by T. S. Joyce
“Oh, and two of the chocolate frosted bear claws,” she finished up. “My friend looooves bears.”
Jerk. He hid a smile because she didn’t need to know how amusing her needling was.
He leaned into her and murmured, “I have to eat a lot.”
She nodded and without hesitation, she asked the friendly teen if they could have another dozen of the exact same ones and two orders of donut holes.
Huh. He liked that he didn’t have to explain the amount of food he needed to consume to make the monster drowsy. She didn’t even blink when the boy told her the total. Just pulled out two twenties and talked easily while he made her change.
She’d wanted to buy him breakfast, and okay. But he was going to pay her back, and he was going to have fun doing it. His kind didn’t keep debts. They paid them quick. She wouldn’t take money from him. He knew why she was buying him breakfast right now. It was because he’d brought her the chair to sleep on. Maybe her kind didn’t keep debts either.
God, what was she?
This was kind of fun.
She picked the table right next to the three green-hat ladies, of course, and grinned at him like she was daring him to sit somewhere else. Challenge accepted.
“Are you ladies having a good breakfast?” he asked, sure to keep his voice deep like women seemed to enjoy.
One of them started fanning herself and another shoved her glasses farther up her nose as she stared at his butt. The third just laughed at her friends.
“You two are a fine-looking couple,” the ogling one said. “Your children will be demigods.”
Children? Nope.
He took his seat across the table from Trina, and tried his best to ignore her pretty smile.
“I want two sets of twins. Maybe three,” she said. When he looked up at her, she laughed. “You should see your terrified face right now.” She did that cute thing where she was busy opening donuts and putting them on a plate, but kept randomly giggling, softer and softer until the laugh was only left in the lines beside her dancing eyes.
She devoured a whole chocolate covered one before she spoke again. “Donuts are my comfort food.”
“Oh yeah? Why?” he asked.
“I was raised in a small town. I mean, one stop-light in the town, everyone knew everyone, small town living. We didn’t have a lot of stores in our downtown, but there was this little donut shop that only fit maybe three people at a time. Tiiiiny store, but it made Piccolo Street smell divine. That was the hangout. There were tables outside on the sidewalk, and hanging baskets of purple flowers in the spring and summer. Momma Mae’s Donuts. My dad used to take me and my little sister there early in the mornings or after school before he brought us back home to start our homework.”
Hmmm, so she was able to go to public school, which said she didn’t struggle controlling her animal. Weresquirrel?
“Anyway,” she continued. “That was our special spot for so long. Now every time I pass a donut store, I think of the happy times with my dad and sister.”
“Where was your mom?”
“Oh, she was at home working. She worked a lot. Ran her own boutique, so Dad kinda took over the school stuff with me and my sister.”
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Tory.” Her eyes darted to her half-eaten bear claw and her tone went all soft, and something else. Sad?
“I’m sorry. Did you lose her?” he asked, the bite of food turning to coal in his mouth.
“No. No, she’s still alive. We’re very close. My parents were a bit of a mess, and I think being on our own so much bonded me and Tory more. Plus, it’s hard to find people like us.”
“How hard?” Yep, he was fishing for info.
She inhaled deeply and rested her chin on her interlocked hands. “Impossible,” she answered simply.
Oh shit. “You’re the last?”
“Me and Tory are.” She cracked a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Are you the last too?”
He froze. No, no, no, he didn’t want to talk about himself. He just wanted to absorb every tidbit of information from her without revealing anything of himself. God, it was tempting with her. Tempting to share the burden that was always so heavy on his shoulders, but it would only get her hurt.
“Everyone who has ever known about me has died, Trina. No more digging.”
“Hmm. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist.”
He didn’t understand.
Trina canted her head, and her smile reached her eyes again as she said, “I like digging.”
He chuckled. He couldn’t help it. The woman was sassy, and had much more of a backbone than he’d originally thought. She wasn’t a mouse, like he’d assumed.
“Yes. I’m the last.”
“Then I have a proposal.”
“Oh God,” he muttered, leaning back in his chair. “What’s the proposal?”
“Since we are both misfits, we should be best friends. So someday, when I’m off running my own life and doing amazing things, and I have one of those days where I am frustrated that I can’t find anyone who understands me, I can call you. And I can be like ‘hey, best friend, how is your day?’ and you’ll say, ‘sometimes it’s lonely being the only one of me left,’ and I’ll nod and take a selfie of me making a silly face, and I’ll send it to you, and you’ll crack a smile and send a silly selfie back, and then me and you will know we are alone in some ways, but in some ways we are not, and we will feel better.”
His old, dead heart was trying to glub-glub to life right now. She was doing something to him. Something bad, maybe. Something that shouldn’t be happening because he had a job, and it was a big one. An important one. He was supposed to stay steady and protect the world from himself. But right now? Looking into Trina’s pretty green eyes, swimming in that gorgeous smile that lingered just at the corners of her lips, he felt like he was perhaps feeling too much.
She stuck her hand out, over their pile of donuts, for a shake. “Best friends?”
Trina was baiting him. She was having fun. He could tell by the tension that had left her, and the challenge in her eyes and the easy laughs when she could tell he was uncomfortable. She didn’t think he would shake her hand and accept. She really didn’t.
Before he could change his mind, he reached across and clasped her hand as gently as he could. He held it for three seconds just to watch the smile fade to shock in her face, and then something blossomed in her gaze. Something warm. Something hopeful. Her cheeks were turning pink, and she seemed trapped in his gaze. He could do that to people, but usually he didn’t want to. With Trina though? Trapping her sounded fun.
“Friends,” he murmured, and then released her hand.
Chapter Seven
“You gonna help, or just sit there?” Nuke called without looking up from where he was hammering boards to his new front porch.
Amos was sitting in front of his trailer next door in a bright red plastic lawn chair, wearing a blue swim suit and leaned back like he was tanning. Amos shoved his sunglasses up onto his head. “Just sit here. When you’re finished, can you make me a porch too? I need a big one so I can have a fire pit and attract all the ladies. Bitches love fire pits.”
“You know what they don’t love? Being called bitches,” Trina advised him.
“Maybe I only date sassy Chihuahua shifters, and they are females, so technically? The term isn’t degrading.”
“Don’t bald eagles do better in colder climates, like Alaska?” Nuke asked him. “You should go there.”
“I like it here. I have a castle. I have friends—,”
“No, you don’t,” Nuke muttered.
“—I have a Crew. I have a good job. And I have the best damn neighbor around, who starts fuckin’ hammering at seven in the morning on my day off. Why would I want to be anywhere but here?”
“Nail.”
Trina scrambled to grab more nails from the box that rested on the grass beside her, and then handed Nuke one
.
The framework for the deck was already in place, and his trailer had stairs. Over the past three hours, she’d come to learn that her new best friend could probably build anything. He wasn’t even using a blueprint or anything, and this deck was big enough to cover the entire front of his trailer.
He hammered it in, and she hurried to peel her hoodie off before he needed another nail. The sun was high in the sky now, and she’d grown hot hauling the framework wood from the bed of his truck to their construction area.
She was learning so much!
Nuke held his hand out and she slapped a nail into it.
“Thank youuuu,” he drawled out as his eyes went to her tank top. “Holy shit,” he whispered.
Oh! Her tank top had pulled down a little under her hoodie and was showing a lot of cleavage right now. She pulled it up an inch and laughed. “You’re such a boy.”
“You have…nice…” He swallowed hard and ripped his gaze from her curves. “Hair.”
Hmmmm. “I’m going to pull more wood,” she told him, sliding the box of nails right beside him. He was nailing down the last two-by-six they had cut as floorboards.
“Do you think you are confident enough to make the cuts now?” he asked from behind her.
She did a dramatic about-face, sashaying her hips, and moseyed right back to him. “You bet your nuts I am,” she lied. Confidence hadn’t been her forte for a few years, but today was a good, easy day, and she could pretend. “No yelling at me if I screw it up,” she demanded as she plucked the safety glasses from where they rested on top of his head. She put them on her face and yep, they were way too big, but he was grinning up at her with a hotboy smile.
She struck a pose, butt popped to the side, hands on her hips.
“Pretty fuckin’ cute. Here,” he said, pulling the pencil from behind his ear. “You’ll need this.”
She took it from him and put it behind her ear like he’d been wearing it, but the pencil fell off immediately and landed on the grass.
“So smooth,” he said.
“It’s the giant ears,” she said, pointing at her ears that did, in fact, stick out a little too far to be aesthetically pleasing when she looked in the mirror sometimes. If he saw her monster’s ears, he wouldn’t be laughing right now though.
He brayed a donkey call, and she stuck her tongue out before she picked up the pencil and made her way to the back of the truck, still stacked with wooden boards.
She pulled one out so she could get a better grip, but hesitated when she saw what he’d snuck into the bed of the truck. There were two hanging flower pots with purple flowers sitting in the very back. They’d been blocked by the wood when she’d been unloading. He’d listened to her when she’d talked about the donut shop with the two hanging flower pots full of purple flowers.
He’d snuck these in here for her.
When she looked up, Nuke was watching her. “I got a couple of hooks we can put on the trailer. We can hang them on either side of the door if you want.”
Her heart had never been so touched in all her life. “Thank you,” she murmured.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a handsome, crooked smile. “You’re welcome.” And then he bent his head and went back to his task, nailing down boards. As the whack, whack, whack of the hammer on a nail head echoed through the woods, a feeling of deep guilt washed over her.
She was supposed to be here spying on these people.
Nuke was working hard, trying to make a space for himself, not harming anyone. And oh, she knew he had potential for great harm, but he was just trying to make a life. And Amos? Over there drinking a…she squinted at the drink he’d pulled from a cooler beside his chair. Seven-Eleven grape-flavored Slurpee. Enjoying a day off from his new job doing whatever he did for a living. He wasn’t harming anyone. Ren? She was happy. She had been through a lot and deserved happiness. Her mate Bron, and her king Krome, and Krome’s mate, Cora were just trying to carve out a safe spot to exist.
And Trina was supposed to betray this little slice of sanctuary, and expose people who had done no harm to her? But…Tory…
She’d left her phone in her trailer this morning on purpose, just to avoid Manning’s messages for a few hours, but now she had this deep urge to go check it just to make sure he hadn’t sent her any new video updates of her sister. What was happening to her right now? More guilt rippled through her, because she was here, having a good morning, while her sister was waiting for Trina to complete her job so she could be set free.
She’d never quite understood that ‘between a rock and a hard place’ saying until this very moment.
Amos meandered over to Nuke’s deck-in-progress and slurped on his grape drink as he watched him.
“Fuck off, man,” Nuke growled.
They were probably going to fight. From her experience, that’s just what male shifters did.
Trina walked the flower baskets to her trailer, set them on the stoop, and then unloaded a few pieces of wood and set one on the sawhorse to measure it out. All of the boards were supposed to be the exact same length on the part they were building now, and the number was burned into her brain.
She measured it out like she’d seen Nuke do, and then set it under the saw to make her first cut.
“Are those wing tattoos?” Amos asked loudly.
Trina froze, her hand on the saw, ready to pull the trigger to the blade. That. That was why she’d worn her hoodie this morning.
Slowly, she turned to see both boys watching her, and now one of the shifters she hadn’t yet met a few trailers down was standing on his stairs, staring at her too. Great.
“I got them when I was young,” she lied. “I thought they were cool.”
“Liar liar, wings on fire,” Amos crowed. “You’re an avian shifter, aren’t you?”
“Amos,” Nuke warned. “It’s none of your damn business what she is.”
“Humming bird shifter,” he said, pointing at her. “No! You’re a goose. One of those badass ones that is super mean and chases everyone and bites all the children.”
“Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m a goose.” They would never guess it, so she went back to work cutting wood while Amos droned on about something she didn’t have the patience to listen to, because she had a deck to build. One of his answers poked through the noise though and made her have to hide a giggle. “She’s a sexy little sugar glider, I freakin’ know it, I can feel it in my boner…”
“Feel it in my bones,” she called. “The saying is I can feel it in my bones. Not my boner.”
“Potato, potahto, Sugar Glider,” Amos called. “Do you need help with that saw? I don’t want you getting sawdust in your giant sugar glider eyeballs.”
“She’s fine!” Nuke barked out. “Help us, or fuck off to anywhere else. Those are your two options.”
“Don’t you think the stain you picked out is too dark?” Amos asked.
Nuke looked right at Trina with conviction written all over his face as he said, “I’m going to kill him today. Today is the day I’m going to eat a bald eagle.”
“I don’t even think it’s legal to do that,” said a muscled-up titan with short dark hair, a thick beard, and bright blue eyes.
“Protected by law, motherfucker,” Amos said. “Plus, I’m beloved. I would be missed by the entire shifter community.”
“His mother wouldn’t even miss him,” Barrel Chest deadpanned.
Trina belted out a laugh. “I’m Trina,” she introduced herself to the newcomer.
“Tommy Lang. I’m moving into that trailer down there.” He pointed to one a few away from hers…errr…not hers. She was only keeping it warm for a Crew member who was moving in on Friday.
As he walked past Trina, she caught the faint scent of fur. She would bet he was a wolf. “I can help,” Tommy told the boys.
“Great, because that one is useless,” Nuke muttered with a quick gesture to Amos.
“I’m just saying, you’re making a deck
and you don’t even have any tiki torches,” Amos muttered as he and his Slurpee made his way to the wood piled in the back of Nuke’s truck.
They all hit a smooth rhythm, and ten minutes in, Ren and Bron showed up. Krome and his mate Cora came a few minutes after that, and everyone was chipping in. Krome was a strange Crow Blooded king. He helped and bantered like he was one of the boys, but he felt so heavy. He was clearly King, but he didn’t rule with an iron fist like Manning did. Perhaps he wasn’t a strange king. Perhaps he was a good king. Ren even flew back to her cabin and returned with a pile of sandwiches and bottled waters, and Cora was very easy to talk to.
Trina’s insecurities faded away slowly. It was impossible to feel small when she was surrounded by badass shifters who treated her as an equal. How long had it been since she felt like an equal to anyone?
And time and time again, while they were all talking and laughing and working and joking, Nuke’s attention had landed on her. How many times had he drawn an automatic and genuine smile from her lips just because she was happy that he was paying attention to her, like she was paying attention to him?
Come here, he mouthed, and oooooh she did. If Manning would’ve demanded the same, her stomach would’ve dropped to the floor, but when Nuke spoke to her? Her body wanted to do whatever he needed.
She excused herself from Cora and Ren and carried her plate with her half-eaten lunch to Nuke. As he stood up from the last board he’d just nailed in, she asked, “Want a bite, big eater?” She held out her sandwich for him.
“Yeah, I’m starving.” Without any hesitation, he leaned in and took a bite of her offered snack, gave her a sexyboy wink that launched every coherent thought straight out of her brain, and then he bumped her hip with his hand. “You’re doing really good here,” he said around the bite.
And then he went back to work, and left her standing there with a half a sandwich in her hand and a heart that felt like it had just lost fifty pounds of weight with that simple compliment.
He was right.
She was doing good here. She felt at ease, and liked building with the boys, and was excited every time they talked about what deck they were building next, because she knew they would invite her to help.