Chapter 22 Solomon #2
I memorized every detail of the scene. Then I turned and walked back to the diner’s front entrance.
Through the window, I spotted Mira in our booth.
She wasn’t alone.
Martinez stood at the edge of the table, one hip propped against the booth across from ours, arms crossed with his best casual lean. His turnout jacket was unzipped, suggesting he was on break from the firehouse.
My wolf surged against my ribs with a possessiveness that bordered on feral.
I pushed through the door. The bell chimed.
“... can’t believe you’re the bookshop girl.” Martinez was shaking his head, laughing, and the admiration in his voice made my teeth ache. “I mean, I knew you were pretty before, but you look completely different. In a good way. A really good way.”
“She looked fine before,” I said.
My voice cut through the diner’s ambient noise with the efficiency of a blade. Martinez’s head snapped toward me. His smile wavered when he registered my expression, which I was making no effort to soften.
“Hey, Solomon.” He straightened off the booth. Self-preservation instincts activating, finally. “I was just saying hi. I saw her sitting here and didn’t recognize her at first.”
“You’ve said hi.” I didn’t sit down. My height advantage placed Martinez firmly in my shadow, and I watched the calculation happen behind his eyes.
“Right.” Martinez’s hands came up, palms out. “Just being friendly. That’s all.”
“Martinez.”
He flinched. Not from volume, I hadn’t raised my voice, but from the tone. The one I’d perfected extracting cooperation from people who initially believed they had options.
“She’s taken.”
Two words. Delivered without aggression. Just a fact.
And a warning.
Martinez swallowed. “Got it. Loud and clear.” He shot Mira an apologetic glance, muttered a “nice seeing you,” and retreated toward the counter.
I slid into the booth.
Mira stared at me.
“That,” she said, “was unnecessary.”
“He was flirting.”
“He was making conversation.”
“He told you that you looked ‘really good’ three times while I was gone. I counted through the window.”
“You were counting? How did you… Right. Lycan. But still. You really counted?”
“I count everything.”
Her lips pressed together. In the particular way they pressed together when she was trying very hard not to smile and losing the battle.
“You scared him.”
“I informed him.”
“Solomon, you towered over him. Poor guy.”
“I can’t help that I’m tall.”
She lost the fight with the smile. It broke across her face in a way that flooded the booth with the scent of her amusement and my wolf settled beneath my skin with a smug satisfaction.
“You know,” she said, picking up her fork and cutting into a pancake, unbothered by the territorial display she’d just witnessed, “for someone who uses fewer words than anyone I’ve ever met, you really know how to make a statement.”
“Efficiency.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“I said what needed to be said. He understood. The interaction required no additional dialogue.”
She chewed, swallowed. Pointed her fork at me.
“You’re grumpy. This is a first.”
“I’m not grumpy.”
“You’re the grumpiest person in this diner right now, and there’s a man in the corner who’s been scowling at his eggs for twenty minutes.”
She was laughing genuinely. Full-bodied, the kind that turned heads across the diner. The two women by the window tracked the sound, and I watched their expressions shift from curiosity to the particular warmth people displayed when witnessing someone else’s happiness.
My possessiveness wasn’t simply about Martinez. Not really. Not at the core.
It came from the fact that she was sitting across from me in a public place, unmasked, unhidden, laughing freely for the first time since I’d known her, and the primal part of my brain needed every person in the building to understand that this was mine.
A declaration of belonging.
That this woman, who had spent years being made small by a man who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, had chosen me. Chosen us.
And anyone who thought they could compete with my devotion was welcome to try.
We finished eating. She talked about the bookshop rebuild, about shelving arrangements and whether to add a café section in the back. I listened, because listening to her was what I did best, and offered three-word responses at intervals that made her roll her eyes and keep going.
The bill arrived. I paid as we finished our meal.
Mira slid out of the booth. “You’re right about the pancakes, by the way.”
“And also because you’ve eaten enough of Percy’s food that anything will be immaculate.”
She laughed again as we headed to the door. I followed, pocketing the receipt, aware of the device in my other pocket, the silver still faintly warm through the handkerchief.
Outside, the morning had brightened. The parking lot was quieter now, the breakfast rush winding down. Mira walked three steps ahead of me, arms swinging, that copper hair catching the light.
She stopped at the truck and turned.
“You’re still grumpy.”
“I told you. I’m not.”
“Your jaw has been clenched since Martinez said hi. It hasn’t unclenched. You’re not the only observant one here.” She tilted her head, studying me. Her gaze was thorough enough to make my pulse pick up. “You know, most people would find the jealousy annoying.”
My jaw tightened further, which undermined my position considerably.
“But on you?” She stepped closer. Close enough that her scent hit me full force. I felt my skin getting heated. “It’s kind of endearing.”
I did not have a response for that. This woman had rendered me wordless despite my usual articulate deflection.
Mira rose on her toes.
Her lips pressed against my cheek. Soft, brief, warm. The contact lasted two seconds at most, a featherweight touch.
Every nerve ending in my body fired at once.
She dropped back to her heels. Looked up at me with a smile that was equal parts affection and mischief. The quiet confidence of a woman who knew exactly what she’d just done.
“For the record,” she said, “you never have to worry about anyone else. Not Martinez, not anyone.” Her hand found my chest, palm flat over my heart, and I went perfectly still.
“You’re my favorite grump.”
She turned and walked around to the passenger side of the truck.
I stood in the parking lot with her kiss burning on my cheek and my heartbeat hammering against the palm print she’d left on my chest. The silver device pulsed in my pocket, a reminder that the world outside this moment was dangerous and closing in.
But she’d called me endearing.
Nothing else mattered.