Page 73 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

I carried the wooden logs in my arms, the bark poking through my sweater and into the skin of my forearms. I’d bundled up, but the cutting cold of these mountains was something I’d never really understood before.

Having grown up in southern California, I’d thought I knew the cold. As it turned out, I knew desert cold—I didn’t know real cold, the kind that bit into me the moment I left the house.

Still, the quiet was nice, peaceful.

“What are you doing?” Carter sounded absolutely scandalized as he swooped in like a force of nature, more dangerous than the blizzard that had come through overnight. He took the stack of wood from me like it weighed nothing. Worse, he bowed slightly with a flourish, as though he wanted to make damn sure I was impressed.

“I can carry some wood,” I argued.

“You could, but you have us, so why would you?” He drew out would, as though I might have missed his horrible pun.

“You cut yourself,” Kenyon fussed, pulling my sleeves up and healing the wounds. I hadn’t even noticed how deep the bark had cut, probably due to the cold.

“Why the fuck are you even out here?” Ingram bitched as he wrapped his arms around himself. He really hadn’t gotten used to the weather at all over the past three months we’d lived here.

I blamed it on all the metal he had on him.

“You were busy,” I complained. “You never let me help out with anything.”

“You don’t need to help. You need to sit your ass down and relax,” Ingram said before wrapping his arms around me. He did it as though he were keeping me warm, but I was fairly sure the opposite was true. He wanted me to be his heater.

I rolled my eyes but walked back the short distance to the house, going along with them, which I’d found I’d done much too often recently. It was like after our almost-death, I couldn’t turn them down for anything anymore.

I needed to knock that off or they’d turn into pampered, spoiled little brats…

When we walked inside, Shear stood by the stove, wearing a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. The outside world might have been frozen over, but the fireplaces that rested inside our home kept it toasty no matter what.

I’d asked why we needed it so warm, since it felt wasteful. We could have just worn more layers.

Ingram had made it clear that if he had his way, he’d prefer if I remained entirely naked all the time, which meant the temperature would always be high enough to leave that a possibility.

A day where you won’t get naked is a day wasted, he’d said to me.

Shear turned from the stove and smiled, a look that melted me. He still didn’t smile as much as the others, but far more than he had before. I figured some of that was living this far away from people and their noisy minds, the quiet he’d gotten, the peace from not hearing so many other minds, from the constant onslaught.

“It’s ready,” he said after one more stir of the large pot, the scent of beans and meat filling the house.

“You know, he’s gotten pretty damn good at that.” Carter piled the wood in the holder that sat to the left of the large brick fireplace. We had more than enough wood inside, but some part of me still felt like anything less than full just wasn’t enough, especially as the dusk started. The darkness still bothered me, reminding me of The Pitt, so the idea of the fire going out panicked me.

“Take a seat.” Shear took down a stack of bowls from the cabinet, the pretty green dishes ones that we’d picked out together the first week we’d moved in here. By we, I meant mostly me.

In fact, looking around as I took a seat, I realized that everything was something I’d picked out. Even if we’d gone together, they’d always given into whatever I wanted happily.

“What’s wrong?” Kenyon took the spot to my left.

“Why is everything here something I picked?”

“Because we already got what we wanted.” Carter sat to my right, smiling so brightly that I was pretty sure he thought he was charming.

And damn him, because he was…

“What did you want?”

“Dumb question,” Ingram said. “Obviously it’s you. I’m happy as fuck to live my life in a fucking pink, fluffy unicorn hellscape just so long as you’re there. So you want green dishes or that lumberjack-looking bedding, that’s just fucking fine with me.” He paused, then smirked. “Besides, we got one thing we wanted.”

I didn’t have to ask what that was. I was pretty damn sure it was the huge bed that filled the space in our room, large enough for the five of us to sleep on, one that needed custom-made sheets. It might have been something they’d picked out, but I’d been happy as hell with it as well.

We had guest rooms, and if there was a reason, someone might crash in one, if they needed a little privacy, if they weren’t sleeping well. Mostly, though, we all piled into that one massive mattress, and at times like that I didn’t need to worry about heat at all.