I was collecting the last of the supper dishes from the residents to take to the kitchen when the shift supervisor poked her head in the common room door and made a ‘come here’ motion with one hand. As quick as I could, I cleared away the last table and loaded everything on my cart, then pushed it all over in her direction.

“You wanted me?” I asked. I hoped it wasn’t anything time-consuming—I had fifteen minutes, give or take, left on my shift and I was tired and ready to go home.

“There’s someone here to see you,” she whispered and I couldn’t tell if she was scandalized or excited for me. Or… I glanced past her into the lobby and saw Mike leaning casually against the front desk, chatting up the staff there.

“Tell him I’m still working.” Except I had to go through the lobby to get to the kitchen and drop off my load of dirty dishes. Damn it. “Never mind, I’ll tell him.” I gritted my teeth and shoved the cart out into the lobby.

Mike straightened up as soon as I came in and smiled. My heart stopped dead before leaping wildly around in my chest, so of course I frowned and began shoving the cart even harder in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m working,” I snapped and fought a sudden urge to sit down and weep like my nephew when he’d been told no more ice cream. The worst of it was, I didn’t even know why I wanted to cry, I just really wanted to.

“I know,” Mike said, and his voice sparked memories that made my emotions even worse. “I brought coffee. And pastry. I thought we could go for a walk.”

“Idiot,” I muttered, while my brain replayed all the times we’d gone for walks. Including the ones where we’d actually done some walking. “Why would I want to go for a walk after working a twelve-hour shift?” The stupid cart had one sticky wheel and of course it would pick now as a great time to stop spinning at all.

Then all of a sudden, he was beside me, putting that well-honed muscle of his to work forcing the cart to obey. “I was thinking more like we take the coffee and pastry down to the park and sit at one of the picnic tables. Unless you’d rather take it home?”

The cart started to move with a grinding noise of protest and we rolled down the hall toward the kitchen doors, Mike keeping pace but not offering to help as I shoved the thing along. I appreciated that—most alphas would have shoved their way in, tried to take over. Mike had always gotten that about me. I wasn’t bothered by being omega, but I wasn’t comfortable being treated like a doll or someone too fragile to look after themselves.

We got to the kitchen and I pushed the cart through the door. Mike stayed outside in the hallway and I paused and put out a foot to keep the door from closing completely. “I have to unload the cart before I can go.”

“I’ll wait outside for you,” he said and I thought for a moment he might have leaned in to kiss me, but then the moment disappeared and he left in the direction of the lobby again.

I’d never unloaded the cart so fast in my life. Everything was either in a dishwasher or in the sink and I was already pulling on my hoodie and gathering up my car keys when the end of my shift came. “See you,” I called and forced myself to walk, though I really wanted to run. Would he still be out there waiting for me?

He was. Half sitting on the hood of his car, looking at his phone. Totally relaxed, totally picture worthy. I might have snuck one of him if he hadn’t heard my footsteps on the concrete and looked up. But the smile I got was worth losing the chance at a picture, and it was probably burned into my memory as tightly as the picture would have been burned into my memory card anyway. And much less easy to lose.

“Hi,” I said, feeling a little awkward now.

“Hi,” he said back. “You want to go in my car?”

I did. Through the passenger window, I could see a box from my favorite pastry shop and two tall take-out cups of coffee. “No, I’ll take mine. What part of the park were you thinking of?”

“Down near the bandshell?”

I nodded. “I’ll meet you there.” It was better this way. I was obviously too smitten still to be in a car alone with him. And we had far too much to talk about before I wanted to be anywhere I couldn’t just get up and leave from. If everything went to pieces tonight, at least I wouldn’t be trapped at the park and dependent on him for a drive back to get my car.

“All right.” He stood up and went around to the driver’s side of his car. “I’ll see you down there.”

All the way there, I reminded myself that just because he hadn’t argued with me didn’t mean that this was a long-term change. I’d been sure when I’d kissed him good-bye at the airport all those years ago that nothing could change him then, too, and look where that got me?

I parked my car next to his and took a deep breath to steady myself before I got out. He was easy to spot, sitting at one of the picnic tables right down by the man-made pond, with the coffee set out and the pastry box open in the middle. He’d brought a loaf of bread with him too and was busy tearing up a slice to feed to the voracious ducks that called the park home.

“You know that isn’t good for them,” I said as I slid into my seat at the other side of the table.

Mike handed me a slice of bread. “But look how happy they are,” he pointed out and held out a piece of crust for a fat mallard to grab right from his hand.

The ducks were no dummies; they knew that more people meant more bread and it wasn’t long before I was surrounded too. “They’re going to want the pastries too when they’re done with the bread,” I grumbled, and fended off one particularly aggressive duck who wanted to jump into my lap and hog all my bread for herself. “Get down, you!”

“I promise you,” Mike said. “I will defend your pastries to the death.” He took a moment in the middle of the feeding frenzy to reach into the box and hand one to me. “But just in case, you might want to feed with one hand and eat with the other.”

I accepted the croissant with a sigh of resignation and started to do just that.

It took a while after the loaf of bread was done for the ducks to leave us in peace, the optimistic little quackers. But eventually it was just me and Mike, alone at our table.

“Thank you for the coffee,” I said politely. I thought I should give him an opening, and some part of me wanted to make it a little easy for him. Not too easy, but not Mt. Everest either.

“Did I get it right?”

One milk, one sugar. I nodded.

He looked away to gaze out over the pond, then swung both legs over the picnic table’s bench and faced me square on. “I thought I’d start out with an abject apology, if that’s okay with you.”

I froze with my pastry halfway to my mouth. It had almost sounded like the setup for a joke, the kind of thing where you have to say something unpleasant but you say it in a funny way so it’s easier to get through. Not that I was innocent of that little trick, but to hear it in his voice made my heart race in sudden anxiety. This was a mistake. I knew it. “If you’re going to joke about it, I’m done,” I managed to get out.

“No, I’m not joking. Just trying to get my thoughts in order. There’s a lot of them.” He smiled weakly in my direction, the first real sign I’d seen in him that he realized how badly he’d screwed up.

“All right.” I took a bite of the croissant and sighed happily. Chocolate.

He smiled at me then, not his show-stopper smile but the one I remembered from high school. The one he used to wear when he was just happy that I was happy.

Stop melting my heart.

He took a breath and glanced away again just for a moment, and then he began to speak.