The temperature outside had dropped almost 20° since Ryan’s swim, putting a fierce chill in the air. Unlike many people, he liked the cold. It was bracing, invigorating in a way that he didn’t really want to figure out. It was like magic, the taste of frost in the air, the way a person could smell the cold.

Dylan would tell me that’s just my nose hairs freezing.

Chuckling softly, he got in the truck and started up the engine. He kept the windows down as he drove so that the wind sliced against his skin like knives.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of a building just off Hampshire Street. The building was roughly the size and shape of a trailer, painted in overly-bright shades of blue. Simply called The American Bar, it was owned and run by a British couple who thought the name would appeal to the citizens’ sense of patriotism. And they were right, though they probably didn’t expect the sort of crowd they pulled in.

His parking job wasn’t the best, since the lot itself was rather small and his truck was pretty big, but he stayed in the lines and that was as good as it was going to get. Shutting the door carefully, he walked around the side of the building to the front and stepped inside.

As he opened the door, a short burst of the national anthem played before being cut off. No one looked at him, having long since become accustomed to the bar’s unique bell. Only regulars came here. This wasn’t exactly the sort of place that a new person would find without knowing it was already there, and that was how everyone liked it.

Most of the men in the room were hicks and proud of it. They claimed the title like it was their birth name and wouldn’t let anyone use a more politically-friendly term to address them. They were the sort of folks who wore wife beaters all day, worked strictly manual jobs nine to five, five days a week, and who probably owned no less than two guns. Tough men. No-nonsense men who’d just as soon bullshit you as they would lend you their truck to move a heavy piece of furniture. The women they brought with them were just as rough, though usually pretty in their own way.

None of them knew he was a lawyer. He went to great lengths to hide his identity from the public, since separating work from his private life was difficult enough as it was without being accosted by some jilted lover of a client on the street. If they ever found out, they’d probably kick his ass.

Try to kick his ass, anyway.

But unless they found out, they all just thought of him as that weirdo who dressed too fancy—as if a t-shirt without holes in it was akin to a suit—but who caused no harm. Tough men like they were, Ryan might have thought that they’d dislike Dylan but that was far from the truth.

Looking around, he spotted Dylan sitting in their usual spot. It was difficult to see him at first because a gigantic man stood in the way. The man in front of Dylan looked to be at least 300 lbs, if not more, with a construction worker’s deep tan. It was always easy to tell when the construction business was booming because the workers would be as red as boiled lobsters from long hours in the sun. When they started to tan, as they did in the colder months when worked slowed down, it was a sure sign that they’d been spending all their time indoors.

As always, Ryan felt a surge of protectiveness towards the omega. Even though Dylan was a wolf, he was no match for a roughened man with fists the size of hams. There was no cause for alarm, because these folks loved Dylan, but he felt protective anyway. It was a holdover from their high school days, when any attention from the school jocks meant trouble for the omega.

Walking up, he caught the tail end of their conversation. They were both using words that he really couldn’t understand, words that he vaguely recognized as having to do with some sort of vehicle. It seemed that the big guy had been asking questions and Dylan was answering them.

“Excuse me, fella,” Ryan said from behind the large man.

The mountain of flesh shifted to turn in his direction and he found himself staring into a pair of startlingly beautiful brown eyes. “What do you want?”

“Just here to get a drink with my friend.”

“Hi, Ryan,” Dylan said.

The large man nodded, and his entire bulk nodded with him. “A’ight. Not my intention to get between you two pals. So, you think it’ll work?” He aimed this last part towards Dylan.

“Sure,” the omega replied. “If you do it right. Probably be best to take it to someone who does it every day, though.”

“Pah.” The large man scowled. “Takin’ my money for somethin’ I can do myself.” And then he shuffled off towards the bar, parting the sea of patrons with his size.

Ryan settled into the booth opposite Dylan. A glass of beer was already waiting for him, though he could tell it’d been there for a few minutes because the head had mostly fizzed away. “Am I late?”

“Nah.” Dylan shrugged. “I got here early. Already had one. Figured I’d pace myself and wait for you before I got another.”

Ryan drank deeply from the glass. It was still cold and the bitterness seemed to sear the back of his throat, tingling pleasantly all the way down. “Thanks. I know you don’t like that. Talking shop outside of work.”

Dylan snorted. “What am I going to do? Tell Heavyboy over there to scram?”

“You could. He’d get tossed out by a pair of angry Brits if he so much as yells.”

“Sure, but people here like me. I’m not interested in ruining that. Unlike you.” Dylan grinned at him.

“Fucker.”

Really, he couldn’t complain. It was nice to see his best friend getting along with other people when his interactions with strangers in the past tended to be a little strained. These people could tell that Dylan worked with his hands for a living. It was something about his clothes, which were nice but tended to become stained with oil and grease no matter how carefully he tried to get rid of the residue of his work. His hands were usually in a similar state. But even without those things, there was something about him.

Maybe he was biased, but he didn’t think he’d ever met another omega like Dylan before. Maybe that was because most other omega wolves tended to be female, just as alpha wolves were usually male, but as a pack leader he’d had a lot of experience with a lot of different kinds of wolves. Omega men and women alike tended to be quiet little things, a little frail, a bit timid. They were quite content to be tugged around by their mates—such as in the case of Jeanine, who he believed had grown tired of doing what everyone told her even though she didn’t have to.

Dylan was different. Dylan was a spitfire, strong and solid. Even though he tended to be mild-mannered and sweet, that soft exterior was wrapped around a determined inner core. His eyes were blue-green, like deep river water, and his golden-brown hair was always shorn down to a layer perhaps an inch long, to keep it from getting in the way of his work. He was muscular, capable of hard work. There was something hard about him beneath the gentleness that these bar patrons seemed to recognize and respect.

After another deep drink from his glass, Ryan pushed it aside and looked at his friend. “So, you said you’d been having a shitty day? Did you have to see Jeanine Robinson-McIntosh too?”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “If I had, I’d probably have shot myself by now. What’d she want?”

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

“What, are we ten again? Did you steal a hamster from the pet store and hide it from your parents?”

“They never did find out about old Tater Tot, did they?” Ryan smiled.

“You never mentioned it, so I guess they didn’t. You kept his cage under your bed, right?”

“Yep. Fed him dog food.”

“Where’d you get that from?”

That was a long story and it involved a two-year-long ruse. A few houses down, there had been a neighbor who kept his dog outside most of the day. The mutt was as happy as any outside dog could ever be, with food, water, and a dog house in the shade of a Japanese maple. Ryan would head over there every other day and steal a handful of dog food out of the sealed bag that the neighbor kept safely inside his covered deck. Eventually, the neighbor had noticed that his food was being used up faster than he was doling it out; thinking perhaps there was a raccoon on the loose, that neighbor set up a humane trap and baited it with more dog food. Ryan continued to steal the food, baffling his neighbor at how a raccoon could outsmart the trap. Tater Tot lived a very fat and happy lifestyle, supplemented with table scraps, until his passing.

Any other day, Ryan would have gladly shared this tale with his friend but there were more important things at hand. “Man, Dilly, I thought there was something weird about her wanting sessions alone with me but then again...this time, she tried to get me to have sex with her.”

Dylan’s jaw dropped, exposing a pink tongue and two rows of white teeth. For some reason, it was difficult to look away from that tongue. An uncomfortable feeling flushed through Ryan’s body, prickling beneath his skin. “You’re... you’re kidding.”

“I’m not. She would’ve dragged me to bed by my balls if I was one second slower making my exit. Was it ever like that with Arden?”

As always, the mention of Arden brought a defensive scowl to Dylan’s face. The omega stood up without another word and headed over to the bar. Ryan watched him go and had just finished his first beer when Dylan returned with another for both of them.

Neither of them spoke. Their drinks had suddenly become much more interesting. Ryan wasn’t worried about having said the wrong thing because he knew he had. With Arden, nothing was right.

“No,” Dylan finally said. A waft of beer-scent emerged from his mouth with his breath as he sighed. “No, it was never like that with Arden. I wasn’t really her kind of guy. I guess she wasn’t my kind of person, either.”

Arden was Dylan’s ex-wife, an alpha female. He’d always thought she was a bit high-strung for an alpha, too materialistic for a wolf, but you didn’t say that kind of shit to your best friend. You congratulated him and hoped that he would see the truth on his own eventually.

“You know, sometimes I’m not sure why we even got married.”

Ryan knew why. The whole pack knew why. He just didn’t like it.

Shortly after he and Dylan went through that night of mistakes together, the omega had approached him and explained that he’d found a woman to love him and that they were having a child together. Since Dylan was the omega of the relationship, he was the one who was pregnant.

The revelation took only about two months to come about, which would have been appalling to most of human society but was about standard for wolves. The animals within them recognized a mate before the human part of them accepted it, since wolves needed little in the way of courtship before bonding for life.

The whole thing made him sad and a little bit afraid, to see his best friend moving so fast through life, covering distance in leaps and bounds that neither of them were prepared for. But Ryan supported him, supported his marriage to Arden, and he was the first one at the shifter-friendly hospital when Dylan gave birth.

The kid was ugly, but Ryan thought all kids were gross.

That should have been the end of it, but less than a year later, the two divorced and Arden took the kid with her because the human-American justice system declared that a baby needed its mother. They had no way of knowing that in this case, Dylan was the mother.

It was a terrible thing to only be able to see your own pup every other weekend, but Ryan knew it was for the best. He knew a lot of things, remembered a lot more from their drunken talks than he would ever let on. For instance, Dylan sometimes let a hint or two drop towards the idea that he had been pregnant even before they decided to get married. The whole pack suspected as much. That happened all the time and wasn’t exactly disapproved of, but it was also suspected that they got married because of the pup.

That was just dumb. It was asking for trouble, and trouble had answered.

“Anyway.” Dylan broke the silence which had fallen between them. “Anything else happen besides that crazy shit with Jeanine?”

“No. I just think I won’t be taking anymore private sessions with her. Whatever shit she’s got to say, she can say it in front of River.” Ryan took another deep drink of his beer. “So, your turn to talk shit.”

Dylan groaned out loud and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Oh, you won’t believe this shit.”

“Try me.”

“Okay. So, when I get to the shop in the morning, I’m always the first one there. Right? I got the keys.”

“Right,” Ryan agreed.

“Fucking wrong. There’s already a car parked out in the service area. And I think okay, that’s not unusual. Someone really needed help. And the exhaust pipe was still steaming in the cold so it hadn’t been there long. But that’s the weird part. No one in the driver’s seat. Guess where they were?”

“Where?”

“In the shop.”

Ryan let out a startled laugh, almost choking on a mouthful of beer. “What?”

“This...this woman was driving a minivan. She looks like she’s a 40-year-old soccer mom. And she arrived at the shop mere seconds before I did, parked, and fucking jimmied the lock to invite herself into my office. I don’t know how, but she did.”

“Goddamn. What did she want?”

“Said her engine was making a weird noise. Turns out it wasn’t the engine. It was the snake in the engine. Her son’s corn snake, which had just escaped somehow after eating its mouse for the week. It got itself wedged in there and couldn’t get back out again, probably searching for warmth in the cold. And when she started the engine up again...” Dylan held his arm out to the side and whipped it around. “Snake pieces everywhere.”

“Damn,” Ryan said. “What’d you do?”

“What could I do except get some leather gloves and start picking out pieces of snake? I couldn’t get all of it, though. Lots of tiny little pieces that were already baked on by the heat of the engine running. This woman wanted to know why I wouldn’t wash her engine for her. I said, lady, you can’t wash a fucking engine. I told her the best she could hope for was having the snake bits eventually bake, then burn, then crumple to ash. She didn’t pay me. Technically she didn’t have to because all I really did was inspect her vehicle, but holy hell. At least give a guy a tip after you break into his place of business! Is that too much to ask?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Ryan replied. As much as he felt bad for his friend, he couldn’t help but to be amused. And seeing his amusement, feeling his laughter, Dylan started laughing, too.

“Well, that was only the start of my shitty day. Nothing else really worth mentioning, though. Some tools broke, some people complained, some idiots came in ten minutes before they had to be somewhere else wanted me to fix ‘whatever that clunking sound is.’” Dylan sighed. “But I’m here now. With you.”

If there was wistfulness in those words, they both chose to ignore it. Ryan focused on his drink again until it was gone, and then he took a turn getting them another.

“How’s your pup doing? You heard from him recently?”

A slight change came over Dylan at the mention of his son. The wistfulness deepened, bringing a distant glisten to his sparkling eyes. There was a softening that happened, too. Dylan looked less stressed, less annoyed at the world. A smile curved on his lips. His clenched jaw line eased somewhat.

“Hunter is doing great. Got a call from him last night.”

“He’s in kindergarten this year, right?”

Dylan nodded cheerfully, smiling even more now. His cheer was contagious and Ryan grinned. There were thoughts in his head that he didn’t imagine he would ever say out loud, but he really thought Dylan was an attractive man who might have more luck with the ladies if he smiled like that more often.

“It’s not really all that different from preschool,” Dylan said. “They still take naps and color and play for most of the day. Some of the other kids are learning how to write their name and do math but he’s already got all that down. He might even be a little bored but he doesn’t act like it.”

“Good to hear. When do I get to see the little guy again? It’s been a few years now, right?”

Some of the softness immediately faded from Dylan’s expression, though for the life of him Ryan couldn’t figure out why. Maybe Dylan already got to spend so little time with his son that he didn’t want to share that time with anyone, not even his best friend. If he didn’t know better, he would have said that expression was guarded.

But what could he possibly be hiding?

Maybe his instincts were just off tonight. They didn’t hide things from each other. Never had.

“Yeah, it has been a few years.” Dylan played restlessly with the little puddle of condensation left on the tabletop by his sweating glass. He drew little swirling symbols, as if writing something, but the droplets of water didn’t hold together long enough for Ryan to figure out what they might have said. “You’d...you’d hardly recognize him. He’s really grown. Maybe this weekend you can see him. I’ll try to convince him that he wants to meet my friend but I don’t know if he’ll go for it.”

Dylan wasn’t looking at him as he spoke, and now Ryan realized why that was. The realization came with a pang, almost as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Those distant eyes, the gaze avoidance, the vague way of speaking...

Dylan was lying to him about something. But what? What was there for him to lie about? Looking back, he thought he might have seen these same signs on a number of other occasions and just hadn’t paid much attention to them.

Does he not want me to see his kid?

If Dylan was a client, he would have pushed at those weak points until everything came crumbling down around them. He would be forced to tell the truth at that point, and they could move on from there. It was a tactic Ryan had employed in nearly every case he ever worked, simply because even the most well-meaning of people tended to omit bits of information to get their way. The thing was, most people weren’t hardened criminals who were used to lying. A normal person would give in after enough pushing and prodding, if only out of pure annoyance.

But you didn’t do that to friends.

Whatever secrets Dylan hid, they were his to keep until he wanted to come out with them on his own.

Ryan took a small sip at his beer, though at this point he’d mostly lost his taste for it. The liquid was sour on his tongue, difficult to swallow. “Do you know what he’ll be yet?”

Shapeshifters weren’t born with their parents knowing whether they would be an alpha, beta, or omega. These things were determined from conception but signs of a child’s true identity emerged slowly, gradually, as they grew older. Alpha wolves tended to develop faster, which naturally pointed them out as fledgling alphas. Five years old was probably soon enough to tell.

Dylan smiled but there was no real warmth in it and it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think he’s going to be an alpha. Just like his Daddy.”

Since the person who carried the child was technically the mother, the other person in a shapeshifter relationship was often called the father. These labels were meaningless regarding gender, and they were quickly falling out of fashion as alternative relationships became even more common, but they still found usage here and there. Really it all came down to a person’s preference. That was what made it a bit odd in this case, since Ryan hadn’t ever heard Dylan refer to his ex in such a manner.

Not that it matters, he thought. People change all the time.

They kept the conversation going through sheer determination, but not even that was enough to pave over whatever rough patch they’d hit somewhere along the way. Words came roughly and with a great deal of hesitation, but no matter how hard they tried they kept running into potholes.

Eventually, Dylan straightened up in his seat and Ryan knew their time together was over for the night. Something was really bothering Dylan. Even though this was more than an hour earlier than they’d usually call it quits, he’d already had more than he normally drank. His nervousness and agitation were quiet but catching, and it was all Ryan could do to hold off on following his lead. Neither of them wanted to go down that road again. They had survived one drunken complication, but another just might be the end of them. If that happened, he didn’t know what he’d do.

“I have to be up bright and early tomorrow. Same as every day.” Dylan rubbed the back of his neck, eyes dancing around in an effort to not look directly at Ryan. “So, I should get going.”

There was no point arguing, no point pushing the subject. “I’ll walk you out to your car,” Ryan suggested.

“Oh. I didn’t drive.”

That was probably a good thing, though Dylan didn’t exactly seem drunk out of his mind. Still, it was puzzling. “You walked all the way here?”

“In one way or another, yeah.”

Which meant that Dylan had come most or all the way here in wolf form, probably sticking to the shadows the whole time. That was troubling in its own way. There was a sort of unwritten code amongst shapeshifters that they should try not to cause trouble for one another by being seen shape shifting by regular humans. While that didn’t mean they couldn’t go around in broad daylight, it certainly wasn’t advisable. Dylan was so intelligent and level-headed most of the time; what had caused him to make that choice?

Sensing his question, Dylan replied. “I just needed to blow off some steam.”

“Do you want a ride home, then? It can be dangerous after dark.”

“What, are you my mate? I don’t need you to hold my hand the whole way, Castle.”

Ouch.

They only threw out each other’s last names when they were getting annoyed. Another unwritten code, though this one existed between only them.

Ryan held up his hands to surrender. Worry knotted tightly in his throat for his friend and whatever stress he was going through but there was nothing he could do. “Send me a text or something tomorrow, then. So I know you’re safe.”

“Sure. I’ll see you later, fuckface.”

An attempt to make amends for the tension. “Alright, dickhead. See ya.”

Dylan staggered off through the bar, fielding questions from a man who apparently wanted to chat. He reached the door and ducked through the gap without opening it fully, before disappearing off into the night. Just out of sight of the rest of the patrons, he shifted and started to run. Ryan felt the whole thing through the connection they shared as lifelong friends and it both baffled and concerned him. Something was wrong, but there was nothing he could do to fix it.

Shaking his head, he finished the last mouthful of amber-colored alcohol in his glass and went up to the bar. There was an ache in the back of his throat, a thirst born of need, but he ignored it and requested a half-order of onion ring nachos.

No one spoke to him as he ate. He tipped the girl who came to retrieve his empty basket and left. Something gnawed at him from the inside, and it wasn’t the food. Too early for heartburn to set in. No, it was loneliness. Loneliness and worry.

He hesitated beside his truck in the parking lot, one hand on the door and the other in his pocket grasping for the keys. Going home made the most sense, of course. There was nothing left for him to do. He’d never been the bar-hopping type, and he had no interest in trying to pick some girl up just to pump her and dump her. Those days were mostly behind him, especially considering the last time he’d brought home a strange broad, he woke up to her ransacking his garage for some paint to huff.

So, he could go home. Or he could do the dishonorable thing and drive by Dylan’s house to see if he’d made it back safely. That was the right thing to do, but also the wrong thing. If he did that, he was being a good friend. However, he would also be disrespecting Dylan’s wishes.

And he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go behind someone’s back unless he had a real reason to worry and this seemed like just a rough patch, like a hitch in Dylan’s step. They’d both get over it, separate or together.

He went home to his empty house. Something about the darkened driveway made his guts twist around and form a tangled coil. There were too many emotions in that mix, too many things he would rather not deal with right now when booze dulled his control.

But he still couldn’t escape the feeling that something was wrong about coming home to an empty house, to walking through a living room filled with only his own things. Shouldn’t the floor be littered with toys or clothes? In the bathroom, wouldn’t it be better if someone else had their toothbrush in that cup right next to his?

Wouldn’t it be better to come home to laughter and hugs and a fond kiss? To see children’s toys littering his perfect lawn, tripping over them in the middle of the night when he woke up in need of a snack?

Wouldn’t it?

Most of the time, he thought not. He was a happy bachelor, had never really had much interest in finding a mate. Clearly it wasn’t the responsibility that put him off, since he was in charge of an entire pack, but he had never been able to really get into the idea of sharing his own space, of leaning on someone else. He was the one to be leaned on, the one who shouldered all the burdens. No one else.

Most of the time.

Other times, such as after a night of drinking, and on the rare occasion when he couldn’t sleep, he questioned those choices.

That time was now, no matter how hard he tried to push the thoughts away. Putting his keys up, getting ready for bed, doing his last round through the house to check all the doors and windows, he could feel those nagging doubts keeping pace with him the whole way.

He crawled into bed and stared up at the ceiling. The furnace thrummed deep in the basement of the house and the heat kicked on with a soft rattling of vents, but otherwise the world was utterly silent. He might have been the only wolf in the entire world. There was no denying that sometimes he hated the sounds his own house made. The rattles and creaks were entirely natural but the way they seemed to echo through the halls was anything but. There should have been something to disturb those ambient sounds. The soft breaths of a person sleeping on the other side of the bed, for example.

Groaning, Ryan rolled over onto his side and pressed his head more firmly against the pillow. The weight of his thoughts was oppressive, almost unbearable. Crushing weight settled on his shoulders, constricted his breathing.

God, I wish Dylan was here.

Not to talk, but simply to share the silence with him, to let their emotions pass between them until they wore each other out.

One thing led to another, thoughts trailed on, and he suddenly wished he hadn’t thought of Dylan because now he was remembering that night and what happened between them, and the way he felt. The way Dylan felt. When they...

Stop.

He sat up and buried his face in his hands. Time never passed without people changing. He knew that. He was always the first one to detect such differences. Maybe he himself was changing. Maybe, after all this time, he was developing a desire to settle down for good. Sell the boat and buy a crib, maybe.

“I’ll hate myself for this in the morning,” he muttered. The silence seemed to swallow his words, rendering them insignificant.

Almost a year ago, he recommended that a member of his pack reenter the dating scene to shake off some of the cobwebs growing around his life. That pack member was now happily married, with a beautiful daughter. An initially rocky start led to a life filled with bliss.

Perhaps it was time for him to do the same. He wasn’t suffering from depression and was content most of the time, but maybe contentment wasn’t enough anymore.

He remembered saying words to that pack member, words which seemed very stupid but which had led to that happiness and light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a wishing well, he had said. That was how it began.

If he wanted it, there was an answer for him at the wishing well, too.

Few people knew about the well. It wasn’t exactly a secret so much as it was something that simply wasn’t talked about. In Abingdon, Virginia, about five or six hours to the west, there was an orchard owned by wolf shapeshifters. Behind that orchard was the wishing well. A shapeshifter could supposedly look into that well and be shown the person who was meant to be their true mate.

The very idea was preposterous. Shapeshifters knew so little of their own potential but a magic wishing well? That was just absurd. No matter how much a person tried to apply logic to such a thing, it just didn’t seem right.

Yet, Josh had found his mate, and everything had worked out perfectly.

Ryan lay back down and looked up at the ceiling again, examining the soft outline of shadows on the bumpy surface. From what he could gather, Josh had seen his future mate in person before going to the well and catching a glimpse of him there. For all he knew, the well only showed people what they wanted to see or just connected them with someone at random.

He was a man of reason and shouldn’t even be considering this, yet as he waited through the hours in search of sleep, he kept coming back to thoughts of the well. Everyone learned as a child that temptation led a person down paths best not taken, but, he thought for the first time, he could understand why someone might stray.

When he woke up in the morning, he couldn’t remember having fallen asleep. Judging from the way he felt, he might as well not have slept at all. A headache had settled right behind his eyes, and his mouth felt as if he’d licked the inside of a dumpster. His stomach churned both from hunger and in protest of what he’d eaten last night.

The room spun around him as he sat up, and he had to press his hands against his eyes to wait for everything to tilt back into a normal position. When it seemed safe to move again, Ryan dropped his hands down to the twisted bedsheets. He looked over at the alarm clock on his nightstand.

10:12 a.m.

“Shit,” he swore. He swore softly to keep from aggravating his headache, but his anger wasn’t dulled in the slightest by the quiet way he spoke. There were three alarms on the damn clock to make sure this exact thing didn’t happen! Had the contraption somehow faltered since last night? That wouldn’t have surprised him. Shapeshifters had a lot of bad luck with all sorts of electronics, not just phones.

Reaching out, he picked up the clock and inspected it. The anger throbbed inside him, making him grit his teeth. No, it wasn’t broken or glitched. All three alarms had been hit as normal, which meant he’d either done it in his sleep or just didn’t remember doing it. Considering how awful he felt, either one was just as likely. That didn’t make him feel any better. He was two hours late for basically everything.

Grabbing his phone, he scowled at the long list of missed calls and perplexed texts. Most of them were from his secretary as she desperately tried to do damage control for all his missed appointments, but several were from clients themselves who weren’t too pleased about this inconvenience.

One was from Dylan, only 15 minutes ago.

“Sorry for delayed response,” the text read. “Made it home last night. Just woke up.”

You and me both.

Ryan rolled out of bed and stretched. The act made the world spiral around him again but his muscles thanked him for the release from their tension. There was no use in rushing things now. He was already late, already in terrible condition, so the best thing he could do was go about his morning routine as usual and then spend the rest of the day making up for it.

He hoped Dylan would fare better.