Chapter 39: The After
The days bled into a rhythm so consistent it felt like a soft cage. Wake up, heat the oatmeal Rhys had made her that first morning—she’d bought more ingredients to replicate it exactly, though hers never tasted quite right—work the morning shift at Greener Pastures, come home, text Rhys, sleep.Repeat.
The plant shop was a jungle of scents; damp soil, chlorophyll, the sweet rot of orchid bark. Aurora moved through it with a kind of Zen focus, misting delicate ferns, pruning yellowing leaves from a fiddle-leaf fig, her fingers careful and sure.This was a world she understood.Silent growth.Predictable needs. Water, light, nutrients.Simple.
Her phone, a persistent weight in her apron pocket, was not simple.Rhys (10:14 AM): That monster truck lift finally shipped. Took three weeks.Aurora (10:22 AM): A monster truck?Really?
Rhys (10:23 AM): Don’t judge.It’s for a client. Not my personal aesthetic.Aurora (10:25 AM): Liar. I bet you have a tiny one on your keychain.
Rhys (10:26 AM): …Maybe.She smiled, wiping her hands on her jeans.The texts were easy.Fun. They’d settled into a pattern of daily check-ins, him sending pictures of engine blocks or a messed-up weld, her sending photos of bizarre succulents or the latte art Rina made for her.It was a connection, but it was happening in a vacuum. A digital echo of the man who had filled her kitchen with his presence, his scent, his unshakeable certainty.Three weeks. It had been three weeks since he’d kissed her forehead and walked out her door.
“You’re sighing again.” Rina appeared from behind a towering monstera, her arms laden with bags of potting mix.“It’s the alpha, isn’t it? The mysterious text-man.”
“He’s not mysterious. He’s just busy.”
“And you’re just pining.” Rina dumped the bags with a soft thud. She was a beta, fiercely pragmatic, with a protective streak wider than she was tall.“Busy men make time, Rory. If he wanted to see you, he’d see you.”
Aurora focused very hard on untangling the roots of a root-bound peace lily. “He had to go out of town for that big custom job.And the shop is short-staffed. He sent me a picture of the schedule. It’s… brutal.”
“So he says.” Rina knelt beside her, her voice dropping.“Look, I just don’t want you getting hurt. You get this look when you talk about him.Like he hung the moon. You’ve never even… you know.”
“I know what I haven’t done, Rina.” Aurora’s voice was quieter than she intended.She couldn’t explain the phone calls. The ones that came late, when his voice was a tired rasp sanded down by long hours, and he’d ask her about her day and actually listen to the answer. He’d told her about the cheating ex, the bitterness of it, how he wasn’t looking for anything complicated. She’d just listened, her heart a bruised peach in her chest.It felt real.The exhaustion in his voice was real.
But the distance was also real.That night, her apartment felt too large. The lavender scent from her diffuser was cloying. She burrowed into the nest of blankets on her bed, the fluffy white comforter swallowing her petite frame. She pulled up their chat log, scrolling back to the last voice note he’d sent two days ago.She pressed play, holding the phone to her ear.
“—so then the kid tries to tell me the alternator’s fine, and I have to show him the scorch marks. Sometimes I miss having an apprentice who doesn’t argue.” A pause, the sound of a tool clinking on concrete.“Your day better than mine, I hope. Talk tomorrow, Aurora.”
His voice did something to her insides. It smoothed out the anxious edges, settled the low-grade panic that hummed in her veins most days.She played it again. And again.She wanted more than his voice. She wanted the heavy weight of his arm around her, the solid wall of his chest against her back, the scratch of his stubble on her forehead. She wanted to feel small again, in the good way.The safe way.
Her phone buzzed, startling her.A new text.Not from Rhys.Unknown Number: Hey Aurora. It’s Ben.From the building committee?We met last month about the recycling bins. I got your number from the directory.Hope that’s okay.She stared at the message. Ben was a beta from two floors up.Pleasant.Normal. He’d asked about her cat—she didn’t have a cat—and smiled with very straight teeth.A logical, safe choice. The kind of guy Rina would approve of.Aurora dropped the phone like it was hot. It landed face-down on the comforter. She pulled a pillow over her head, breathing in the faint, clean smell of the laundry detergent.It didn’t smell like sandalwood. It didn’t smell like him.Her own phone buzzed again, a different, sharper tone.A call.
She scrambled for it, her heart catapulting into her throat. The screen glowed in the dim nest-light.Rhys.She swiped to answer, pressing the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
For a second, there was only the sound of his breathing. Then his voice, rougher than in the voice notes, stripped bare. “Aurora.”
“Is everything okay?”
“No.” The word was flat, final.“I’m done being busy. I’m done being sensible.I need to see you.Tonight.”
The demand should have scared her. It didn’t. It flooded the empty spaces in her apartment, in her routine, in her chest.It was a current, pulling her under.“Okay,” she whispered.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.Be downstairs.”
The line went dead.
Aurora sat frozen for a full ten seconds.Then she launched herself from the bed.Twenty minutes. She flew to her closet, her hands shaking.What did you wear for a man who sounded like that? Like he’d reached the end of a very long, very thin rope? She chose simple black leggings and an oversized cream sweater, her hands fumbling with the fabric.She didn’t bother with makeup. Just brushed her teeth, her wide hazel eyes staring back at her in the mirror. The girl there looked terrified.And alive.
At eighteen minutes, she was standing outside her building’s front door, the night air cool on her flushed cheeks.The street was quiet.
A black truck, big and slightly battered, rounded the corner. It pulled to the curb with a low growl of an engine that was all muscle.The driver’s door opened.Rhys unfolded himself from the seat.
He looked older.Weary. His dark hair was messy, like he’d been running his hands through it. He wore a simple grey t-shirt stretched across his broad chest and faded jeans, and even from ten feet away, she could see the tension in the set of his shoulders. His eyes found hers in the dim streetlight glow.He didn’t smile. He just looked at her, a long, swallowing look that traveled from her loose blonde hair down to her socked feet in their simple sneakers.It was the look of a man seeing water after days in a desert. Needy.Starving.“Hi,” she breathed.
He closed the distance between them in three long strides.He didn’t embrace her. He just stopped, close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his body, to smell the clean sweat and motor oil and him.
“I tried to stay away,” he said, his voice low and rough.“Told myself it was better. That you didn’t need the complication of a guy like me right now.”
She looked up at him, her pulse hammering in her throat.“What changed?”
His jaw tightened. A muscle flickered.“I got tired of my own voice in my head. Tired of pretending I just needed a release.” He raised one hand, slow, and brushed his knuckles along the curve of her cheek.The touch was searing.“I need to know if this is real. If you’re real. Or if I made you up because I wanted something sweet for once.”
His honesty was a physical blow.It left her breathless. “I’m here,” she said, the words barely audible.“Yeah,” he sighed, the sound full of a profound relief. “You are.Get in the truck, Aurora.Please.”
He didn’t wait for her to move. He simply took her hand, his fingers threading through hers with a possessive certainty, and led her to the passenger side.He opened the door, helped her up into the high seat. His hands lingered on her waist for a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
He closed the door, a solid, heavy thunk that felt like the sealing of a pact.
As he walked around the front of the truck, Aurora looked at her reflection in the dark window.Her eyes were huge, her lips parted. She looked like a girl being taken.She looked like a girl who wanted to be taken.
Rhys slid into the driver’s seat, the interior suddenly small, intimate, filled with his presence. He started the engine, the rumble vibrating through the seats. He didn’t ask for her address. He just pulled away from the curb, one hand on the wheel, the other reaching across the center console to rest on her thigh.His palm was warm, heavy.Anchoring.
He was taking her to his place.To the fortress of quiet control. And for the first time in three weeks, the hollow feeling was gone, replaced by a trembling, terrifying fullness. The night ahead was no longer an empty stretch of hours.It was a deep, dark door he was about to open. And she was ready to walk through it.