Page 145 of Knot Baked Out For This

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"Good. Maybe people will stop trying to set me up with their daughters."

"People try to set you up?"

"Constantly. Mrs. Patterson has three nieces, apparently."

"Three!"

"All 'lovely girls who'd make wonderful mates.'"

"What do you tell her?"

"That I'm already taken. Have been for fifteen years, even if you didn't know it."

She's quiet for a moment, then: "That's either the most romantic or most stalkerish thing anyone's ever said to me."

"Romantic. Definitely romantic."

"Romantically stalkerish."

"I prefer devotedly patient."

"That's just stalking with better vocabulary."

We're both laughing as we pull up to her apartment, the lights already on in the bakery below, where the evening shift is probably gossiping about our afternoon.

"Want help carrying everything up?" I offer.

"Want to stay for dinner?" she counters. "Levi and Luca will be there. We can tell them about you finally kissing me properly."

"And plan their murders for not telling me about kissing you first."

"No murder on date night."

"That seems like an arbitrary rule."

"All the best rules are arbitrary."

I carry the record player while she manages her books, and as we climb the stairs to her apartment—our apartment, really, since we practically live there now—I think about fifteen years of waiting. About the boy who fell for a girl who threw pies at gropers. About the man who came back to a town he'd outgrown just to be near her. About the Alpha who's finally, finally getting everything he never dared dream of.

"Racing thoughts?" she asks, pausing at her door.

"Good thoughts," I assure her. "The best thoughts."

"Want to share?"

"Later. After dinner. After I interrogate the twins about their kissing technique."

"It was a good technique."

"I don't want to hear that!"

"Luca's very thorough."

"Hazel!"

"Levi's enthusiastic."

"I'm begging you to stop."

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