Page 116 of Pin My Alpha
Knox takes a slow drink of his beer, expression blank. “I’m right here.”
“Yeah, and?”
I laugh before I mean to.
It comes easy now. That’s the weirdest part.
For years, everything good had an exit plan attached. A footnote. A tiny asterisk at the bottom of the page reminding me not to get comfortable, because comfort is how people surprise you. Comfort is how you end up with a suitcase by the door while your mom cries over some alpha who swore he was different.
But there’s no suitcase by the door upstairs.
There’s my toothbrush in the bathroom, my shoes under the bed, and two drawers in Declan’s dresser that I filled with my clothes before I could pretend I was just staying for a little while. There’s a stack of invoices on our desk and a whiteboard in the office where I wrote out the summer events calendar in color-coded marker.
There’s a brass sign over the door.
There’s a life happening around me that I didn’t have to buy, or earn by being useful, or claw out of somebody else’s hands.
I chose it.
That’s different.
My phone buzzes against my thigh. Mom, the screen says, because Tasha Thompson has a sixth sense for good moments—she always calls in the middle of one, like she can smell it through the cell towers.
I step to the quiet end of the patio and answer. “Hey, Mom.”
“Baby.” Bright, then careful. “I’m not interrupting?”
“We’re grilling. What’s up?”
Darren came back. Flowers, a speech, almost an apology. She wants me to tell her it means something, and six months ago I would have run the numbers on him out loud until she cried.
“I hope it goes how you want it to,” I say instead, and I mean it. “But my answer hasn’t changed. I’m not sending money for his half of anything.”
Quiet on the line. Then, soft, no accusation in it, just surprise: “You sound different.”
“I am different.” And the wild thing is how easy it is to say. “Come see the bar sometime, Mom. I want you to see it.”
“The one you own?”
“Half of it. The good half.”
She laughs, wet at the edges, and for once neither of us hangs up feeling like we lost something.
Declan glances over from the grill again.
This time, he catches me staring.
His mouth pulls to one side.
Oh, no.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
That man has been my mate for a month and he can still look at me from twenty feet away and turn my entire brain into the DVD logo bouncing around a blank screen. The particular tilt of his mouth, the way the skin at the outer corners of his eyes crinkles when he’s trying not to smirk at me, the low rumble I know is trapped in his throat right now. I want my teeth on that throat. I want to feel the vibration of that laugh against my tongue while he’s still pretending he’s not thinking about pinning me somewhere quiet.
He raises his eyebrows.
