And a slip of a female appeared in my life, and now I’m flat on my back at two in the morning, hard, wrecked, gone, mooning at my ceiling like a fucking idiot.
Pickle lifts his head from the foot of my bed and looks at me with his one good eye, likewhat is wrong with you, dude?
“Don’t,” I tell him.
He sighs and puts his head back down.
I don’t sleep much, and I am, by every account, a fucking nightmare the next morning.
I can hear myself doing it. I snap at Dev, one of the orcs we have on staff, over a cart parked six inches off. I tell a male asking about the printer to read the sign in a voice that makes him back away with his hands up. I find three things to be furious about before nine and not one of them deserves it, and I can’t stop. I’m strung so tight I could crack a shelf in half, aching behind my zipper, replaying last night on a loop, and the only thing that can fix it is the one thing I won’t let myself have yet.
The whole floor reads the weather and people take the long way past my office. Conversations die when I walk by. Janey actually reverses direction in a hallway when she sees my face, she just turns on her heels and goes the other way. I don’t blame her.
Fuck, I’m a fucking hazard to anyone who asks me a simple question. If people knew… that their terrifying boss is in a black mood because a soft little human let him put one finger in her last night and he walked away like a goddamn idiot and can’t fucking think straight.
My phone buzzes. It’s my brother, Bjorn.
how was the date ??
I don’t answer.
that good huh?
Sven!
SVEN! did you take her to Aldous’s? you took her to Aldous’s didn’t you? you absolute romantic freak
I put the phone face down and go terrorize more patrons. Because apparently this is who I am now. This is what she’s done to me. Two years of running the steadiest branch in the countyand I’m one short temper away from being told to take the morning off.
Then she walks in, wearing a coat and boots, with her hair loose, balancing a coffee, her bag and a stack of program folders, a little breathless from climbing the stairs… and the whole fucking storm inside my chest just… stops. It goes quiet. Still. Soft, all at once, the way my spirit gets around her.
Esme looks up, catches me looking, and she fucking smiles. Big, bright, beautiful… hot. Her eyes drop to my mouth and come back up to meet mine. I can read her look clear across the library’s vast open floor: she spent her night exactly the way I spent mine…
I feel my mouth move a tiny bit. That crack in the stone the whole town would lose its mind over, and I don’t fight it.
Ten
Sven
That weekend, we’re at the coffee place when we hear a customer ask the barista: “you going to the fair tonight?”
Esme’s head jerks up. I watch her hear the wordfairand witness her entire face light up like a damn kid. I chuckle, shaking my head.
“What? Fairs are fun,” she shrugs with a smile.
I roll my eyes, she laughs, and that’s it. That’s the whole conversation; we’re going to the fair. No one had to ask or agree. My girl wants to go, so we’re going. Because apparently my main concern in life has become:does this make my omega happy? And if the county fair makes her happy, the county fair is where I’ll be. In all honesty, I’m a grown alpha who hasn’t been to a fair since I was a boy. I’d rather walk on fucking glass. But I’m going to the damn fair.
* * *
And yep, it’s exactly as loud and bright and fucking ridiculous asI remember, and she fucking loves it, so…
First, Esme wants funnel cake. And of course she gets powdered sugar every fucking where… down the front of her shirt, on her face… I reach over without thinking and wipe it off her nose with my thumb. Her hazel eyes widen and I do it again just to mess with her.
She drags me through the whole damn thing, names every freaking goat in the petting zoo. We listen to a terrible band on the makeshift stage. And I just follow… Fuck, I’d follow this woman to the ends of the world.
I’m carrying her funnel cake, cup of lemonade and a giant stuffed animal, and I don’t give a single fuck.
“Win me something,” Esme says, stopping in front of a booth, smiling huge, clapping her hands.
