His Secret Nest: Trapped by the Alpha Boss novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Given, Not Taken

Noel picked a sandwich place in the Strip District with the fries inside the sandwich and paper on the tables.

He picked the booth in the back, under a mounted fish.

Fletcher came at six fifty-five in a wool coat with snow on the shoulders.

He looked at the fish.

"Very romantic," he said.

"I'm paying," Noel said. "It's what I can afford."

"I love it."

"You haven't seen the menu."

"I love it anyway."

Noel ordered for both of them.

When Fletcher's plate came, it was fried bologna with peanut butter, on white bread, with a side of pierogies and a chocolate milk.

Fletcher looked at it for a long moment.

Then at Noel.

"I called ahead," Noel said. "They didn't want to. I begged."

Fletcher laughed out loud, the real one, the one Noel had only heard twice.

People at the counter turned around.

Fletcher didn't care.

They ate.

They talked about Maddie's pharmacology grade, which was now a C-plus, and the dying goose in Noel's lab.

Halfway through his chocolate milk, Noel put his hands flat on the paper.

"I don't forgive you for noted," he said.

Fletcher set the glass down.

"I know."

"I don't think I'm supposed to. It happened. People went into heat on trains."

"Yes."

"But I watched you fix it." Noel made himself keep looking at him. "Not with a speech. You read all six pages of the charter with a pen. You made somebody audit me."

"Somebody should."

"Somebody should." Noel swallowed. "So I don't forgive it. I just know who you are now. That's different. And it's better."

The bond moved between them, slow and warm.

"My heat's due on the twenty-ninth," Noel said.

Fletcher went very still.

"I'm not taking the pen when it starts. I want you there." Noel's voice stayed level, which surprised him. "My apartment. My room. My nest. I'll build it."

"Out of what?"

"Out of whatever you give me. Given, this time. Not off a chair."

Fletcher didn't answer for a second.

"And the bite?" he said quietly.

"Yes," Noel said. "I'm saying yes now, on a Saturday, with a full stomach and a fish watching. So you know I meant it."

"I'll ask again. On the night."

"You'd better."

"One night," Fletcher said. "Then the pen at dawn?"

"Then the pen at dawn. I'll use it myself."

Fletcher reached across the table, slowly, and put his hand palm up between their plates.

Noel put his in it.

On the twenty-seventh Fletcher brought a box up the stairs to the second floor over the barber shop.

Fenella had announced, very loudly, that she'd be at her mother's in Greenfield on the twenty-ninth.

Maddie had booked a friend's couch, even more loudly.

"I'm not coming back till New Year's," Maddie yelled from the street. "I'm not even going to text. I'm going to pretend you're a monk."

The box was full of clothes.

Fletcher's clothes, worn. Noel could smell them through the cardboard.

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