Page 107 of Pin My Alpha
He pauses on the porch.
The evening is warm, that late-spring kind of warm where the street still holds the day in the pavement. His apartment behind us smells like laundry detergent, old coffee, and the life he’d been trying to convince himself was enough. The smell barely touches him now. He’s already turned toward me.
“You ready?” I ask.
His fingers slide between mine.
“Take me home.”
My chest almost splits open.
The walk back to Byrne’s is quiet in the best way. Shay leans into my side when we cross the street. Not because he needs help. He could walk a straight line in a hurricane out of spite.
Because he wants to.
I keep our hands linked. I don’t say anything stupid about it. Don’t point it out. I’ve learned, finally, that care doesn’t have to arrive with a speech and a solution attached. Sometimes it’s just a hand held in the dark.
Byrne’s is closed when we get there, the neon switched off, the front windows black against the sidewalk. My keys make their familiar little clink as I unlock the side door.
For years, that sound meant work. Another open. Another close. Another night where I could prove I still had this place, that it hadn’t slipped through my hands like the first one.
Tonight, Shay steps in beside me, and the bar smells like worn oak, lemon cleaner, old beer sunk into the floorboards, and the faint lingering trace of a hundred people who came here because it was somewhere to be.
Our bar.
Shay stops just inside.
I look over. “What?”
He glances around the empty room, then down at the folder under his arm. “Nothing.”
“Shay.”
His mouth pulls sideways. “It’s just weird.”
“Good weird?”
“Yeah.” He swallows. “Yeah, good weird.”
I squeeze his hand. “Get used to it.”
“Bossy.”
“You like it.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.” I lead him toward the stairs. “I’m getting you upstairs.”
“Bold claim.”
“Shay.”
He laughs again, low and real, and I spend the climb behind him trying not to stare at the way his jeans fit. I fail. Obviously.
The apartment opens around us when I unlock the door, warm from the afternoon sun and full of us. Cedar, clean cotton, aged whiskey. Sandalwood, dark chocolate, that sharp sweet note I could find in a crowded room with my eyes shut.
The scent of home.
