The cheese stretches, golden and obscene, and when I bite down again, I moan deep in my chest. “This is incredible. Genuinely the best pull-apart I’ve ever eaten.”
He sets a small dish of treats on the floor for Damien, who abandons my lap with zero loyalty and is face down in the bowl before the last piece hits the ceramic. Then Brody leans against the counter opposite me, arms folded, ankles crossed, and the joggers pull across his thighs.
“I like the sound of that.” He tears off his own piece. “Now, tell me what I’m walking into on Saturday. Who’s the target?” Then he devours his chunk.
I pick at the bread. “It’s… there’s my ex.” I take a sip of my iced tea. “He’ll be there.”
Brody doesn’t push further, just watches me with those steady blue eyes, and I appreciate his patience.
“His name’s Louis. He was…” I press my thumb against the side of my glass, focusing on the cold. “He was my fiancé.”
“How long?”
“A year. We never bonded, but I thought it was heading there.” I tear some bread into smaller pieces. “He ended it the morning of my horrendous TV interview. Packed suitcase, another Omega in the car outside, the whole scene.” I attempt a laugh, but it comes out wobbly. “Fun times.”
“He sounds like a fucking loser.”
I grin. “You’re not wrong. And, well, he’s the best man at this wedding because the universe has a sense of humor and no mercy.”
Brody’s jaw clenches. “Guessing he knows you’re attending.”
“He texted me about it, some crap about offering me a dance because he knows I’ll be alone. He’s such a douche. I don’t know what I saw in him.” I trail off, feeling the heat in my cheeks, the vulnerability of saying this to a man I’m heavily attracted to. My fingers find the edge of my glass again. “Sorry. This is a lot of baggage to dump on someone over a cheesy pull-apart.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Claire.” The way he says my name, deep, unhurried, certain, is everything.
I take a heavy breath. “So that’s target one. Him seeing me with someone and realizing I’m not the pathetic mess he assumes I am.”
“He’s going to see so much,” he says, and in all honesty, I’m unsure what he means by that, but I let it go. “Which brings us to target two? I’m good with families,” he admits.
I groan. “Mine will be there in force, and they always grill me. When am I finding an Alpha? Why did I let Louis go when he was such a great catch? Am I eating enough? Why don’t I get a real job at a restaurant instead of writing cookbooks?” I straighten up, reaching for my tea, while Brody is munching away, his attention never leaving me. “You see, my sister found her Alpha match at eighteen. Bonded, mated, blissfully happy. She’s the family success story. And I’m…” I gesture at myself. “Twenty-five, unmated, and professionally radioactive. I mean, they love me all while being very obviously worried I’m going to die alone surrounded by books.”
He listens through all of it without interrupting. When I finish and take a long sip of tea to wash down the embarrassment, he straightens off the counter and walks around to my side.
He sits on the stool next to mine, extremely close. His knee presses against my thigh, and the contact sends a jolt up my leg and to my spine. He turns my stool to face him, and suddenly my bare legs are between his spread knees.
“Do you have any idea how stunning you are?”
I blink to hear this hunk of a man—with captivating eyes, lips I can only dream about tasting, and loose, wild, dark hair falling over one eye—implying I’m beautiful. The thing is, the word sits very differently with me because I’ve never seen myself that way.
“You don’t need to?—”
“I’m not being polite or rehearsing for Saturday.” His gaze holds mine, and there’s absolutely nothing casual in it. “Your ex walked away from you, and that’s his failure, not yours. Plus, your family comparing you to anyone else is their blindness, not your shortcoming.”
My throat thickens from the terrifying experience of being seen by someone who isn’t flinching at what he finds out about me.
“You don’t need to hide from the world because of one mistake, Claire. Don’t let them win when you’re this incredible.” His mouth twists, and for the first time tonight, the confidence slips enough for me to see something rougher underneath. “Hell, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I once got an account shut down because I uploaded a video without checking the reflection in the oven door and gave half the internet a view nobody asked for. I’ve burned recipes live, picked fights with trolls I should’ve ignored, and said things on camera that made me want to crawl into a hole afterward. Mine were real mistakes. Yours was a bad moment that shitty people twisted into a weapon.”
I stare at him, and he exhales, running a hand over the back of his neck, my response locked in my chest.
“My mom was a TV presenter. Big smile, perfect hair, and a happy marriage. That was the story everyone bought. Behind closed doors, it was screaming, drinking, doors slamming hard enough to shake the walls.” His voice lowers, losing the easy charm completely. “I grew up watching people perform happiness for cameras while everything rotted underneath, andI swore I’d never do that. My videos are messy because that’s me. You see the flour on the floor, the cat stealing food, the dumb jokes, the screwups. All of it. Sometimes that means I embarrass myself in front of a few million people, but at least it’s mine.”
The words settle between us, and something in my chest aches because he isn’t giving me a polished version of himself. He’s offering me the cracked piece underneath.
“I’m trying,” I whisper. “It’s just… it’s always been hard. I’ve always been this way. The anxiety, the hiding, the convincing myself that if I stay inside long enough, nobody can hurt me.” I pick at the butterfly strip on my arm. “It’s not a great strategy.”
His gaze drops to my fingers, and he pulls them away from the scratch, then lifts his attention back to my face. “It’s a survival strategy,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
That’s when Damien returns from his bowl and attempts to climb between us. He gets one paw on Brody’s thigh, one on mine, and stands there, a furry bridge, trilling with the insistence of a cat who has noticed that attention is being directed at someone other than him and finds this unacceptable.