Chapter 16 Ray #2
"You weren't paying attention to your body fundamentally rewiring itself around another person.
That's very you." He sighs. "Ray, this is serious.
If the bond starts forming and then gets disrupted — if you get separated before it completes — it's not just heartbreak.
It's physical. Like withdrawal. Alex and I had a fight before we bonded and I couldn't sleep for three days. I couldn't regulate without him."
I sit down on the stairwell step. Gabriel shrieks happily in the background and Devon shushes him absently.
"Does Miles know?" Devon asks.
"I don't think so. He's been — stressed. Distracted. But he might be feeling it too. His scent has been stronger. And he gets this look sometimes when I'm close, like—" Like he's scared of how much he wants to lean into me. "Like he notices it."
"If he's an omega showing symptoms too, then it's mutual pre-bonding. Which means it's happening faster than usual." Devon's voice is gentle now, the sarcasm gone. "You need to talk to him about this."
"He's already dealing with HR stuff at the firm. If I tell him his body is permanently bonding to his assistant—"
"He deserves to know."
"I know. I know he does." I press my head against the wall. "I just don't want to be the thing that scares him off."
"Ray." Devon's voice is the big-brother voice, the one that doesn't have jokes in it. "If it's already started, it's not going to stop because you don't talk about it. It's only going to get harder."
I sit in the stairwell for a while after we hang up. Pre-bonding. My body choosing a mate. Not a decision I made with my brain but something older and deeper that looked at Miles Covington and said this one, forever and started building a bridge whether I wanted one or not.
The terrifying part is that I did want one. I just didn't know it was already laying the foundation.
At the end of the day, the office empties out. I wait until the associates leave and the hallway empties and then I knock on Miles's open door.
He's still at his desk. His tie is loosened and his hair has been pushed back from his forehead — he does that when he's been running his fingers through it — and he looks exhausted.
The email, whatever it said, has been eating at him all day.
There are shadows under his eyes that weren't there this morning.
"Hey," I say.
He looks up. The ice wall is there but it's thin. "What."
"You eat today?"
"I had coffee."
"Coffee isn't food." I lean against his doorframe. The same spot I've leaned a hundred times, except now the pre-bond hums between us — the pull, the settling, my whole system saying closer, get closer. "There's a Thai place on the way to your apartment. Let me buy you dinner."
"Garcia—"
"Ray." I say it quietly. Not pushing. Just reminding him of my name.
He looks at me for a long moment. The ice wall cracks — just a hairline, just enough — and I see the person underneath. Tired. Scared. Wanting something he won't ask for.
"Fine," he says. "But I'm ordering my own food. Last time you got me something with cilantro."
"That was one time."
"I hate cilantro, Ray. I mentioned it the first week you started."
"And I've remembered it every time since."
In the car, something shifts. The office is gone, the glass walls and the gossip and the HR emails, and it's just us in a small space heading somewhere together.
Miles puts his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes and I can see the tension start to drain from his shoulders.
I register it too — now that I know the word for it, the pre-bond doing its work.
Proximity easing the agitation. My body settling because he's here. The humming going quiet.
"Long day," I say.
"Mm." His eyes stay closed.
"The filing sequence thing — you would have caught it."
"I didn't, though." He opens one eye. "You did."
"We're a good team."
He closes his eye again. He doesn't agree. But he doesn't disagree either, and for Miles that's practically a declaration.
We pick up the food and go to his apartment and eat on his couch because his dining table has case files spread across it.
Miles eats more than I expected — the pad see ew and half my spring rolls — and the color comes back to his face.
We don't talk about the HR email. We don't talk about the case.
We talk about Lawson's dad being less of a hardass than expected, and about Devon's new freelance client, and about a movie Miles saw two years ago that he has very strong opinions about despite claiming not to care about movies.
It's easy. It's so easy that it scares me, because easy means it matters, and mattering means losing it would hurt.
After dinner, Miles is leaning against the arm of the couch and I'm at the other end and there's a foot of space between us that feels like a mile.
The pull is constant. The pre-bond saying closer.
My hand is on the cushion between us and his is on his knee and the distance between them is a physical ache.
Miles looks at our hands. Looks at me. And then he reaches over and threads his fingers through mine, deliberate and quiet, and doesn't say anything.
The settling is immediate. My whole body exhales.
The restless hum that's been running under my skin all day goes completely silent for the first time, replaced by a calm so deep it's almost like sleep.
I look at our linked hands and I think about what Devon said. Pre-bonding. Your body choosing a mate.
I should tell him. I should say the word — pre-bonding — and let him decide what to do with it. He deserves to know what's happening to both of us.
But he's leaning against the couch with his eyes half-closed and his hand in mine and he looks more peaceful than I've seen him in weeks, and I can't bring myself to break it.
Not tonight. Tonight I just want to hold his hand on the couch, let this happen, and pretend that the firm, the emails, the future can wait.
His thumb traces a slow circle on the back of my hand. Outside, the city hums. Inside, we're quiet.
I hold on and I don't say the word.