Chapter 19
NINETEEN
THREE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS
Gabriel rolls his sleeves up, flaunting his deep, russet-brown skin and prominent veins. I bite back a groan.
I don’t know if Gabriel has ever missed a day in the gym, or if this is a side effect of his Alpha designation, but either way, I am reaping the benefits. I’d heard people talk about forearm porn before, but I’d never seen it for myself until now.
I’m feeling a little self-conscious about my Fair Isle printed leggings and oversized sweatshirt. My hair is two days unwashed and thrown up in a bun, and I’m not wearing any makeup.
I hadn’t intended to see my scent match when I left the apartment this morning.
I think Felix is getting sick. He didn’t come out of his nest to tell me goodbye, and I caught only a fleeting glimpse of him last night.
Or maybe he’s realized that he made a mistake having sex with me, so now he’s avoiding me until after the holidays, when he can tell me to find another place to live.
I try to tell myself that it’s just my anxiety making me think those things, but my anxiety owes me rent with how often it’s taken up residence within me.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, my mouth a little dry when I finally look away from Gabriel’s arms. “What’s the recipe say?”
He moves to the fridge and pulls the recipe off the door. “Well, it doesn’t look very complicated — meringue powder, powdered sugar, vanilla, and food coloring.”
“What’s meringue powder?” I move closer to him and read the recipe over his shoulder.
He searches the counter and holds up a small white container, turning it over and reading the label. “Mostly egg whites and some stabilizers.”
When Gabriel turns around, he startles a little at how close I’m standing. An invisible force pulled me toward him, and I am unable to stop myself from moving closer. His Adam’s apple bobs as he looks me up and down.
“Do you know where she keeps her measuring cups?” he asks, voice husky. How can a question like that sound seductive?
I stumble backward, trying to break the haze his peppermint scent has me in. “Uh, yeah, I think.”
It takes me a moment of fumbling around to find the measuring cups, and I hold them out to Gabriel as if I were a hunter-gatherer presenting my findings. He beams at me.
“Good job.” His fingers brush mine as he takes them from me. A shiver runs down my spine at the contact and basic praise, and I want to swear at myself.
The fact that this is all it takes to get me to rethink my desire to stay away from Gabriel for Felix is a little embarrassing.
When Hazel floated the idea that Felix saying, “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” was his way of telling me he was okay if it meant nothing to me, my heart soared. She tried to convince me to tell Felix how much it meant to me, but I’m not ready for that.
And that is when she developed her plan.
I date Gabriel.
Gabriel dates Felix.
If something happens between Gabriel and Felix, Gabriel tells him what I am to him. Then, Felix and I can decide how to proceed.
It may be a bad idea. What if Felix isn’t into me and we’re both attached to Gabriel, and things are awkward as fuck?
I proposed that question to Hazel a hundred times, and her answer was always the same.
“But what if he is?”
And those six words have been enough to get me to swallow my fears.
For the most part.
I’m still terrified of what this could mean, but I’m willing to get to know Gabriel, at the very least. We’ll figure the rest out later.
As he measures the powdered sugar meticulously, he peeks at me from the corner of his eye. “So, how do you and Hazel know each other?”
“Oh, Felix introduced us when I moved here about six months ago. We hit it off immediately.” He spoons some of the meringue powder into the mixing bowl. “She can be a lot sometimes, but she means well.”
He chuckles, turning to the side to smile at me. “That’s an apt characterization. She’s meddling with good intentions. Case in point.” He gestures between the two of us. “But I won’t complain.”
“What do you complain about? Because from where I’m standing, you seem like a fairly agreeable man.”
“Oh, I complain about lots. Green tea, for one. Hate it. Who wants to drink water that tastes like grass clippings?” He scoots around me and fills a cup with water from the sink. “I will also go to my grave disparaging people who put pineapple on pizza.”
I grab my chest, feigning a noise of surprise. “Oh, what a controversial opinion. Be careful, you may get cancelled.”
“Don’t tell me you eat it.”
I shake my head and move closer to his side, taking a peek into the box of food coloring. “Oh, no, I hate it. Felix loves it, though.”
“Then we’d better get used to eating it. Whatever our Omega wants, right?”
My hands freeze on the cherry red bottle of dye. “I…”
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel says quietly. “That was inappropriate. Let’s pretend I didn’t ruin the mood, yeah? What kind of things do you normally talk about on dates?”
I try to shake off his comment, but it’s hard. It takes me a minute to answer.
“Uh, I don’t go on dates. Or, haven’t in a while. It was exhausting, so I gave up.”
He snaps and points at me. “Exhausting is the perfect word for it. I always felt like I was performing, like I had to be on my best behavior and pretend to be into whatever they were. I can’t remember the last time a date felt natural.”
“What was your worst date?” I lean my back against the counter to admire the handsome man. His micro twists frame his face, and his red button-up shirt is unbuttoned one more than is typical, revealing a hint of skin.
Not that I’m complaining about the view of the hollow of his throat and collarbones.
“Mitchell set me up on a blind date, and it almost ruined our friendship.” He abandons the water he was about to pour into the mixing bowl. “I wasn’t sure what I had done to make him hate me so much, but it felt like a punishment.”
“Now I know you’re being dramatic. Nothing could be that bad.”
“He stole my wallet and phone and left me stranded at the restaurant with no way to pay and no way to call for a ride.” He raises an eyebrow at me as if challenging me to downplay it, but I won’t.
That is definitely an awful date.
“Okay, Mitchell deserves a punch in the face for that, for sure. Why would he set you up with someone so shady? What happened after?”
“That’s the thing. He didn’t actually know the guy.
They met at a home improvement store. Mitchell thought he was cute and gave him my number.
That’s it.” He scrubs his massive hand down his face and exhales with a puff.
“I told Mitchell he’s not allowed to give out my number anymore, under no circumstances. ”
“That seems like a fair reaction,” I agree, plucking out a few different food coloring bottles. “I can’t say I ever had a date that bad.”
“Most haven’t. What was yours?”
I suck my teeth and look down at my feet.
“I asked this girl out, and we went to the circus. Cirque de Mordu? They’re in Vegas now, but before that, they had a traveling show.
It was incredible, crazy good, but there was this one act that I didn’t quite understand.
A guy came and prowled through the audience with a mask on, being menacing and startling people.
It’s not really my thing, but my date was super into it.
She ended up trying to sneak behind the tents into the guy’s trailer, leaving me standing around like a fool with no idea where she went. ”
He gapes at me. “I’m sorry, what? You were standing there waiting for her, and she was trying to break into his trailer?”
I nod, cutting my hand through the air for emphasis. “Yes! She told me she was going to the bathroom, and then fifteen minutes later, a young Beta was escorting her to me and saying we needed to leave right then and there. And then I had to drive her an hour back to her place.”
Gabriel can’t stop his soft, masculine huff of a laugh. “Okay, yeah, that is bad.”
“Enough to make anyone want to give up dating.”
“So that’s what you did?” he asks. “Gave up?”
“I wouldn’t consider it giving up.”
“Have you gone on another date since?”
I groan. “Okay, yeah, I gave up.”
He turns back to the mixer and finally adds the required tablespoons of water, then switches it on.
Except he turns it on too high, and powdered sugar goes everywhere, blanketing the kitchen and us with a fine layer of white powder.
When the Alpha turns to me, sugar clinging to his hair, his eyelashes, his face, my stomach does a flip.
It’s like something out of a movie.
The man who is all in, chasing the woman who thinks she can avoid fate, brought together by baking mishaps.
Maybe he’s thinking the same thing. I’m also covered in sugar, though not as much as he is.
Something about the way he blinks those big, dark eyes at me, his lashes frosted white, has me wondering why I bothered trying to stay away from him. He smells like candy canes, and it calls me in a way I’ve never felt before.
Like every molecule of my body knew before I did, that this man is right for me.
He runs his fingers across my jaw, a question in his eyes.
I don’t need to answer it because my body is doing it for me. I brush our lips together, and he sighs into my mouth, wrapping a hand around my waist. He coaxes me closer, his hand encircling my neck as he deepens our kiss.
Christmas music plays in the background, cookies cool on the counter, and powdered sugar dusts the kitchen like snow.
We could be on the set of one of the movies Felix and I love watching together.
But this isn’t a movie.
This is real life.
This kiss, this man, could be mine for good.
If I take the leap.
The question he asked me two days ago comes back to me, and I break our lips apart. He rests his forehead against mine, chest heaving, eyes closed.
“I’m ready to be brave, Gabriel.”