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“Zalen!” she said, her sweet scent reaching out to surround me like a cloud. “What are you doing home? Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I said, and it felt like someone else entirely was speaking. “What about you? What’s wrong?”
She waved the words away like buzzing insects. “No, it’s not... I mean... nothing’swrong. It’s the restaurant. We’re reopening a week from tomorrow. But now there’s nothing else that actually needs toget donetoday, and I’m kind of freaking out, to be honest.”
“Oh,” I said, because it was good that her restaurant was opening again, but not so good that she was freaking out about it.
She peered at me, her mahogany eyebrows crinkling into a worried frown. “Zalen, what’s wrong? Something happened. I can tell.”
The words poured out into the open before I’d really made a decision to start speaking. “Tony’s parents showed up at the Hope Project again, demanding information I don’t have. It, um, didn’t go well.”
I was still stuck in that strange third-person perspective, looking at myself standing just inside the kitchen entryway, clearly a hairsbreadth away from losing my proverbial shit. Meanwhile, Mia hovered halfway between the door and the barstools by the breakfast counter.
“Tony?” she echoed. “He’s the missing teen, right? Wait, you saidbothhis parents were there?” Her complexion paled. “You talked to his stepdad?”
I nodded, swaying a bit. “I almost hit him,” I said distantly. “I wanted to. Still do, actually. I wanted to break his jaw.”
Suddenly, Mia was standing right in front of me. Her small hand closed around my arm. I hadn’t seen her approach.
“Think you might need to stand in line for that,” she muttered. “Come sit down for a minute, okay? You don’t look so good.”
I allowed her to guide me to one of the barstools. She didn’t let go of my arm, her slender fingers sending a hint of warmth radiating outward from the contact... chasing away the ice in my veins.
“It’s just... I suddenly realized how utterly shit I’ve been about protecting the people in my life,” I said slowly. “I don’t know how to stop any of this from happening. I don’t know how to make it better.” I blinked rapidly, forcing myself to focus on Mia’s lovely features. “I’m sorry. You’re worried about your restaurant and I shouldn’t be dumping all of this on you—”
She leaned forward, her lips pressing against mine. Abruptly, I slammed fully back into my body, still brimming with its cocktail of anger, grief, sadness, and slowly souring adrenaline.
“No.” The word puffed against my lips as she pulled back. “Zalen, you’re—”
Sudden, terrible need ripped through me, cutting through the awfulness of it all. This amazing omega had crashed into our lives like a gift from above, and like an idiot I’d held her at arm’s length for fear of reopening the old wound that was Julie’s broken mate bond.
But Mia wasn’t Julie; she never had been.
“Mia,” I breathed, hooking a hand gently around the nape of her neck.
She shivered, her brown eyes wide and dark as I reeled her in close, covering her full lips in a scorching kiss. Her hands clasped my shoulders like a lifeline, a desperate whimper escaping her throat as she practically climbed into my lap. Between one heartbeat and the next, all thoughts of distance fled; two lost souls in free fall, with nothing to hold onto... except each other.
TWENTY-SIX
Mia
I HADN’T BEEN SUREwhat to expect after I’d given in to temptation and pressed my lips to Zalen’s. The truth was, I hadn’t been thinkingat all. Zalen was upset. Zalen was apologizing for something that didn’t need an apology.Again. And I’d just...acted.
Was this selfish of me? Was kissing Zalen yet another way for me to push my own problems into the background for a little while?