“You have people here?” I ask.
“A few, yeah,” he replies, without hesitation. Then he looks at me with the quick eyes and the direct attention. “Not in a romantic sense. In a family sense. You don’t. Right now.”
It’s not a question and it’s not cruel. It’s just accurate. Stated without pity, without performance of sympathy, just seen and said. I choose to believe him about not having that wife and kids I’d imagined a moment earlier.
“No,” I say. “Not right now.”
“Well.” He raises his glass. “You have one. Tonight at least.”
I raise mine.
We drink.
I don’t decide the next part.
That’s not quite true. I do decide, it’s a choice, I’m aware it’s a choice and I make it clearly and without the post-hoc narrative that says it just happened. I’m a person who acts deliberately and this is deliberate. But the deciding happens somewhere between his thirdquestion that I actually answered and the moment the bartender finally, gently, sayslast call.By the time I’ve acknowledged that I’ve decided, the decision is already made and has a consequence I’m comfortable with.
I need to not be alone tonight.
Not the vulnerability version of that. The other version. The one where you’ve been running solo for seventy-two hours and your nervous system is exhausted and there is a man at a bar who has been looking at you like you’re the most interesting thing in the room and you have decided that tonight you are not a fugitive or a strategy or a next move.
Tonight you are just Lola. And Lola wants this.
“Your place or mine?” he asks, outside in the cool air.
“Mine’s a rented room in a stranger’s house,” I reply.
“Mine’s not far.” He pauses. “No obligations. No morning weirdness.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you well enough for tonight,” he says. “And tonight’s the right amount right now.”
I watch him. He looks back with the open, quick, relaxed attention that has been his register all night. He’s not pushing, not coercing, just turned toward me the way he’s been turned toward me since he moved two stools down and asked about my life.
He means it. The no obligations, no morning weirdness. He means all of it. I find that extremely attractive right now. Heat coils in my stomach while my Omega purrs with excitement.
“Show me,” I say.
He grins.
His place is beautiful. A large modern cabin in the woods just beyond the carnival. The river runs alongside it like a thick ribbon. He takes me through a back entrance into the laundry room and down a dark corridor.
Finally, we reach his bedroom. It’s warm and slightly chaotic in the way of someone who lives fully in their space and doesn’t maintain it for appearances. Books, a large television, and the comfortable clutter of a life being actively used.
“I’m not the tidiest person on earth,” he comments.
“It’s fine,” I reply, which is true. I’m certainly not someone to judge.
“Tell me if anything’s—”
“Jack.” He looks at me. “Stop talking.”
He does.
I kiss him first, because why the hell not? My lips crash into his, all teeth and urgency. He responds like he’s been waiting for this his whole damn life. His hands find my waist, pulling me against him, and I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
That Alpha scent of his—spicy and wild, like campfire smoke mixed with something dangerously addictive—wrapping around me. It’s intoxicating, making my Omega instincts flare, but I shove that down. This is just a distraction, an hour of fun,nothing more. No bonds, no packs, no complications.
