My composure fails instantly.
I go still in the middle of the shell path and drag in another breath before I can stop myself. Like a man hearing a song he thought was gone, trying to catch the next note before he trusts it.
The breeze shifts.
It goes somewhere else and takes the scent with it.
I stand there.
Bene,I tell myself.Bene, Santos. You have been on this island for four days smelling the same water and the same flowers and the same particular quality of warm stone and sea air and your brain has manufactured a smell out of longing, which is a thing your brain has apparently decided to do now, which is fine, it's fine, this is fine.
I look to my left.
Nothing. Trees. The edge of the staff quarter path going around the side of the hill. A bird in one of the trees that regards me with the blank professional neutrality of a bird who has seenevery kind of human embarrass themselves and finds none of it surprising anymore.
I keep walking.
Then, I sit on the dock and put my feet over the edge and breathe actual sea air for a while and think about the Nakamura documentation and whether we've considered the third-party liability clause thoroughly enough and whether Tomas remembered to send the amended terms before the delegation arrives.
I think about these things for approximately four minutes before my nose finds it again.
It arrives from the direction of the staff kitchen.
It’s around the side of the hill from the main house, positioned for practical reasons related to ventilation and deliveries. I need to let this go because I am doing the thing I told myself not to do, I follow the scent like a dog.
The path goes around the base of the hill and the kitchen is set into the slope on the other side, a long low building with big windows designed for cross-ventilation, and as I get closer the smell changes from salt and flowers to salt and flowers and something cooking, something with garlic and olive oil and whatever herb is in the jar near the window, and underneath all of it, underneath the cooking, underneath the evening and the sea air, ripe and warm and completely unmistakable,
I stop at the corner of the building, knowing what I'm about to find and dreading it all the same.
Cazzo.
I exhale once and force my head to work.
It is entirely possible for two omegas to share scent notes. Strawberry and rose aren’t rare. Scents aren’t fingerprints. This could be anyone. A staff member. Someone I’ve never met. Someone who smells nothing like Jennifer Sullivan beyond the surface of it.
Except Jennifer’s rose always changed with her mood. Thorned when she braced for something. Soft when she felt safe.
The rose is soft now.
I press my back to the wall beside the kitchen window, because apparently this is who I am today, a man hiding outside his own kitchen and scenting the air like a criminal.
Inside, I hear movement. A pan on the stove. A drawer opening and closing. One voice, female, too low to make out.
Then, louder, to no one in particular.
“I know. It’s pretty good.”
The world stops.
For the second time in three months I lose my ability to construct sentences.
I know that voice.
There’s no two-ways about it, it’s Jennifer.
She’s in my kitchen.
I don't go in because I don't know what happened when she woke up alone. She doesn't know we're here.