Page 68 of Knot Baked Out For This
"I don't really know you," I blurt out, then immediately want to crawl under the truck and die. "I mean, I know your name and that you're a firefighter and that you smell like cedar and vanilla—"STOP TALKING"—but I don't know... you."
He tilts his head, studying me with those amber eyes that look almost gold in this light. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything?" It comes out as a question. "Hobbies? Background? Why firefighting? Why do you sometimes look at me like I'm a math problem you're trying to solve?"
He laughs—a real, full laugh that transforms his face. "That's a lot of questions."
"I'm a curious person."
"You're a disaster," he says fondly, then leans against the truck. "Let's see. Hobbies: I restore old motorcycles when I can't sleep, which is often. I read actual books, not just training manuals. I cook, badly, but with enthusiasm."
"Background?"
"Grew up here, you know that. Parents died when I was nineteen—car accident." He says it simply, like weather. "Raised my younger sister until she escaped to college. Did my training in the city, worked there for six years, came back three years ago."
Three years ago. When I divorced Korrin.
"Why did you leave the city?" I ask, twisting my apron strings nervously. "You had a successful career there. The pay's better. More opportunities for advancement."
His expression grows serious, those amber eyes finding mine and holding. We've moved closer somehow, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his irises, the faint scar above his left eyebrow.
"You really want to know?"
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"I left because staying meant I'd have to keep watching you live in a pack that didn't deserve you. That couldn't love you properly." His voice drops, rough with emotion. "I left the city to come back here. To be closer. To be ready."
"Ready for what?" My voice is barely a whisper.
"For when you finally left him. For when you'd need someone who saw who you really were, not what he tried to make you."
He came back for me. He upended his entire life on the possibility that maybe?—
"I researched," he continues, and his hands clench like he wants to reach for me but won't. "Legal precedents for breaking pack bonds. Omega protection laws. Every loophole, every option. I had a lawyer on retainer before you even filed for divorce."
My hands are trembling. My whole body is trembling. "You... why would you...?"
"Because I've been half in love with you since you threw a pie at Tommy Chen in tenth grade for groping Milly Patterson." His smile is rueful. "You had terrible aim but excellent intentions."
"That was fifteen years ago!"
"Fifteen years, three months, and twelve days." He pauses. "Approximately."
The world tilts. Everything I thought I knew rearranges itself. "Do you... do you pity me? Is that what this is? Some kind of rescue complex?"
"No." The word is firm, immediate. He steps closer, and his hand comes up to tilt my chin gently, making me meet his eyes. "No, Hazel. I remember who you were before he broke you. The girl who threw pies at gropers and organized protests when they tried to cut the library funding. Who danced on tables at the Harvest Festival and didn't care who watched. Who laughed so bright the whole room lit up."
Before. Before Korrin. Before I learned to make myself smaller, quieter, less.
"That girl's gone," I whisper.
"No," he says softly. "She's not. She's just been hiding. I see her sometimes—when you're baking and you think noone's watching. When you banter with Reverie. When you tell customers stories about your recipes. She's there, waiting."
The air between us has gone electric. My walls are cracking, visibly, audibly—I can feel them falling like dominoes. My voice wavers when I speak.
"I don't know if I can be her again."
"You don't have to be." His thumb brushes my cheek, and I realize I'm crying. When did I start crying? "You can be whoever you are now. Stronger for having survived. Different, but not less. Never less."
