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“Alright, Tori, are we unpacking?” I asked, already dragging a kitchen box toward her small galley-style kitchen.
“If you want. I’m not saying no to any help you guys are willing to give,” she said. “You know I’m a mess on a good day.”
“That’s why you have us,” Katya said easily. My friends had taken my sister under their wings the night we watched the finale and now that she was moving here, I had a feeling it would only get better. “This one says bathroom, heading in there.”
“You guys are amazing,” Tori called after her.
“We girls have to stick together,” Serenity told her. “Plus, Ellie’s family is our family.”
“See, small town life isn’t so bad,” Micah added as he walked in. “You thought it would be lame. How did you put it… backwoods and not even a good store in sight.”
“I did,” she admitted sheepishly. “But I didn’t care because you guys would be here. It already feels amazing to be away from dear old Mom and Dads. She was insufferable when you both left, by the way.”
“You were the only one close enough to dig her claws into,” I said. “When I stopped talking to her she didn’t know how to cope. I’m shocked it took this long.”
“She did love to use you as her scapegoat,” Tori said, wrapping me in a hug. She hid it well but her breath hitched as she fought off tears. They felt guilty about not being able to stop it, but I’d never blame her or Micah for that. “I hate that they treated you like they did. You werenevera problem. You know that, right?”
We always danced around the subject, aka the stark contrast in how my parents treated us. There was obvious favoritism and my shyness was, apparently, the worst sin imaginable. It resulted in constant remarks, putting me down, and comparing me to my two siblings who were complete opposites of me, always findingmelacking.
“I know that now,” I promised. “It was always something that lingered until Lockwood. I’ve found my footing here and some confidence.”
“It looks good on you, baby sister,” Tori said, kissing my cheek and dragging another box closer to mine so we could work together. “So does having this pack. You’ve never seemed so happy.”
“That’s all her,” Atlas said as he added a kitchen box to our pile. “She came into this town and made it her bitch. Even Walter loves her.”
“The first time I interacted with Walter, I was seven. He told me if I wanted to go anywhere in life I better start listening to my mom. I was dragging my feet over some chores and he scared me right into being a good boy,” Ezra admitted.
“He told us that we better stop hanging out with Corey Smith,” Atlas said. “He was an older kid who got us into trouble. I think his exact words were ‘If I find out you hung out with him, I’ll tell your dad you were smoking pot’.”
“Damn,” I laughed. “Walter doesn’t play around. Your dad would have kicked your asses.”
“He would have,” Dean agreed, shaking his head. “Ironically, Corey is in prison for dealing harder things.”
“Sounds like Walter is the town guru,” Tori said. “So, is he nice to all the girls?”
“No,” Serenity snorted. “He’s a no-preference kind of asshole. There’s just a few of us special ones, he treats us like his own.”
“Challenge accepted,” Tori sang out. “He’ll love me in no time! Now, who wants pizza?”
“Everyone,” Ezra, Atlas, and Dean all said at once. She laughed and grabbed a menu out of the drawer that Dean had left behind.
A crash came from the back and I left Tori to handle that, only to find Serenity buried under a mountain of clothes cursing like a sailor.
“Son of a motherfucker, what the hell kind of shelf is this?” she screamed as she popped out from the clothes and threw the offending shelf.
“Are you okay?” I asked, biting back a laugh. She narrowed her eyes at my voice and pointed at me.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she groaned dramatically. “Your sister is going to be sad, her shelf is shit.”
“I think it snaps back in place,” I said, grabbing the offending shelf and inspecting it. “One of the pieces bent.”
“Because it’s shit,” she said with a huff, sitting on the bed. The amount of attitude she was giving inanimate objects was impressive. “We need an alpha in here!”
“You rang?” Ezra said with an eye roll.
“This is bent, use your strength to fix it,” she explained. “It just fell on me.”
“Aw, unfortunate,” he mocked but took the shelf from my hands and fixed it, hanging it back into place without issue.
