Page 49 of Keep My Alpha

“So am I.” He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. His fingers brush the inside of my wrist and my breath catches way too hard. I want to grab him, pull him in, press my face into his neck and breathe him in until that’s all I can smell. I want to bite down right where his pulse is going crazy and make him shake. Instead, I just stand here with my hands shaking, trying to be someone who actually talks.

“The hiding hurt.” His voice goes quieter, like he’s been carrying this sentence and needs to set it down carefully. “I need you to know that. I spent a whole day rearranging birds on my windowsill and eating Milo’s brownies and trying to figure out if I was angry or in love. And the answer was both, and the angry part was real. Months of not knowing who you were, of wondering if I was crazy for caring this much about a stranger—that wasn’t nothing, Wren. It hurt.”

I had that coming.

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.” He holds my gaze. “And I’m not building a wall out of it. But I needed to say it out loud, because if we’re doing the ‘words first’ thing, that includes the ones that aren’t easy.”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough. “Yeah, it does.”

“So,” he says, and the wobble gives way to warmth. “I want to build something with you. The actual you, who talks to me with his actual mouth, even when it’s hard.”

I close my hand over his and press my thumb to his pulse. It’s racing under my thumb, and my own heart answers right back.

“I promise,” I say. “Words first. From now on. Even the ugly ones.”

“Especially the ugly ones.”

“Even the ugly ones.”

He smiles. Not the big, showy one he gives his friends. This one’s smaller, real. The one I’ve watched from across the quad a hundred times and always wanted to see up close.

I kiss him.

He tastes like brownie and sawdust and something in my chest just splits open. His hands come up to my jaw, his thumbs brushing sawdust off my face, and I pull him in until there’s no space left between us. It’s not frantic. It’s just us, right here.

When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine. His breath is warm on my lips and it takes everything I’ve got not to go after his mouth again. Later. We have time.

“The showcase,” he murmurs. “Kendra wants to tell our story her way.”

“I know.”

“What if we tell it ours?” His eyes flick to the tree under its drop cloth. “Your tree. My poems. What if we put them together? The birds in the branches with the stanzas underneath. One installation. Our version.”

I can picture it. My tree with all its branches, each bird sitting where it belongs, and under each one, Soren’s words on thin wire, spinning a little. His voice, my hands.

“You’d want that?” I ask.

“I’d want that more than anything I’ve ever wanted at a poetry reading, and I once wanted a bathroom break so badly I almost cried.”

I laugh. It sounds weird in my own shop. Good weird.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s build it.”

We’re still standing with our foreheads together, fingers laced, when a car door slams in the driveway. Then Aaron’s voice carries right through the walls: “If anyone is naked in there, I’m turning around and billing you for therapy!”

Soren freezes. I close my eyes.

“Dammit.”

Aaron shows up in the doorway first, grinning like he’s been glued to his phone all day. Callum ducks in behind him with a paper bag, and Ava squeezes in next, already looking around the shop.

“Oh my god, the birds.” Ava makes a beeline for the shelf. “Callum, look at the detail. Are these all for Soren? This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever—“

“Ava,” Callum says mildly.

“I’m just saying! Milo told me about the bench and I thought he was making it up, but this is—“ She holds up one of the half-carved pieces to the light. “You’re insane. In the best way.”Aaron drops onto my work stool and kicks his feet up on a sawhorse. “See? Just show up and be honest and people don’t run screaming.”