Lila
Iwoke up Saturday morning in a better mood than I had any business being in, and I immediately blamed the sunshine coming through the curtains because that was a much safer explanation than the alternative.
The alternative being the Alpha across the street who had said the word mine out loud in front of witnesses and then looked me dead in the eye and denied it three times in a row.
I put on my cardigan, pulled my hair into a braid, and opened the front door to get some air.
There sitting on my porch railing, was a steaming cup of fresh coffee. And I knew that it was made exactly the way I liked it because I could smell the vanilla wafting out of the cup and into the atmosphere the second I picked it up. Slowly, I dared to look across the street.
Azrael was watering the small cluster of flowers near my mailbox with the calm efficiency of someone who had decided this was simply part of his morning now and saw no need to discuss it.
"You know," I called out, "normal people knock."
He didn't look up. "I wasn't delivering coffee."
"Then why is there coffee on my porch?"
"Because you complained yesterday that you were out of creamer."
I picked up the cup and held it with both hands and looked at him across the quiet morning street. "This is getting dangerously thoughtful."
He set down the watering can and finally looked at me. "I'm trying to be less terrifying."
I laughed before I could stop myself. "You're not doing a very good job."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth that might, under generous interpretation, have been a smile.
He picked the watering can back up and went back to my flowers, while I stood on my porch in my cardigan with my coffee.
I didn’t want to blame the good mood I was in on Azrael but it was something about watching him work in my yard…
I took another sip of my coffee and immediately made a face. The vanilla suddenly smelled...wrong.
I rolled around in my mouth, feeling to sweet and maybe to rich.
My stomach seemed to thrash around in the most unpleasant manner leaving me feeling queasy.
I stared at cup in my hands, suddenly so put off. “Hmmm…”
Across the street, Azrael looked up and called out to me, “You alright?"
"I think so." I frowned down at the cup. "For some reason, coffee suddenly sounds awful."
He tilted his head. "You alright?”
Grinning, I replied. “I know. It's deeply concerning."
I set the mug on the porch railing instead of taking another sip.
"Maybe I'm coming down with something."
His gaze lingered on me for a second longer than usual before he nodded once and went back to watering the flowers.
I shrugged it off because it was probably nothing.
Debbie had texted at eight fifteen to say the farmer's market started at nine and she would meet me there by eight fifty. So after I finished my coffee, I went back into the house, pulled my hair into a braid and brushed the coffee out of my mouth.
The Farmer’s Market was just a few blocks away and I decided to walk and pull my cart along.
What I had not anticipated was Azrael falling into step beside me as I reached the end of the block.
He offered up no explanation and it felt like the most natural thing I the world for the two of use to be walking together.
The market stretched along two blocks of Main Street, vendors set up under white canopies selling produce and honey and baked goods and candles and things made from wool, and the whole thing smelled like autumn and fried dough and something herbal I couldn't identify.
It was exactly the kind of thing I had imagined when I pictured small town life, warm and unhurried and full of people who actually knew each other.
What I had not imagined was watching a tall fine as hell Alpha, get his cheek pinched by a woman who could not have been under eighty years old.
"Ruthie," Azrael said, with the patience of someone who had been having this interaction for a very long time.
"You look thin," Ruthie said, and handed him a loaf of bread.
He took it without argument.
The vendor at the peach stand waved him over and refused to take his money.
The woman selling kettle corn asked after his garden.
A small child in a yellow raincoat, despite the complete absence of rain, waved at him from across the street and he waved back with the solemnity of someone taking the gesture seriously.
I fell into step beside him after the fourth interaction and looked up at him. "You're like the mayor."
"Gods, no," he said, with more feeling than I had heard from him about almost anything. "That sounds exhausting."
Debbie and May were somewhere behind us, which I knew because I could hear Debbie narrating her opinions on various cheeses at a volume that carried.
Azrael had, at some point I had not tracked precisely, accumulated a considerable amount of cargo.
He was carrying my flowers and my peaches and Debbie's kettle corn and May's honey and a pumpkin that I was genuinely uncertain anyone had actually purchased, all balanced on one arm with the effortless calm of someone who did not consider this worth remarking on.
I shook my head and kept walking.
Behind me, Debbie's voice dropped to what she apparently considered a whisper, which meant I could still hear approximately seventy percent of it.
"Look at him," she said to May.
May made a sound that communicated volumes.
"I'm telling you," Debbie continued.
I slowed down. "What?"
Both of them looked up with expressions of coordinated innocence that I did not believe for a single second.
"Nothing," Debbie said.
"That was not nothing."
"We were just talking," May said.
"About me."
Debbie sighed with the dramatic weight of someone who had been waiting to have this conversation.
She nodded toward Azrael, who was currently stopped a few feet ahead of us, politely listening to an elderly man explain something about heirloom tomatoes while holding six bags and a pumpkin.
"We were trying to figure out how long before he starts keeping clothes at your house. "
I nearly dropped my flowers. "What?"
May laughed. "Girl. He is carrying your groceries."
"He's just helping."
Debbie looked at me with the specific patience of a woman who had been married for twenty-seven years and knew things. "Honey. My husband did not carry my groceries until after we got engaged."
I looked at Azrael, who was now nodding seriously at whatever the tomato man was saying, still holding everything, unbothered. I looked back at Debbie.
"You’re both ridiculous," I said, and walked ahead to rejoin him before either of them could say anything else that I would have to think about later.
As I caught up to him, I also caught a whiff of something frying from one of the food vendors. My stomach turned instantly.
"Oh..."
I stopped walking and Azrael looked over immediately. "What?"
I swallowed hard. "I don't..."
Another wave rolled through me, “…I suddenly don't feel so great."
The smell of fried dough seemed to wrap itself around me, as if it were trying to claw its way inside of my veins. My stomach lurched so violently I slapped a hand over my mouth.
"Lila!” Azrael was beside me before I'd even realized he'd moved.
"I'm fine," I mumbled.
"You are not."
"I just..."
I turned away from the crowd, taking slow breaths through my nose.
Debbie hurried over, “Honey?"
May frowned, “Do you need to sit down?"
I shook my head. "I think it's just the smell."
Azrael rested one warm hand against the middle of my back in a possessive little way and I leaned into it just a bit.
Debbie peered in closer, “You've gone pale."
"I'm Black,” I assured them. “I don’t really do pale…”
"A paler shade than you were five minutes ago,” Azrael agreed.
Despite myself, I laughed. "That joke still isn't medically accurate."
"No." He kissed my forehead. “But it got you to smile."
I had slowly started to recover from the smell while loading everything into my cart when Ethan appeared.
He slowed the moment he saw me and his eyes flicked from my face…to the way Azrael's hand was still resting lightly against my back.
Concern crossed his features. "Everything okay?"
I nodded, “I think so. Just got a little overheated."
He smiled politely. "Farmer's markets will do that."
He accepted the explanation and smiled. He also offered a good morning to Debbie and May by name because this was Blackthorn Ridge and everyone knew everyone within approximately two weeks of arriving.
"Looks like I got beat to helping," he said, glancing at Azrael, who continued transferring bags to the cart without comment or acknowledgment.
"He's very efficient," I said.
Ethan smiled. "I noticed." He looked back at me. "I was wondering if you still wanted to grab dinner sometime. No pressure either way."
I opened my mouth to reply when I heard Azrael murmur, "I'll be across the street."
Then he set the last bag in the cart, and walked away. I watched how he moved and it was very much that he was giving me space to let Ethan’s ass down nicely.
My hot ass neighbor was giving me the choice to tell Ethan there would be not dating of any kind before he said something to him.
I watched him go and felt something pull in my chest that I had not been expecting, something that sat uncomfortably between gratitude and longing and a third thing I did not have a clean name for yet.
Ethan followed my gaze and then looked back at me with an expression that was kind in a way I appreciated more than I could say. "Rain check," he said simply, and let me off the hook without making me ask.
I offered him a smile. “I don’t think I’ll be able to take you up on a dinner any time soon…
The bookshelf had been sitting in the second bedroom since moving day, still in the box, because it required more than two hands and a positive attitude to assemble and I had not yet found the right moment to admit I needed help with it.
I had been staring at the instruction sheet for four minutes when Azrael appeared in the doorway.
I looked at him. "Are you psychic?"