Chapter 9
Sandwiches And Social Media Disasters
~HAZEL~
Wednesday afternoons at the bakery should come with hazard pay and a therapist on standby.
The lunch rush died twenty minutes ago, leaving me with flour in my hair, frosting under my nails, and the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from smiling at customers while your life falls apart in slow motion.
I'm attacking a ball of sourdough like it personally offended my ancestors when chaos incarnate explodes through my door.
"HAZEL HOLLOWAY, YOU ABSOLUTE MENACE!"
Reverie Bell bursts into my bakery like a honey-blonde hurricane, curls bouncing with the kind of energy that suggests she's either had too much coffee or discovered nuclear fusion. She's brandishing her phone like a weapon, the screen bright with what I can only assume is my latest humiliation.
Please let it be literally anything other than—
"You're trending!" she announces, loud enough for the entire block to hear. "Hashtag Oakridge Alphas! Hashtag Bakery Babe! Hashtag—oh my god, this one's my favorite—Hashtag GetItGirlGetThoseKnots!"
I'm going to fake my own death and move to Alaska.
"I'm not trending," I protest, punching the sourdough with perhaps excessive force. "No one trends in Oakridge. We have like three thousand people and half of them don't know what hashtags are."
"Oh honey, you're so wrong." Reverie hops onto a stool, making herself at home like she owns the place.
Which, given how often she's here, she basically does.
"The Oakridge Community Facebook page has exploded.
Dottie James has written a three-part saga about your 'romantic entanglements. ' With GIFs."
"Dottie doesn't know how to use GIFs."
"Her granddaughter helped. There's one of a swooning Victorian lady that's supposed to be you, apparently."
Kill me. Kill me now.
"And look!" Reverie shoves her phone in my face. "Someone got video of Rowan catching you at the Pumpkin Patch. You're a meme! 'Local Alpha Catches Falling Omega'—it has twelve thousand views!"
"TWELVE THOUSAND—"
"Oh, and there's fanfiction."
"There's WHAT?"
"Just a little one-shot about you and the firefighter. Very tasteful. Mostly. Okay, chapter three gets explicit but in an artistic way—"
"I need you to stop talking immediately."
The bell chimes, saving me from further social media mortification, and Levi Maddox strolls in carrying a crate of milk bottles like he hasn't just been written into pornographic fanfiction about my life.
"Afternoon, ladies," he says, that easy grin already in place. "Milk delivery for the prettiest baker in town."
"Still the only baker," I mutter, but my traitorous body is already responding to his presence—honey butter and vanilla chai flooding my senses, making my stomach do stupid little flips.
"Still doesn't make it less true," he says, setting the crate down with unnecessary flourish.
Muffin, the traitor, immediately starts purring. She actually chirps—that special cat sound reserved for favorite humans and tuna—and starts doing her new trick. The one he taught her.
She spins in a perfect circle, little paws dancing, fluffy tail creating a gray blur.
"Good girl!" Levi produces a treat from his pocket because apparently he just carries cat treats now like some kind of feline drug dealer. "Such a smart girl."
"You've corrupted my cat," I inform him, kneading dough with perhaps more violence than necessary.
"I've educated your cat," he corrects. "There's a difference."
"The difference is semantic."
"The difference is she likes me now."
"She has terrible taste."
"She has excellent taste. Like her mom."
Reverie makes a sound like a dying seal. "Oh my god, the FLIRTING. It's like watching a Hallmark movie but with better jawlines."
"We're not flirting," I protest, definitely not noticing how Levi's flannel stretches across his shoulders when he crouches to pet Muffin.
"He literally just called you pretty and your cat smart. That's Alpha flirting 101."
"That's basic human interaction."
"Honey, nothing about this is basic." Reverie gestures between us with her phone. "The pheromones alone could choke a horse. I feel like I need a shower just sitting here."
She's not wrong.
The bakery air has gone thick with competing scents—my vanilla and cinnamon mixing with his honey butter until it smells like the world's most dangerous dessert.
Add in the lingering ghost of coffee and gingerbread from Luca's visit yesterday, the phantom cedar smoke that clings to everything since Rowan fixed my oven, and my shop smells like an Alpha convention center.
"Just let yourself be wanted again," Reverie says suddenly, seriously, reaching over to squeeze my flour-dusted hand. "What's the worst that can happen?"
The worst? Oh, just my heart shattered, my trust betrayed, my body marked and claimed and abandoned when I'm not perfect enough. Just everything I barely survived the first time.
"Not everyone is like your evil ex," she continues, softer now.
I laugh—that practiced, bright sound that fools everyone except the people who matter. "All Alphas have territorial instincts. It's biology. Can't fight biology."
My hands are trembling slightly as I shape the sourdough, but I hide it by being extra aggressive with the forming. See? Totally fine. Completely unaffected. Definitely not falling apart.
"You should go out with them," Reverie suggests, like it's that simple. Like dating isn't a minefield when you're a divorced Omega with trust issues deep enough to swim in.
Go out with them. Right. Because that wouldn't be awkward at all.
"Oh sure," I say, shaping the dough with unnecessary force.
"That'll go great. 'Hi, I'm Hazel, I throw beverages at people when nervous, my cat has better social skills than me, and I haven't been on a date in four years.
Also, I might have a panic attack if you move too fast or touch me without warning. Super fun time for everyone.'"
"You're being dramatic."
"I'm being realistic. Can you imagine? Sitting across from one of them at dinner, trying to make small talk while the entire town watches through the restaurant windows? Everyone comparing them to Korrin, wondering if I'm making the same mistake twice, taking bets on how long before—"
"Before what?"
The voice behind me is deep, amused, and absolutely not supposed to be there.
I spin around so fast I nearly give myself whiplash.
Rowan Cambridge stands in my kitchen doorway, all six-foot-six of him in full firefighter uniform, looking like he stepped out of a calendar and into my personal nightmare. The dark blue uniform fits him like sin, badge gleaming, radio crackling softly at his hip.
When did he—how long has he—
"Where did you even come from?" I squeak, very aware that I probably have flour in my hair and frosting on my cheek and oh god, how much did he hear?
He smirks—that barely-there curve of lips that makes my stomach do things stomachs shouldn't do. "Door was open." He gestures to his uniform. "Lunch break. Heard an Omega was on the market."
On the market. ON THE MARKET?
"You heard everything?!" My voice hits a pitch only dogs and dolphins can properly appreciate.
He chuckles, actually chuckles, seeming completely at ease today in a way that makes him even more dangerous. "Not everything. Just the part about panic attacks and beverage throwing. Though I can personally attest to the accuracy of that last one."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
"I'm going to start."
"You've been saying that for years."
Years. Because we have years. Because we have history that predates my disaster of a marriage, predates everything going wrong, when we were just two people who occasionally ended up at the same town events and maybe noticed each other more than we should have.
Reverie is watching us like we're her personal soap opera, eyes wide, phone probably recording.
"I need to... check... things," she says, backing toward the door with zero subtlety. "Urgent things. In places that aren't here."
"Subtle," I call after her.
"I don't do subtle!" she calls back. "Use protection!"
The bell chimes her exit, leaving me alone with Rowan and Levi, who's still crouched by Muffin but watching us with those keen green-gold eyes that miss nothing.
"I should go too," Levi says, standing slowly. "Ranch doesn't run itself."
He heads for the door, pausing to squeeze Rowan's shoulder. Some kind of Alpha communication passes between them—probably "don't fuck this up" or "remember she bites" or something equally mortifying.
Then it's just us. Me…Rowan…and the ghost of every word I just said about dating being uncomfortable.
"So," he says, moving closer with that predator grace all Alphas seem to possess. "On the market?"
"I'm going to murder Reverie."
"Get in line. Pretty sure Dottie James has first dibs after Reverie posted that photo of her at last year's Christmas party."
Wait…I remember seeing that in the woodworks of gossip during the holidays…a hole cakepop fiasco…
"The one with the—"
"Yep."
"Oh god."
We share a moment of mutual horror at the memory, and it's almost like before. Like we're just Rowan and Hazel, occasionally orbiting each other, making small talk at town events, pretending we don't notice the way the air shifts when we're in the same room.
I turn back to my sourdough, needing something to do with my hands that isn't reaching for him.
"I'm not on the market. Markets imply commerce. Exchange of goods. I'm not goods."
"No," he agrees quietly. "You're not."
The weight in his voice makes me look up. He's closer than I expected, leaning against my prep counter, those amber eyes serious in a way that makes my chest tight.
"Would you actually give us a chance?" he asks. "If we asked?"
Us. Plural. All three of them.
I look around, confirming Reverie hasn't snuck back in to eavesdrop, then face him properly. The afternoon light streaming through the windows turns his dark hair auburn at the edges, catches the gold flecks in his eyes.