OMG Brady is the cutest! Can’t wait to meet him!
Mal
I will come to your house with a teething baby. Answer your damn phone!
Unwilling to anger him further, I called him. “Hey, how’s Sora?”
“Nevermind her. She’s grumpy AF right now. Tell me! How’d it happen?”
“I did it. I got Brady to match with me on the app!”
“Seriously? Deets now!”
I quickly took him through the afternoon, minus the sex in the car. “Malik, I need to make a call. We need a reservation.”
“Come to our place!”
“You just want to see Brady again. I’d rather go somewhere more private right now. Soon for sure. We’ll do a double date or something.”
“Yes! We have to. I’ll send you the info for my doctor, too. Okay, gotta run, Sora’s grumbling again and soon I won’t be able to hear a word.” Malik ended the call, though he did follow it up with his doctor’s information, which earned him my eternal gratitude.
Since he’d finally had a baby, he’d complained that many of his friends had lost touch. He was working less in the office and more from home, isolating him further. I was determined to stay in his life. His friendship helped me get by during the divorce and the months without Brady, so it was the least I could do.
Malik was more than a best friend to me. He’d been my lifeline. There was no way I’d let his friendship go.
Once the reservation was sorted, I showered and dressed with more care than I’d usually put into this. Brady had told me he loved me. We were finally doing this for real. No weird situationship or friends with benefits, actually dating. I couldn’t fuck this up.
Brady was waiting for me outside his building with a blinding smile and a red rose when I approached. “Alphas never get flowers, do they? I thought it’d be cute.” Embarrassment stained his cheeks red.
“You’re perfect.” I took the rose and leaned down to kiss him. He went onto his tiptoes to meet my lips in a synchronizedmovement that spoke volumes to me. This was it. Brady was what I’d been looking for all this time.
Therapy had taught me that there was always a hole in my marriage. Sure, I’d loved Gio for a long time, longer than was perhaps wise. We’d opened our marriage after pressure from his more traditional parents and never really worked on keeping our bond together. I’d never given or received a mating mark from my alpha husband because I think he had always been looking for an omega. He loved me, or at least felt something akin to it, but we were fighting against conditioning and outside pressure without doing it as a pair.
I returned my focus to Brady, where it belonged. Our dinner was at an upscale restaurant where I knew the chef and could get a cancellation at the last minute. The gods were really smiling on me. We ate and talked as if we’d never been apart, picking up where we’d last been.
We caught each other up on our lives while feeding each other bites of our meals until we were done.
“Xavi?”
“Hmm?”
“Take me home to your place. I want to stay the night.”
Fifteen
Brady
Bythetimewe’dfinished dinner, I was ready for dessert, preferably eaten off Xavi in his house where no one could interrupt us. I wanted to really savor our time together.
Being out, holding hands, doing couple things with my man was the best! I felt lighter than air, as if the weight of the last… year? Had slipped off me. How had more than a year passed without my noticing? It made sense, though. We didn’t have all that long before the wedding, and Jae had been in early pregnancy when everything with Gio fell apart. By the time Jae got married, Leo would be ten months old! Time was slipping by so fast!
Xavier paid the bill and wrapped an arm around my waist as we walked to the car. His grip was firm, as if he were afraid I would vanish without him holding onto me. At the car, heopened the door for me and kissed me, long and slow, before darting around to the driver’s side.
The journey to his house was mercifully short. I wanted to be under him immediately. My pheromones flooded the car, making Xavi tighten his fingers around the steering wheel.
“Brady, my love, you need to stop that or I’m going to crash the car.”
With difficulty, I pulled them back. I opened a window for good measure.
