So he blew me off. He’s not the first guy… Well, okay, he is the first guy to completely blow me off. But it’s not the end of the world. Hell, if he gave me his real contact info, I’d be worried he didn’t have a strong survival instinct because what little Thad, if that was even his name, knew about me was all pretty bad.

He met me at my worst...and things went downhill from there. I was drunk and loud with my buddies, doing blow jobs off strangers in a bar, and then I beat the shit out of a different stranger that he’d been on a date with.

Why wouldn’t he give me a fake name?

Maybe because I wanted him to feel the connection that I felt. The same connection that was obviously one-sided and probably romanticized by my alcohol-addled brain.

Maybe he wasn’t actually as cute as I remembered. And maybe those green eyes and that strawberry blonde hair wasn’t as intoxicating as my mind kept telling me it was. And maybe the energy that I thought flowed between us like a magnet, drawing us together when the forces around us kept trying to keep us apart, didn’t actually exist.

So it was time for me to accept the facts for what they were. As a promise to myself in an attempt to move on, I deleted all the dating app profiles I’d created when looking for Thad. If he didn’t want to be found, I wouldn’t keep searching for him.

It’d been a few weeks since my birthday, and it was time to get on with my life. Wallowing in misery over what could have been would get me nowhere. I had four more weeks of tax season to survive and then maybe I’d get back on the horse and see who I could find out there.

* * *

I made it through the busiest time of the year in my profession, but that’s as far as I got in my plan to get back on the horse. I tried, I really did. But after a few nights out with the guys, it was painfully obvious that there were no good omegas left out there. The good ones were either straight or taken. Even a lot of the assholes were taken, which put me and my pathetic self into a whole new dimension of low.

Danny did what he could. He made me go back to poker nights with him, and he dragged me to some singles mixers at his gym to see who we could find. But no matter who came on to me or what the mood of the event was, I still walked out of each place just as single as when I walked in. There were always a few cute omegas who tried to chat me up, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

I wasn’t ever feeling it. Or anything.

I was an alpha with physical and emotional needs in general, but I was able to focus my energy on work. And when that started to slow down, I took on some additional clients to keep myself distracted. And for the most part, it worked. I didn’t allow myself a lot of downtime to think about being lonely until the first note arrived.

It was a small white notecard with a red heart stamped on one side and neat block letters printed on the other. I wouldn’t have even noticed it sticking out from underneath the doormat, but Danny dropped his keys after an impromptu karaoke night, and he found it hiding there. It wasn’t dated so I’m not sure how long it had been there, but it looked recent.

Ren,

I know our first meeting wasn’t perfect, but I’ve been thinking about you. Is it wrong for me to hope you’ve been thinking about me too?

Love,

T. H.

As soon as I read the message, my heart started racing. He found me. It took some time, but Thad found me. I ran down to the street as if he might still be waiting right outside, but he wasn’t.

Obviously.

And he didn’t leave any contact information.

Again.

But he knew where to find me, and he was interested. Those two facts had me practically floating on air as I went back to up my apartment.

Thad was interested!

* * *

“Two slices or three?” Danny was holding a paper plate in his hand and waiting for me to respond.

“Two.” I wasn’t that hungry. I saw a guy walking out of a bookstore who looked exactly like Thad earlier that day, but by the time I was able to pull over and park, he was gone. I’m sure it wasn’t him, but it reminded me of the fact that it’d been almost a month since that note and there had been no contact from him at all.

“Why do you look like your dog just died?” Danny passed the plate of pizza to me then dropped onto the sofa beside me.

“Just in a funk.” I picked up a slice and stared at it, willing myself to take a bite.

“This isn’t about Thad, is it?”

I hung my head, ashamed of how pathetic I’d become over a guy I barely knew and who didn’t seem to want to get to know me. “Maybe.”

“Ren, buddy.” He slapped my shoulder as if that could make me snap out of it. “You’ve spent way to long hung up on this guy. It’s time to forget about him.”

I nodded, knowing he was right. “I guess.”

“Well, I know.” He scooted back to his side of the couch and snatched the remote. “Let’s watch some omega porn so you can get some new faces burned into that pretty little brain of yours.”

Watching porn with my best friend wasn’t as weird as it sounded. We’d done it a hundred times before and would probably do it a hundred more times before we died. But it didn’t have the effect Danny had in mind. It did get my mind off my sadness, so that part worked. But it didn’t get my mind off Thad.

Not in the least.

In fact, when I finally called it a night and went to my room with a steel dick standing straight up in my sweats, the only face I could picture as I stroked myself, fucking my fist until my knot blew and I shot ribbons of come all over my chest, was a certain ginger with lips that were meant to be wrapped around my cock.

Yeah, I wasn’t quite over him yet, but I’d get there.

Eventually.

Probably.