Chapter 9
GABE
After Mika rearranged my apartment and helped me build the new storage units, I didn't see him for a week. I still smelled him everywhere in my apartment, especially on my couch, where he'd watched a few more episodes of the meerkat show while I sorted my books.
Every time I caught another whiff of him, it took me back to Saturday.
Once my books sat in neat piles in front of the bookcases, I put my alpha to work, arranging stacks on the highest shelves, where I couldn't reach.
While I was supposed to be loading the rest of the shelves with books and assorted knickknacks, I couldn't stop staring at Mika's sleek muscles and effortless strength.
He hefted my books into place, arranged them by category, and decorated the open shelf-fronts with the knickknacks strewn across the floor.
Stolen glances of his tight abdomen, exposed each time he raised his arms over his head, kept me going through my workweek. Thoughts of our bodies pressed together in the storage unit, tongues fighting for dominance, filled my nights.
Unlike the shallow omega my dad wanted me to be, my thoughts didn't end there.
I wanted to know everything about him. How did he take his coffee in the morning?
Which of my books was he most likely to read?
Had he always wanted to build energy plants, or did he have a dream career?
I'd already told him about my dream of having a gallery and an online shop one day, but he'd changed the subject before I could ask about him.
It wasn't that we didn't communicate. Mika had called me Sunday night to recount family dinner, followed by his strange conversation with Bruce. My bestie's fiancé and I weren't close, but I was pleased to hear he didn't outright reject our mating.
On Monday morning, I texted Mika a punny meme the moment I woke up, and we messaged each other images and short videos throughout the day, intermingled with status updates.
"I'm stuck on a murder trial," I texted him on my lunch break. "I'm already tired of these lawyer's faces."
"Any hot witnesses?"
"No." I tacked a crying face emoji on it instead of a period.
He sent back a laughing emoji, which led to an all-out emoji war.
When I got bored, I sent him another meme, and he responded in kind.
Occasionally, he would drop in a random action text, such as, "Going to the store after work," or, "Making dinner," so I didn't worry when he went quiet for an hour at a time.
Not that I was hovering over my phone, waiting for his next text every moment. I still had work, on top of soothing Becca's nerves every few minutes. I went along on her last-minute shopping trips and stayed up for her late-night cryfests without complaint.
Still, she noticed I wasn't as attentive as usual. "It's him, isn't it?"
"Hmm?" I asked, looking up from my phone. I was supposed to be filling glass vases with the milky white, pink, and clear glass pebbles to make centerpieces for the reception's banquet tables, but Mika's string of random gifs had me holding in laughter instead.
"Mika. You care more about Bruce's friends than me now." Though her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying on and off over the last few hours, no fresh tears aided her pout.
"We're fated." It was the first time I said the words aloud.
"I know. Bruce told me."
She spit his name, and guilt flared in my gut. She should have heard it from me first.
"I didn't want to add to your stress!" I focused on counting the flat glass discs again. Twenty clear. Fifteen white. Fifteen pink.
Finally, she huffed a sigh, and I heard the tinkle of glass on glass coming from her side of the couch. "Tell me about him. It'll make this go faster."
"Not much to tell," I said. "I don't know him yet."
"You two are the worst!" A pebble hit the inside of her glass vase so hard, I was surprised it didn't shatter. "When I gave him the best friend talk, he said I was getting ahead of myself."
"We just met."
"You're fated mates!" Another pebble pinged off the glass, and I cringed.
"So are you and Bruce."
"That's different. We were kids."
"You're acting like a fucking kid!" My gaze snapped to hers, and I immediately regretted saying it, though she needed to hear it.
"Yes, I am!" Instead of tearing up, she squint-glared at me. "I'm stressed, okay?"
"I know." I dumped my fifty counted pebbles into the vase and scooted closer to her, wrapping my arm over her shoulders. "I'm sorry."
"Mating is so much easier," she said. "If I'd been born a wolf shifter, we wouldn't even need all the pomp and circumstance.
All this, because my dad promised my mom he would be there to walk me down the aisle.
" She sighed and grabbed my knee. "You've been wonderful, though.
Thanks for agreeing to host the reception. "
"Well, you refused to let me in the wedding party, so it's the least I could do." I kissed her temple to take the sting from my words. "I would have looked like a princess in a bridesmaid dress."
"You would have outshined me on my wedding day," she corrected.
"I love you, but I will not let you upstage me.
" She said it with mock bitchiness, but there was a kernel of truth to it.
My bestie, who was perfectly comfortable in plaid shirts and jeans, suffered unreasonable bouts of self-consciousness in anything formal.
Her wedding dress was gorgeous, but the women on her dad's side of the family were ruthless with the backhanded compliments when anything bucked tradition.
"Besides, you know how my extended family is.
They would pass out from shock if they saw you in drag. "
"Fine, fine." It wasn't worth arguing. I squeezed her shoulders again.
"It's almost over, anyway," she said before dropping a handful of pebbles into a vase.
"Four more days, and you'll be on your honeymoon."
"Four more days, and I'll be in debt up to my eyeballs." She leaned against my shoulder. "Bruce has all those student loans, and then there's the new house he's building. I don't think he understands the concept of saving for the future."
"You are his future."
She twisted her neck to give me side eye. "You are a hopeless romantic, unless it's your own love life."
She had a valid point. I usually steered clear of predicting a happily ever after for myself, but maybe this time, it would be different.
I re-read the text twice to make sure I wasn't missing weird subtext.
"My room number is 323. There's an extra key waiting for you at the front desk."
How was Mika already checked into the hotel? I'd just gotten home from work. My suit for the rehearsal dinner was laid out over the back of the couch, and I'd packed my toiletries this morning after I used them. I still needed pajamas, socks, and underwear for the next couple of days.
Originally, I'd planned on coming home after the rehearsal dinner. When I'd told Mika over FaceTime, he'd scoffed. "What do you mean? Don't you have a hotel room?"
Bruce, always the gentleman, had rented hotel rooms for his groomsmen at the reception venue, along with the block of rooms for Becca's bridesmaids and extended family. "You're in the wedding," I said.
"So are you?"
"Au contraire." I'd shaken my head in mock disappointment. "Best friend of the bride does not a man of honor make. Believe me, I tried. I begged her to wear a dress, but she said no." I liked to complain, but Becca was right. I would be a spectacle if I stood up with her.
Instead of laughing at my joke, Mika's eyes twinkled through the phone screen. "Stay with me. Bridesmaid gown not required."
I'd said yes without thinking, and now I had to deal with the consequences. Here I was, less than an hour away from meeting him in his hotel room, and I still felt hesitant.
Yes, he was my fated mate. Yes, I wanted to see him. But was I ready to consummate our relationship? Did I want him to mark me tonight?
I felt as nervous as I had on my prom night.
It had gone differently than I'd expected, and far worse than anything I could even imagine for tonight.
I'd thought I was going to lose my virginity to my date.
Instead, he ended up ditching me at the dance, and I never saw him again.
He must have taken someone else back to his rented hotel room.
At the time, I'd been devastated, but now, I saw it as a blessing in disguise.
Tonight, I knew Mika wouldn't ditch me for someone else, but having his full attention seemed even more unnerving. Fated mate or not, I wasn't ready to be someone else's everything, the way Becca was for Bruce.
That wasn't fair. Bruce had cared enough about shifter and human studies to attend the only school offering the degree. On paper, he'd graduated with a master's in humanities, but Becca had defended him vehemently when her ignorant bestie (me) had said he could get a humanities degree anywhere.
It served me right, ending up with a shifter alpha of my own.
It never failed. Even with my decluttered room and newly sorted dresser drawers and hanging rack, I arrived at the hotel with five minutes to spare before we had to be in the ballroom for the rehearsal. Bruce and Becca were already greeting people at the open double doors.
"I'll be right back," I reassured them as I rushed to the elevator, completely forgetting to stop by the front desk for the key. I realized my mistake at the locked hotel room door. I knocked, hoping against hope my punctual mate had waited for me.
"Did you forget this?"
Grecian pillars hid the doorways from all but the folks across the way. I stepped back and looked down the hallway toward the elevators I'd just exited. Mika sashayed down the hall in a gray suit and burgundy tie, waving a blue key card at me.
"Yes."
"Thank Becca. She sent me after you."
He slipped around me and opened the door, and I laughed. My bestie knew me better than anyone. "She may be the woman, but I'm the damsel in distress."
"Let's make that de-stress." He tugged my tuxedo bag from my grip and led the way past the bathroom to the closet, where he hung it next to a black vinyl bag. Then, he shoved me against the opposite wall and kissed me.
De-stress was right. I snaked my arms around his neck to hold myself up while my legs turned to gelatin. The simple presence of his pheromones reset my body to factory settings. I felt relaxed and rejuvenated at the same time. My blood pressure lowered in all but one obvious spot.
I wanted to keep kissing him, but the alarm bells that had faded into the background charged to the forefront of my mind when a clock struck six outside. Jerking my head to the side, I broke the kiss, panting in his ear. "You have a wedding to rehearse."
"It's not my wedding." He stepped back, giving me some room to compose my rumpled suit. For a moment, I thought he would drop to one knee and propose, but then he grinned and took my hand. "The sooner we leave, the sooner we can come back here."
While that was true, I hoped Mika wouldn't be too angry with me when I ditched him after dinner. He was my mate, but Becca came first, at least for tonight.