Chapter 11 #2
Focus on the lemonade, not on the fact that Rowan left a successful career in the city to come back here. Not on wondering why. Definitely not on the way he looked at you like you were worth protecting.
By the time I emerge with a tray of cups and the pitcher, the drills are winding down. The firefighters converge on me like dehydrated wolves, grateful and sweaty and exhaustingly enthusiastic.
"Oh my god, you're an angel!" "This is perfect!" "Marry me?" "Get in line, she's marrying me!" "Best lemonade I've ever had!"
Their compliments wash over me in a wave that makes me blush and stammer. After years of Korrin's criticism—my food was always too salty, too sweet, too much, not enough—this open admiration feels foreign. Dangerous. Nice.
"It's just lemonade," I protest weakly.
"It's perfect," Martinez says, apparently having recovered from his earlier scolding. "Perfect balance of sweet and tart. Like you."
"Did you just compare her to lemonade?" Jenkins asks incredulously.
"It's a compliment!"
"It's weird, dude."
"Your face is weird."
"Your mom's weird."
They're actual children. Tall, muscled children who save lives, but still.
"That's enough."
Rowan's voice cuts through their bickering as he approaches through the group, still shirtless, still glistening, still devastatingly attractive in that unfair way that makes me want to simultaneously climb him like a tree and run away to Peru.
"I'm taking Hazel for a moment," he announces, and the way he says "taking" shouldn't make my stomach flip but it does.
The crew explodes:
"OHHHHH!" "Chief is in LOVE!" "GET IT, CAMbrIDGE!" "Finally making a move!" "Twenty bucks says he chickens out!" "Fifty says she throws something at him!"
My face burns hotter than the bonfire crackling in the corner of the yard. But there's also something warm unfurling in my chest—pleasure at being claimed, even temporarily, even just as a conversation partner.
Rowan guides me away with a light touch at my lower back, his hand barely making contact but somehow I feel it through every layer of clothing, straight to my spine.
The crowd's teasing fades as he leads me to a quiet spot beside one of the fire trucks, where the headlights create a private pool of light separated from the fundraiser chaos.
"Sorry about them," he says, finally pulling his shirt back on, which is both a relief and a disappointment.
"They're enthusiastic," I say diplomatically.
"They're idiots. But they mean well."
We stand there in our improvised sanctuary, the sounds of the fundraiser distant and muffled. The headlights turn everything silver and gold, like we're suspended in amber.
"I don't really know you," I blurt out, then immediately want to crawl under the truck and die. "I mean, I know your name and that you're a firefighter and that you smell like cedar and vanilla—" STOP TALKING "—but I don't know... you."
He tilts his head, studying me with those amber eyes that look almost gold in this light. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything?" It comes out as a question. "Hobbies? Background? Why firefighting? Why do you sometimes look at me like I'm a math problem you're trying to solve?"
He laughs—a real, full laugh that transforms his face. "That's a lot of questions."
"I'm a curious person."
"You're a disaster," he says fondly, then leans against the truck. "Let's see. Hobbies: I restore old motorcycles when I can't sleep, which is often. I read actual books, not just training manuals. I cook, badly, but with enthusiasm."
"Background?"
"Grew up here, you know that. Parents died when I was nineteen—car accident." He says it simply, like weather. "Raised my younger sister until she escaped to college. Did my training in the city, worked there for six years, came back three years ago."
Three years ago. When I divorced Korrin.
"Why did you leave the city?" I ask, twisting my apron strings nervously. "You had a successful career there. The pay's better. More opportunities for advancement."
His expression grows serious, those amber eyes finding mine and holding. We've moved closer somehow, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his irises, the faint scar above his left eyebrow.
"You really want to know?"
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"I left because staying meant I'd have to keep watching you live in a pack that didn't deserve you. That couldn't love you properly." His voice drops, rough with emotion. "I left the city to come back here. To be closer. To be ready."
"Ready for what?" My voice is barely a whisper.
"For when you finally left him. For when you'd need someone who saw who you really were, not what he tried to make you."
He came back for me. He upended his entire life on the possibility that maybe—
"I researched," he continues, and his hands clench like he wants to reach for me but won't. "Legal precedents for breaking pack bonds. Omega protection laws. Every loophole, every option. I had a lawyer on retainer before you even filed for divorce."
My hands are trembling. My whole body is trembling. "You... why would you...?"
"Because I've been half in love with you since you threw a pie at Tommy Chen in tenth grade for groping Milly Patterson." His smile is rueful. "You had terrible aim but excellent intentions."
"That was fifteen years ago!"
"Fifteen years, three months, and twelve days." He pauses. "Approximately."
The world tilts. Everything I thought I knew rearranges itself. "Do you... do you pity me? Is that what this is? Some kind of rescue complex?"
"No." The word is firm, immediate. He steps closer, and his hand comes up to tilt my chin gently, making me meet his eyes.
"No, Hazel. I remember who you were before he broke you.
The girl who threw pies at gropers and organized protests when they tried to cut the library funding.
Who danced on tables at the Harvest Festival and didn't care who watched.
Who laughed so bright the whole room lit up. "
Before. Before Korrin. Before I learned to make myself smaller, quieter, less.
"That girl's gone," I whisper.
"No," he says softly. "She's not. She's just been hiding. I see her sometimes—when you're baking and you think no one's watching. When you banter with Reverie. When you tell customers stories about your recipes. She's there, waiting."
The air between us has gone electric. My walls are cracking, visibly, audibly—I can feel them falling like dominoes. My voice wavers when I speak.
"I don't know if I can be her again."
"You don't have to be." His thumb brushes my cheek, and I realize I'm crying. When did I start crying? "You can be whoever you are now. Stronger for having survived. Different, but not less. Never less."
We're so close now I can feel his breath on my face, see the way his pupils have dilated until the amber is just a thin ring. My scent is spiraling—vanilla and cinnamon but underneath something raw and vulnerable I haven't let anyone smell in years.
"Rowan," I breathe, and it sounds like a prayer or a plea.
He leans down slowly, giving me time to pull away, to run, to throw something at him like the crew predicted. But I don't. I stay. I tilt my face up to meet him.
Our lips are a breath apart when—
The station siren explodes through the night like the universe's worst timing, loud enough to wake the dead and definitely loud enough to shatter whatever moment we were about to have.
Rowan jerks back, duty and training overriding everything else. His face is a portrait of conflict—want versus responsibility, the eternal firefighter's dilemma.
"I have to—"
"Go," I say, stepping back, wrapping my arms around myself. "Go."
He squeezes my hand once—brief, firm, promising—then jogs toward the station where the crew is already scrambling into gear.
I stand there in the pool of headlights, breathless and confused and feeling like I've been struck by lightning that somehow missed. My lips tingle with the kiss that didn't happen. My hand burns where he touched it.
The emotional connection between us is undeniable now. He came back for me. He researched how to free me. He's been waiting, watching, hoping for three years.
And I almost kissed him. Would have kissed him. Wanted to kiss him more than I've wanted anything in so long.
The fire trucks roar to life, lights flashing, sirens wailing as they tear out of the station toward whatever emergency has called them away. I watch until the lights disappear, then slowly make my way back to my booth.
The fundraiser continues around me—people laughing, chatting, buying cookies they don't need for causes they half-support. But I'm suspended in that moment by the truck, in the almost of it all.
My phone buzzes: Levi.
LEVI: Heard there was almost a moment. Sorry about the timing. He's kicking himself.
ME: How do you already know?
LEVI: Firefighter group text. Jenkins live-tweeted the whole thing until the siren went off.
ME: I hate this town.
LEVI: No you don't. Also, I call next almost-kiss. It's only fair.
I laugh despite myself, despite the ache in my chest where the kiss should have been.
ME: That's not how this works.
LEVI: How does it work then? We're all kind of making this up as we go.
He's not wrong. We are making it up. Three Alphas, one disaster of an Omega, and a town full of spectators waiting to see how it all crashes and burns.
Or maybe, just maybe, how it all comes together.
ME: To be continued?
LEVI: Definitely. Always. As many continuations as you'll give us.
I put my phone away and focus on selling cookies to support the fire department, very deliberately not thinking about Rowan's mouth almost on mine, his confession still ringing in my ears.
I've been half in love with you for fifteen years.
The night continues around me, but I'm already gone—lost in the possibility of being wanted, being chosen, being worth coming home for.
Fuck.
I'm in so much trouble.
But for the first time in three years, trouble feels like the beginning of something instead of the end.