“These are the best pancakes I think I have ever eaten.” Rhys placed his fork across the platter at the diner where we had wound up. The little hole-in-the-wall was perfect and reminiscent of our time together all those years ago.

“Hey, I made you pancakes--” I started.

Rhys gave me an “are you really bringing that up?” look as the memory of my failed attempt at wooing him with my then-horrific cooking skills flooded back to me.

“Fair enough,” I conceded, blushing at the memory of our first real kiss after my very pathetic attempt at earning Rhys’s heart through his belly. From the way Rhys’s eyes widened slightly at the blush, I knew he, too, was reliving the same moment.

It was amazing how easily the conversation flowed after all those years. We talked about the time immediately following Rhys’s move. How he struggled in a new place with a broken heart. How he wrote me letter upon letter, only to find out years later that I had never responded because Rhys’s parents felt it best we had a clean break and never sent them.

In hindsight, I knew they were right about their decision. If I had gotten even one of those letters, I never would’ve given Jacob a chance, and Jake wouldn’t be the shining light in my life.

That said, I felt Rhys’s hurt was still close to the surface at his family’s betrayal, and it made my own heart ache as well.

From Guam to college in Hawaii to MIT grad school, Rhys had lived the dream he had shared with me throughout our time as high-school sweethearts. Rhys had always wanted to be more than his alpha-father, whose entire career was directed by someone else, from what training he received to where his family would live. Military life had worked out well for his father, but it wasn’t what Rhys wanted. He wanted to be his own boss and work on computers. At the time, it had seemed so farfetched. Heck, the internet hadn’t existed in any real form then, but here he was, all those years later, not only doing what he wanted but succeeding on such a grand scale.

So few were able to live out their dreams. I was so proud of him.

“Breakfast for dinner is one of my favorites.”

Oh yeah. The slight deepening of Rhys’s voice as he said “breakfast” had me squirming in my seat, the memory of that first real kiss surfacing as he gave a wink. Sure, we’d had pecks on the cheek and even the lips before that night, but after our disaster of a dinner, something fell from between us. Our nervousness and apprehension over taking things further, fearing we would mess things up, fled.

I remembered my high-school friends talking about their first real kisses and how awkward they were. For the two of us, none of that was true because we waited for that moment, that perfect moment, when we were so at ease with each other that we just let it happen.

Burning those oh-too-salty pancakes was the best thing I’ve ever done.

At the time, however, it had been mortifying.

“Always was.” I grabbed my water to take a sip, more to block my ever-growing blush than out of thirst. “Remember that dinner off the turnpike?”

“I remember everything.” Rhys’s hand reached across the table, pausing a moment as if to ask if it were okay, and soon after, covering my hand with his. It felt as if it belonged there, as if the years had been washed away, and we were back to the time when we were inseparable and deeply in love.

Which was crazy, since we were both such very different people now.

Or were we?

We might have had an entire lifetime between us, but at our core, how much had we really changed?

“I do, too.” My eyes fell to our touching hands. “Is it weird seeing me again after all these years?”

“Weird?” Rhys’s head snapped up as he spoke. He shook his head slightly. “Weird how?”

“Not weird like crazy.” I inhaled deeply, trying to form the words. My feelings were all over the place, from happy to lustful to confused to comfortable. It was so much all at once, and yet somehow not quite enough. “But… it feels like in some ways we’re back to before you moved. Which is stupid, I know.” Rhys’s eyes disagreed with my stupid assessment, and I felt my shoulders relax. “You’ve lived all over, started a business, and for all I know, have an omega-husband and two-point-three kids waiting for you.”

“You know me better than that.”

I wished I had used a better example. Rhys might be a lot of things, but he had always been an honest person, and that kind of thing didn’t change.

“I do. It was a hypothetical.” I rolled my hand over so our palms touched, my fingers naturally entwining with Rhys’s. “No, you are not a man who would have a family and be holding some new omega’s hand.”

“You’re not a new omega.” Rhys’s eyes were focused on our joined hands. How I wished I could see those thoughts and discover what was bouncing around his head.

“You know what I mean,” I teased, hoping Rhys’s eyes would pop up and meet mine. Instead, they stayed focused on our hands, his thumb now caressing the top of mine.

“I do, and just so it is all out there, I have no children, and my husband left me a decade ago for someone else.”

My hand tried to retract immediately at such a heavy topic, but Rhys held tight, his thumb offering comfort as it traveled along the back of my hand.

“I’m so sorry,” I offered softly. Sure, I wanted him to be the ever-waiting alpha for me to find my way back to Rhys but how unfair would that have been? I had moved on. It was only right that Rhys had the same gift. But it wasn’t the gift I had been granted. Rhys had been left… for another.

“Don’t be.” There was no sorrow, no anger, no regret in his voice. “I could never be what he wanted.”

“Unless you’ve changed more than I see,” I gave his hand a gentle squeeze, “I highly doubt that.”

“He wanted to be with someone else. Someone who was not me.” Rhys shrugged as if it were no big deal.

“Oh,” was all I got out as the waitress came back to the table to clear our places and plop down the bill, a bill Rhys immediately paid with a don’t even think about it glance as I reached for my wallet.

“Really, it isn’t sad,” Rhys began as the waitress finally left. “I’m proud of Stephen. For him to find happiness fills me with more joy than you can know.” His voice beamed, and I felt proud of the omega too, which was odd, since we didn’t know each other, and since he had cheated on Rhys. Or did Rhys even say cheated? Not that it mattered, because his happiness for the situation held no dishonesty.

“You weren’t sad for being left like that.” It wasn’t a question as much as it was a statement. Rhys might have loved Stephen, but he didn’t seem to hold any hard feelings for his departure. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Rhys gave a slow nod. “It was emotional, yes.”

How could it not have been? You live your life with someone, and it ends. That is an emotional time. Period. No matter the circumstances.

“We were friends,” Rhys continued, “and he was one of the only people I knew that liked me for me, and not my business.”

I looked at him then, my old friend and lover, and the sense of him being just Rhys was so strong that I all but forgot about his insane success and mass wealth. It made sense that most people couldn’t look past that side of Rhys. Hell, people were probably drawn to him for that very reason.

How hard it must be to navigate relationships of any kind like that.

“But in all honesty, the chemistry was never there,” Rhys added mischievously

A small, slightly guilty part of me filled with relief at the confession. I might not be the young, gorgeous thing I once was, but I still wanted to be the one Rhys was attracted to, as awful as that sounded, even to myself.

“We married because we were both lonely,” Rhys said. “and that is not the key to a strong marriage.” He looked down at our clasped hands. “He likes you, you know.”

“Who?” The conversation had taken a left turn, and I found myself lost.

“Stephen.”

The alpha was officially talking crazy, and I gave him my famous look that said just that. I watched as Rhys held in his chuckle, letting me know that he remembered the over-exaggerated twist of my mouth when I was trying not-so-subtly to say he was nuts. We had fallen back into old habits far too easily.

It couldn’t be this easy.

That wasn’t how life worked.

“You met him tonight,” he added, as if I could have forgotten meeting an ex. “He showed you to the conference room,” he clarified, and I wanted to die a little.

I had met Rhys’s ex while wearing my dad clothes/paint clothes. Hardly the best first impression for a receptionist, much less the man who once had been a major part of Rhys’s life.

“Your ex works for you, and he likes me?” I asked, and Rhys nodded as if it was simply the way of things and, in his world, it probably was. “This is all a bit… odd. Is that the word?” I went from talking to Rhys to talking to myself, and I stopped. How a night of art classes that never happened turned into this was something I would wrap my mind around later.

“It works for us.” Rhys began to slide out of the booth, never letting my hand go, and I found myself following him. Not once was I concerned by Rhys’s outward display of affection, one that was seen by all in the restaurant and all we passed on the way back to the car.

It had always been like this with Rhys. Always.

“The piece you were looking at on my wall when I came in, do you remember it?” Rhys ventured.

My mind wandered back to the recycled junk masterpiece as we meandered out the door and to the sidewalk.

“How could I forget? It was amazing the way it had all those levels of emotion wrapped in such simplicity.”

“That piece was how Stephen found his alpha. His true mate.” Rhys began walking toward the car, someplace I’d rather we not be going, because it meant our magical evening was quickly coming to an end. “I bought it at a gallery, and the artist delivered it personally, wanting to see who’d bought his work. It turned out I was his first sale, and he wanted to see who had fallen so in love with his piece that they paid what he felt was an insane amount of money for it. Now he’d never sell one for such a low price, but back then, it seemed like a fortune to him.”

We turned the corner, only half a block from our parking spot. Too close. I felt Rhys slow down as much as I had, and I wondered who was leading the change of pace. Could it be we both felt the need for this night to continue beyond the short walk back to Rhys’s car?

“Long story short,” Rhys continued, “he met Stephen while delivering it, and the rest is history. It was one of my best investments.” He squeezed my hand as we reached the car, unlocking it with his remote, but not opening the door.

“You have such a romantic heart.” The words fell from my lips before I could stop myself. It was true, but saying them so openly the first time we’d seen each other in years felt too much, too soon for me.

“When one has experienced true love,” Rhys’s free hand reached up and cupped my cheek, “they want it for all people. There is nothing as magical as finding that one person who fills in all of the pieces of you that you didn’t even know were missing.”

My eyes widened.

He was talking about me. He wasn’t being coy or talking around the issue, he was holding my hand tightly while caressing my cheek, standing ever so close, and meeting my eyes. He was laying it all out, just as he always had in the past. His confidence in his feelings was something that had always drawn me to him, and now was no different.

“And you have that now?” I asked.

Rhys didn’t, and I knew he didn’t, but my insecurities spilled from me before rationality took over.

“No, I was lucky, I had that with my first boyfriend.” Rhys leaned in close to my ear, his breath caressing the side of my neck and curling my toes. “I’m hoping to rekindle it.”

“So much has happened since we last knew each other,” I said far too quickly and quietly.

“Which means we will always have something to talk about.” Rhys’s words, while quiet, held such power. Power to make me weak in the knees. Power to make me believe we could really have a do-over. Power to make me dare to dream of the future I’d once planned together with him.

“And I have a son.” I leaned into him as I gave the excuse that had been uttered so many times over the years as a way to deter the advances of alphas who, while kind and sometimes handsome, were never ones I would ever give my heart to.

“Who I already know and admire.”

“And I’m not the same omega I was.” Feeling a moment of boldness, I wrapped my arms around Rhys’s body, enjoying the feeling of home it created. Rhys followed suit, and we stood there in silence, allowing the feeling to wash over us.

“No.” Rhys broke the silence as a car pulled out of a spot too quickly and broke the spell that had entranced us. “You are the amazing omega you are now.”

“But what if …” I began, unable to finish the thought. There were too many what-ifs. What if Rhys still wanted a family, and my body was all heck no, you waited too long? What if Rhys found my career unbefitting his? What if Rhys only liked me for the memories and the real-life me disappointed him? What if our love all those years ago was just infatuation, as both our parents had told us repeatedly?

Memories were a fickle thing like that.

“What if what?” Rhys pressed his cheek against mine, the stubble from the day rubbing against me gently.

“What if I disappoint you?” That was my fear in a nutshell. Not that Rhys wasn’t going to live up to my memories, but that I wasn’t going to live up to Rhys’s.

“What if you and I become what we always knew we were meant to be?”

The hope in Rhys’s voice, the warmth of his body, and the friction of his stubble on my cheek worked in tandem as they gave me the strength to push aside my insecurities and live in the moment. I was going to do this. I was going to see if we could finally have our happily ever after, even after all the years and events between us.

I took Rhys’s hand. “What if we see where this road takes us?”