... and then, finally, his pants came off.

I'd just finished adding that line to the novel on my computer when Betty barked. Surprised, I looked over to where she was sitting curled up on an old armchair next to my bed. Betty wasn't the kind of dog who barked at nothing. No, in fact, I got the feeling she considered herself above those kinds of dogs.

“What is it, old girl?” I asked. And then I heard it too. A noise that sounded like tiny pebbles hitting my window. Instantly, I was transported back to my childhood and before I knew what I was doing it, I'd walked over to the window and thrown it wide open. A cold gust of wind blew into the room, but I didn’t care. Down below in the snow in front of my store stood Nick. In the light of the street lamp, he grinned up at me.

“Thought you were never gonna notice!” he called.

“I have a door bell, you know!”

He shrugged. “I felt like doing this for old time's sake.”

I shook my head. “I'll open the door for you, you must be freezing!” Where had he even found the pebbles in this weather? I could just picture him using his phone as flashlight to search the side of the road. All of this was so Nick. Even as I shook my head about him, a smile formed on my face. I'd missed his antics more than I liked to admit. He kept life interesting. He always had.

When I opened the door downstairs, I found him brushing some snow out of his hair.

“What leads you here at—” I never even got to finish the question before something cold and wet hit my face.

What?

Wiping the snow from my eyes, I stared at Nick, who wore the biggest smile on his face. The bastard! “Oh you!”

Guessing that I was about to get my revenge, Nick jumped a few steps back, but he wasn't running and that was his downfall. Quickly, I scooped up some snow that had accumulated on my doorstep and caught up to Nick. His coat didn't have a hood. It was almost too easy to shove the snow down his neck.

He shrieked and did a little dance while trying to reach his back with his hands.

I laughed so hard I had to hold my belly. “I still know your weak spot!”

“No fair!” Nick finally stopped contorting himself. “I'll get you back for this.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely.” He collected some more snow from the ground to form another snowball in his hands. He wasn't even wearing gloves.

When he threw the snowball at me, I dodged easily. He'd caught me unawares earlier, but I wasn't going to be so careless anymore. Scowling, he gathered more snow and charged at me. When he reached for my face with his fistful of snow, I grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him even closer. Off-balance, he made a surprised noise until I caught his lips in a kiss and the snow fell from his hand.

“Okay,” he said on an exhale, our breaths mingling in the cold. “You win this round.”

For once, standing in front of my bookstore and drawing the omega I loved into my arms, I actually did feel like a winner. “What do you think about going inside and warming up a little?”

“That sounds great.”

“Good.” Grabbing Nick's hand, I turned back to my front door only to spot my dog eyeing the both of us as if wondering if we'd gone completely mad. I couldn't blame her. I always felt a little crazy around Nick, but I enjoyed the insanity he brought with him too much to protest.

Truth be told, my life was boring without him.

Betty didn't say anything as we walked past her and up the stairs. Her way of accepting our visitor. Once we reached my apartment, Nick looked around with wide eyes, inspecting everything. “I can't believe you're living above a bookstore and you're still cramming books into every corner of your living space,” he said, eyeing my makeshift coffee table, which was indeed a stack of old hardcover encyclopedias.

“They were out of date when my grandmother was still alive. I couldn't sell them anymore,” I explained. But Nick had already moved on to something else, namely the lists taped to my fridge with magnets.

“It's good to know you still make lists for everything.”

“Not everything,” I protested.

“C'mon.” He shot me a look and recited the title of the topmost list. “List of cars I will never buy.” Then he went on to, “Titles of books left to review,” and, “People I will not lend books to anymore.”

“Those are all important lists. Especially that last one.”

“What did those poor people do?” Nick asked as he moved away from the fridge. Obviously, my lists could not hold his attention any longer.

“They're book abusers.”

“Book abusers?”

“People who dog-ear the pages or perform similarly heinous crimes.”

“Oh.” For only a second, guilt flashed across Nick's features. Oh no. What had he done? Before I could ask, Nick flopped in the chair in front of my desk, looking intently at my laptop. Too late I realized that I still had my work-in-progress open. “Were you writing?” he asked, leaning in. “Oh. Wow.” His eyebrows shot up. “You were writing something naughty.”

No point denying that now when Nick had the evidence right in front of him. Nothing for me to do but own up to it. After the night we'd shared in Crystal Bay, there was no reason to be shy. “I was, until you interrupted me.” And I was still not sure exactly why he had come, but I was glad for it anyway.

“And here I thought you were writing a book about underprivileged omegas.”

“I tend to have more than one project going at a time.” Tonight, I'd been in the mood for something a little more spicy. Especially since I couldn't get Nick out of my head. It was impossible to focus on anything more serious when all I could think about was whether or not I could keep him by my side.

“I see.” Nick's eyes flew over the lines. “You didn't get very far.”

“No.”

“Do you write stuff like this a lot?” His eyebrows were still raised, as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd discovered. What, did he think I was too tame to write what he'd just read?

Time to prove him wrong.

“Come down with me,” I told him and led the way to bookstore below us, where I turned on the light and showed him a row of shelves in the back area. This was where I kept all the romance and erotica novels. “This is my pen name,” I said, pointing to the back of one of the books, which read: “An Alpha's Lost Love by Z. C. Silver.”

Nick stepped up beside me to pull the book from its shelf, and then he scanned the row of books beside it. “But that's like twenty books,” he said, surprise evident in his voice. “You wrote twenty porn books?”

“They're not porn books, they're romance,” I corrected him. “Did you ever finish reading the one I gave you?”

Nick's eyes grew even wider. “You wrote that one too?”

A little laugh escaped me. Nick looked just too cute in his confusion. He seriously hadn't expected me to be writing anything remotely raunchy. Still waters run deep, my friend. “It's my latest,” I said. “Not even published yet. What do you think? Is it gonna do well?”

“It might!” Nick said with some enthusiasm as he regained his composure. “I mean, I don't know much about books, but I... liked it. What I've read so far. I haven't finished it.” At this, he looked aside as if a little ashamed.

“It's fine. You don't need to be a super-fast reader. I'm just glad that you enjoyed what you read.”

He gave me a soft smile as he placed the book back on its shelf. “I've always liked your stories and if you hadn't given me that one... I might never have asked you to be my pretend boyfriend.”

“And what a tragedy that would have been,” I tried to joke, even though I meant it.

“How does the story end?” Nick asked. For a moment, I wasn't sure whether he was talking about the book or us. When I looked at his face, it seemed he wasn't too sure either.

“I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. You have to read it.”

Nick stepped away from the shelves and took my hands. “At least tell me if there's going to be a happy ending,” he said, peering into my eyes.

My heart beat faster, feeling his absolute attention on me. “It's a romance novel.”

“Not all romances end well.”

“No, but in romance novels they do, at least in the good ones.” I squeezed his hands. Moments like this, I wished life could resemble fiction a little more.

Nick leaned in close, his hair brushing my cheek as he rested his head on my shoulder. “So they get to stay together?”

“Yeah, they do,” I said, drawing his sweet scent into my nose with a deep breath.

“Even though their relationship started out fake?”

“Yeah.”

A pause. Then, “Do you think that's going to happen to us?” Nick lifted his head to look at me again, eyes trained on mine. “You said you loved me.”

My stomach squeezed. “I do.”

Nick smiled, and something in me relaxed again. How could he do that to me so easily? Love was such a weird emotion—but wonderful, too. Probably why I liked to write about it so much. No other feeling had quite so many facets.

“You know I came here tonight because I needed to know something,” Nick said.

“What did you need to know?” I asked. If I loved him? Because I'd already told him that twice now, but I'd say it again. As many times as was necessary.

“After last night, I kind of wondered. I mean, it's all so confusing. I wasn't sure if it was just the heat that made me want you when I never wanted anyone else before. So I had to come here to see if I...” He shook his head and then he smiled again. “Sorry, I'm rambling. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I needed to know if last night was just a fluke.”

“So what's the verdict?” I asked, trying not to bite my lower lip.

Nick went down on one knee in front of me, much the same way he'd done when he asked me to be his fake husband. “Zander C. Kerner,” he started, “would you like to be my actual boyfriend?”

“I would love that.” I pulled Nick up on his feet, my heart beating faster, pumping joy through my veins. “You still want me?”

He grinned at me. “Do you think I could stay the night?”

Could you stay forever? “Does that mean you'd like to see my bedroom?”

“Maybe.” His grin turned wicked as he threw his arms around my neck. “I want to see everything.” He pressed a quick kiss to my lips that left them tingling, and then he finally uttered the words I'd been waiting to hear for the past thirteen years. “I love you, Zander. I never thought I'd feel that way about anyone, but I'm glad that it's you.”

“I'm glad that it's me too.” More than glad. I'd never considered myself overly alpha, but the thought of seeing Nick with someone else made me want to rip someone's brains out. I wanted him to be mine, and I couldn't believe that he wanted that too. How lucky was I to have him back after all this time?

Sure, we still had some problems to overcome, like the fact that we lived on different ends of the country, but tonight I didn't want to think about all that.

Tonight, I just wanted to be happy.