Somebody who doesn’t need me to take care of them, but would also be ok with me doing it. Somebody to watch romantic comedies with. Girls like that kind of stuff, right? Shit, not all girls—Kay and Penny would kick my ass for that one. Theyalways boycotted movie night when it was my turn. Horror or action movies only for those two—how did they get so violent?
They need to be able to take care of themselves, ’cause Tiffany said I can’t follow them out on dates anymore, but Penny especially is gonna get herself arrested for tasing some guy who tries to take liberties. Not that I think she shouldn’t, Dad got her the taser for a reason, but he got the one that can take down a raging alpha, and I’m pretty sure she only dates betas. Well, she better not be dating anyone right now. Nobody told me if she is. That’s something you tell your big brother, right?
Shit.
She’s totally dating somebody.
I’ll need to ask Paul to look into it once he gets back to work.
She’s like a sister to him too; I’m sure he’ll check it out.
Chapter 34
My cruiser is bigger than Nadine, and while I’m sorely tempted to volunteer it for today’s trip, I don’t want to risk getting in trouble. I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to drive it around unless I’m in uniform; the guys don’t mind though. This little beast fits Alistair pretty well, and has enough room for Spence’s tall ass. I’m the one who has to fold myself into a pretzel to fit in the backseat.
It still looks like a clown car when we pull up at the mall and three alphas climb out, especially Spence. Seriously, the man must have some kind of freaky genetics going on. Descended from the frost giants of old with his dark blond hair, blue eyes, and gargantuan body. The guy is built like one of those freaky old stone statues, Prague golems…or something. Hell if I know…that leads down a long road to semantics that I just can’t fucking deal with. The guy is a fucking mountain, and I wondersometimes how he gets enough calories to support himself. Maybe he’s sneaking protein shakes at the gym or something, ’cause he burns a lot there too with working out and the personal training gigs.
Still, he always remembers to tip the seat forward so I can escape when we go out together. This is just a longer trip than usual, and my toes are numb from both the cold and the cramped space. I’d never tell Alistair that though; he loves this fucking car. It sounds like they’ve been through a lot together, and since it’s the only one we actually own right now, I’m sure as hell not gonna badmouth the rolling sardine can…well, no more than calling it that. But shit, my legs are cramping up.
Spence offers his big hand to help hoist me out of the backseat, and I gladly take it to help stabilize my spasming legs—trying to shake out the tingles before I face-plant in the parking lot. Alistair comes around the car and takes us both in, waiting with his hands in his pockets for me to be able to walk without weaving across the lot like a drunk. Day-drinking isn’t really my style, and even though I’m sort of suspended at the moment, getting the police called on me for public intoxication would lead to heretofore unreached levels of bullshit at work. Since I’m not drunk, I’m sure I would just get shit for it for the next several months. But it would still be embarrassing as hell, so we all just stand around like idiots while I shake and shimmy in place, trying to work feeling back into my extremities.
When it doesn’t feel like walking across thumbtacks, we head inside. Spence said the mall isn’t even open for another hour, so we’ll just be doing laps around the inside where it’s warm until stuff starts to open up. He and Josh both told me the story a few times about how Spence’s mom and dad met at this mall in the food court, and it was love at first sight. That’s how he got named. I’m guessing it’s the same for his sisters.
His family are all weirdos, but I love them, and I basically now have four baby sisters. Spence is almost ten years younger than me, then Tiffany is twenty-four, Kay just turned twenty-one, putting her at legal drinking age—I made sure the guys at the station keep a close eye out for her since she’s family—Penny is nineteen, and Claire, the baby of the group, is almost twenty years my junior at sixteen. Another couple of months and I’ll be hitting thirty-six, which doesn’t feel old until I look at the rest of my family and extended pack. Then it seems fucking ancient.
We’re on our fourth lap around the building when the food court starts to get active. It seems like as good a time as any to grab some breakfast…lunch…brunch? I mean, there’s probably no cantaloupe, but we just had freezer waffles for breakfast, so we can call it brunch. That being said, the picks are mostly hoagie sandwiches, Chinese takeout, pizza, frozen yogurt, or a smoothie. I guess if we wait around for another hour we can get pretzels, but honestly, that’s not much better than what we already had.
Spence wants a salad from the pizza place, and honestly, while I’m guessing it’s a health thing for him…eww. I’m not a fan of salads at the best of times, but before noon is just right out. Of course, most of the stuff here is gonna turn my stomach this early. I need to be awake for at least four or five hours before I ingest that much grease. So, I’ll be hitting the smoothie shop while Spence has his salad, and Alistair wanders over to one of the three sandwich offerings. Mall food is never great—unless you really like bastardized Chinese food—but it’s here, and we’re here, and there’s too much time to kill. Frozen fruit, here I come.
We meet back at a table near the edge of the seating area ten minutes later. Spence and Alistair are already there, halfway to finishing off their early lunch—nothing about this is brunch at this point, and I refuse to call it such. I flop down with my slightly chalky blueberry power smoothie. Spence looks fromme to my drink several times before swallowing the bite he’s chewing. “Oh, hey, I wish I’d seen that place. That sounds good.” I stare at his tray, which is covered not just with a salad but also three slices of pizza, and hand my smoothie over to him.
Yes, I mentioned it two times before we parted ways, but maybe he was under the spell of greasy cheese and didn’t hear me. It doesn’t matter; I’m not really enjoying it, anyway. I wasn’t hungry to start with, and eating at this point just makes me feel draggy. He tries for a token protest before nodding a thank you and inhaling the damned thing. My mouth still feels gritty from the few sips I got, and I’m left to wonder if our biggest packmate has a problem with his taste buds, or if he’s just a human garbage disposal.
Regardless, we spend another forty minutes or so sitting and chatting about what we need to do next for the house. Alistair’s library can be used now, though I would like to try my hand at making face frames to really tie the bookcases together. Maybe add some track lighting or sconces to showcase certain shelves. He thanked me several times last night when he got home from work, before promptly kicking me out of the room so he could start unpacking books. It doesn’t really bother me. He has this weird thing where he doesn’t like to sweat in front of other people. I don’t get it, but everyone has their own freaky little quirks; our pack is no different.
Besides, he apologized this morning and said he wanted to show me the finished result when he didn’t have stacks of random books lying around. I haven’t had the heart to tell him I want to do more work, and he’s just going to have to take everything back off the shelves so I can finish making it look nice.
Spence has finished off the smoothie, his salad, all the pizza, and has gotten two refills on his soda before he finally pushes away from the table, looking content. It’s a good thing he has ajob now, because I’m about two seconds away from just asking him to be in charge of all the grocery shopping. I’m really enjoying the size of the new kitchen, and I had forgotten how much I used to enjoy cooking, but leftovers are apparently not a thing we have around him. It actually makes me wonder if he was always hungry when we got takeout, or if he’s just enjoying the ability to eat as much as he wants to now that I’m cooking more often.
Stores are rolling up their gates and unlocking doors all around us, and Spence collects Alistair’s tray along with his own to carry to the trash. “I need to go by the candle shop, and the art store while we’re here, if that’s ok.”
Alistair nods along, since he’s the driver and technically the head of our pack, and we defer to him on things like this. But it’s mostly a formality. The man might have a huge stick up his ass about some things, but thankfully we aren’t one of them, and since getting to know us over the past couple of years, he’s been fairly laid-back about anything we really want to do. It’s why I wasn’t worried about Spence needing a nest at our new place, I knew Alistair would cave eventually. I just didn’t want to risk someone else buying our perfect house before we could.
Chapter 35
The art store in the mall is bigger than I remember. Maybe they expanded? I haven’t been here in forever, and the last time was with all my sisters so they could figure out craft gift ideas for Mom for Christmas, but that’s been a few years now. Thankfully, they have a lot of different sized brushes, even some that fit my big ham hands. Less thankfully, they have a staggering variety of paint colors and finishes, so finding a small tube of glow-in-the-dark white paint that will work on ceilings takes a while. Three customer service people and one surly cashier later, I’ve got what I need and we can head out.
That took longer than expected, so we’re gonna skip the candle store today—there wasn’t anything there I desperately needed for what I’m doing; I just thought it sounded really fun. Al drives us over to the big home repair store so he can get a few things. Paul grabs a cart while Al grabs a basket, but I don’t think there’llbe any problems trying to carry a few cans of paint, so I don’t bother with anything but myself before heading to the paint section. While I’ll need to look at pillows and stuff for the nest, the bed isn't set up, so it’s not like I can do much more at Nests-N-Stuff than feel samples and make plans. I bought a mattress, but it’s just sitting on the platform base wrapped in plastic. Still, it’ll be a nice starting point for future plans. So, I’m going to grab a couple of swatches to pocket for the paints I’m getting made. That way, there’s a solid reference point for pillow colors.
Al might not want an omega, and I might be doing all this for nothing because none of us are in a relationship right now—but it makes me feel like I’m working towards a goal and it gives me something to focus on. Not quite Zen, but at least I’m being productive with my free time. I mostly think in pictures, so I have what I want to do for the walls and ceiling in my head, and it still makes my mind spin seeing all the color options available. What I see in my head isn’t always possible, and I don’t have the art skills to do a lot of the stuff that pops in there, but holy shit! So many colors. Just the variations of turquoise boggle my poor brain.
They aren’t all labeled as turquoise, of course. There are at least four different variations on cyan, teal, and aqua. Sea glass is amazing, but way too light for what I need. There’s a really nice navy blue that would be a good start to the top of the sky I want to paint, but of course it isn’t called navy blue; it’s called expressions. This sort of thing is why I’m going to need to take swatches with me.
Thankfully, I won’t need full gallons of each one. So, I’m able to get a few quart cans for some of the gradient tones I need and a “true black”—whatever that means. Then I get a gallon each of the colors for the top and bottom…and I probably should have gotten a cart after all.
The guy who’s mixing my paint for me has a nose ring and a lot of eye makeup. It looks good on him, but he also looks bored out of his mind, and I’m not really good at making small talk most of the time. So I tell him I need to get a cart, getting ready to bolt towards the front. He gives me a bit of a lip curl, probably worried that I’ll run off and leave all the paint I had mixed, but I’ve spent too much time getting these colors just right to abandon them now.
Spinning on my heel, I plow straight into Paul’s cart, where he’s been standing behind me for who knows how long. He makes a loud grunt when the handlebar slams into his stomach, and I come close to racking myself on the front corner. These things are fucking dangerous. Who the hell decided crotch-high was a good area for a pointy edge? Looking around, I remember that it’s not that high on everybody, and I’m just kind of a freak…but still…put some bumpers on that damned thing. Fucking ouch.
