Page 25 of Rebound My Alpha
"Locking up in ten," Mars grunts, his way of telling me to get my shit together.
"Yeah, I'm almost done."
"You've been almost done for thirty minutes." He shrugs into his beat-to-hell leather jacket and starts his key routine. Back door first, register second, lights third.
Then the front door opens.
I look up, expecting a lost Uber Eats guy or a walk-in who can't read theClosedsign. Instead, Benji Rowe is standing in the doorway. He's alone. No Jude, no Shay, no human shields. Just Benji in beat-up combat boots and a jacket way too thin for the weather, that slice of blue hair catching the fluorescent light. And the claiming bite, right there above his collar.
"I think I left something here last time," he says.
He didn't leave shit here last time. We both know it. He was here for Jude’s tattoo, and he walked out staring at the sidewalk.
My entire body goes dead still. My hands stop on the counter. The mate bond doesn't flare—it just settles, like a heavy, undeniable weight dropping into my chest. All those times Ialmost walked to his cafe, all those deleted texts, and he's the one standing in my shop.
Mars looks at Benji. Looks at me. Looks at the bite on Benji’s neck. We have a whole conversation in three seconds of silence.
So this is the one who's been making you draw the same face for two months.
Don't.
I didn't say anything.
Your eyebrows said plenty.
Mars grabs his keys. He walks past Benji, pausing just long enough to say, "Lock up when you leave," in the flattest voice he owns. From Mars, that's practically a blessing. The door clicks shut behind him.
The shop shifts the second we're alone. It feels smaller, warmer. My scent and his start mixing in the air without Mars's beta neutral to cut them. The amber after-hours lights make the flash art on the walls look softer. My sketchbook is sitting face-down on the counter, right where I left it.
"Your boss always that warm?" Benji asks, walking further inside. His boots echo on the floor. His fingers trail along the edge of a design binder on the counter.
"That was warm. You should see him when he's annoyed."
"Terrifying." He stops in front of a flash sheet on the wall—a neo-trad snake and roses I drew last year. He tilts his head. "This one's yours."
"How can you tell?"
"Your line work does this thing at the curves. Thicker on the outside, thinner on the inside. Consistent across all your pieces." He traces the line weight in the air. "Same thing on the sleeve design by the door."
I just stare at him. He read my line work like a fucking signature. I cover the sudden, tight feeling in my chest by reaching for a binder.
"You want to see the custom portfolio?"
"Yeah."
I hand it over. He flips through it at the counter, and we spend the next fifteen minutes having the most normal conversation of our lives. He asks about a cover-up I did on a burn scar. I answer him, and I don't even have to put on the cocky act. It's just easy. He points out the negative space on a geometric piece. He laughs when I tell him Mars's teaching style consists of letting you fuck up and staring at you until you figure out why.
His fingers keep touching things. The binder, the vinyl arm of the tattoo chair, a flash sheet. He touches things exactly like he traced my tattoos that first night in the dark. My stomach does a slow, heavy roll, and I keep it off my face.
Eventually, he ends up sitting in my tattoo chair. He leans back, the chair adjusting to his weight, and he looks contained in it. His hands rest on the armrests, the bite visible on his neck, my scent everywhere. He came here. He chose this.
"You working on anything new?" he asks, his voice trying way too hard to sound casual.
My sketchbook is right there. Facedown, six inches from my hand. Full of his jawline, his freckles, that blue streak. I could show him.
Instead, I reach past it and grab a fine-tip skin pen.
"Hold still," I tell him.
