stuck. So I nodded, biting my lip, and hoped he understood anyway.
He did. I saw it in the way his shoulders eased, in the small lift at the corner of his mouth.
“Get some rest,” he said, voice low. “Tomorrow’s another long day.”
I watched him go, boots thumping up the stairs. The kitchen went quiet, the light turned soft, and I stood there for a long minute, breathing in the rich smell—something like promise.
When I finally went up to bed, the house was still. I closed the door to my room, flopped down on the mattress, and stared at the ceiling.
The moon was higher now, ghosting through the curtains and making every shadow look blue and bottomless. I tried to sleep, but my body was too wound up, nerves fizzing just under the skin.
I replayed the day in my head: the walk through the fields, the way Rawley looked at me when I talked about soil and seed, the weight of his hand on mine at the table.
Every memory glowed, neon-bright against the dark.
I’d never wanted anyone like this. Not even close. The ache of it was almost physical, a sweet, sharp pressure in my chest and low in my belly. I kept telling myself it was nothing, just a phase, a fluke, the product of too many lonely years and the shock of finally being seen.
But it wasn’t nothing. Not the way Rawley looked at me, like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve. Not the way my whole body hummed when he was near. Not the way, right now, my skin remembered his touch better than anything I’d ever worn or eaten or held.
I rolled over, buried my face in the pillow, and tried to breathe through it. The house creaked and settled, a lullaby of old wood and wind. I wondered if he was awake, too, lying there with his fists clenched, fighting off the same storm I was.
Maybe it was crazy to think that someone like him could want someone like me. But for the first time, I let myself hope.
I fell asleep with a smile on my lips, heart beating so loud I was sure he could hear it in the next room.
Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow, I’d try again.
Chapter Five
~ Rawley ~
The county electric office had all the ambiance of a DMV holding cell: strip-mall beige walls, warped bulletin boards with curling flyers, and the kind of fluorescent lighting that turned everyone the color of boiled ham. A sagging ficus tree hunched near the door, its leaves glossy with dust.
The woman behind the counter wore her reading glasses on a sparkly beaded chain and had a perm that hadn’t been in fashion since the Cold War. She took one look at me—shaved head, tattoos crawling up my arms like grapevines—and found a new reason to rearrange the paperwork on her desk.
I’d seen the type before, hundreds of times, but I gave her the polite version of my smile and filled out the form she slid toward me. Jojo took the seat beside me, doing his best impression of furniture. He kept his knees together and his hands folded tight in his lap, staring at the pattern in the tile like he was trying to memorize it.
I could feel his anxiety humming through the air, sharp and green as wild onion. Omegas didn’t do well in government buildings, not out here. Too many rules, too many eyes.
