Page 81 of The Florist and Her Alphas

My legs feel unsteady on the sidewalk.

At the door, Cole presses his thumb to a small black panel I have never seen before, low on the frame beside the old brass bell. It hadn’t been there before I left. A thin green light blinks once. The lock clicks.

“That’s new,” I say, breaking the silence between us.

“Biometric,” Cole says. “It reads your thumb. Mine. My brothers’. Nobody else’s.” He pushes the door open and holds it for me. “You don’t need a key anymore. You don’t need to remember a code. Just your hand.”

“That’s…that’s really nice,” I say, and I mean it, and it feels good to mean something small and simple after five days of meaning everything too much. “Toby’s going to try to break it within a week just to see if he can.”

The corner of Cole’s mouth moves. Not quite a smile. Close enough. “He can try.”

We step inside. The bell above the door gives its familiar small ring, and the shop exhales its cool, green, familiar smell around us, soil and stems and old wood. For one second, I feel my shoulders drop an inch, like they haven’t dropped in days.

Cole gives me a long look. My heart beats faster as he studies my face, as if memorizing it. His nostrils flare like he can’t bear to leave.

But it’s time now.

“I’ll wait around outside until I see your bedroom light come on,” he says gruffly.

I nod. I don’t trust my voice enough to answer him out loud. He doesn’t move toward me as he shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Get some rest,” he says. “Let your mind clear. That’s all I want for you today.”

I nod again. My throat is too tight to push words through it. If I open my mouth right now, I am going to cry, and I don’t want to cry in front of him, not after everything, not when he’s being so careful with me.

He steps back onto the sidewalk.

I close the door gently behind him. Through the old warped glass I watch him walk to the driver’s side of the Range Rover, unhurried, and I make myself turn away before I can watch him get in.

I pick up the watering can from behind the counter out of habit. I move toward the buckets by the cooler. My hand is on the spout, tilting it toward a bucket of ranunculus, and I stop. I can’t do this right now.

My hands are shaking too hard right now.

I set the can down. Then I climb the narrow stairs to my apartment slowly, one at a time, my legs trembling with a tiredness that has nothing to do with muscle.

The apartment is dark.

I don’t turn on the overhead light. I walk straight through to the bedroom and click on the small lamp by my bed, and the warm gold glow of it against my own walls, my own dresser, my own narrow bed, makes me sigh in relief. There’s no pressure being in my own space.

I cross to the window, pulling the curtain back just enough.

Cole is still on the sidewalk, standing beside the car instead of in it, looking up. He sees the light come on. He gives me one small nod, and then he walks around to the driver’s door and gets in. The engine starts. He pulls away from the curb, and the street goes quiet and empty behind him.

I let the curtain fall closed. I stand there a long time anyway, my hand still against the fabric.

The apartment is exactly as I left it.

A wine glass sits abandoned in the sink, a half-inch of red gone syrupy at the bottom, from the night Ezra’s and his pack ate dinner here. My bed is unmade, the sheets thrown back the way I left them the morning my heat started. The book on my nightstand lies splayed open at chapter four, exactly where I abandoned it, like it’s been waiting for me. My closet door hangs open, and I can see my grandmother’s locket swinging gently from the corner of my dresser mirror where I hung it before everything happened, before I became someone else for five days.

I take the locket down. The chain is cold as I fasten it around my neck, the metal warming slowly against my skin, and something about its familiar weight calms me.

My stomach growls.

In the fridge there’s half a loaf of Mira’s sourdough going stale on the counter, a small jar of butter, and not much else. I tear off a piece of the bread and eat it standing at the counter, chewing without tasting, and drink a full glass of water because I know I should, even though I’m not hungry.

I finish the bread and wash my hands at the sink beside the abandoned wine glass.

I put on my oldest t-shirt, soft from a hundred washes, and a pair of cotton sleep shorts before climbing into my bed.