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I held up my hands. “Look, forget about it, okay? I have.”Please, let’s just go back to being friends. I know how to do that.
He frowned momentarily, then shrugged. “Okay, if you say so. So…tentacles, huh?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
Phoenix rolled his eyes. “On that note, I’m going to go get some food while there’s still food to get.”
Robert smirked and folded his arms. “Well? Don’t keep me waiting. I need all the sordid details.”
“Forget it. A gentleman never kisses and tells.” I cracked open the beer and took a long drink.
Robert snorted. “If you’re a gentleman, I’m the sausage queen of Frankfurt. Actually, that’s way more likely. But still.”
I laughed, and we fell into easy, familiar banter, talking about nothing and everything. It turned out that Robert really liked working out on Hopper’s ranch, which was a surprise to me. He’d never struck me as the hard-working sort. When I said that out loud, Hopper chimed in behind me.
“Oh, he’s not. Least not the manual labor sort.”
Robert made a sour face. “I lift things. Sometimes.”
“Not if I can help it,” Hopper said with a grunt.
I chuckled. “Sounds like nothing’s changed.”
And yet everything had. The more I made my way around the room, talking to my old friends, the more small changes I noticed in them. Chris was a lot less irritable and smiled more, but he still actively avoided being in the most crowded spaces. He and Ollie slipped outside when the house started to feel a little too crowded and made their own space. But he was still the same old Chris Kringle he’d always been. He and Ollie, of course, were attached at the hip, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The two of them were perfect for each other.
Phoenix was still his grumpy old self, even if Bud had mellowed him out a lot. He just redirected all that grumpiness toward something useful, spending most of the time fussing over Bud or Junior. Somewhere along the way, Bud had found enough confidence to gripe right back at him, constantly telling him to sit down and stop worrying so much.
Chappie—who was now just Charlie—was still happiest in the kitchen, but he was happier still with Cupid by his side. Probably because Cupid spent nearly every breath telling everyone how amazing Charlie was, including Charlie himself. It was a good thing Charlie was so humble by nature or else he’d have developed an ego.
As for Robert, he was the most different of everyone. When he left Michigan, I had worried a lot about him. He’d barely left the house, rarely interacted with anyone, and spent a lot of time covering up his pain with crass humor and surplus amounts of sass. The latter was still true, but he’d turned into a regular socialite. The guy talked to everyone, laughed a lot, and probably gave out more hugs that day than I’d ever seen in my life.
It was good to see them all being better versions of themselves, and it left me wondering just what’d changed. Was it really justthat they’d found the right person? I liked Ghost—loved him even—but I didn’t feel like I was any different just because we were together.
I was still pondering that when I wandered out back to find a little quiet. Ghost had left the impromptu party a while ago, saying he needed to go for a swim to clear his head, and I was considering heading out to the lake shore to check on him. Instead, I paused over by the old pole barn where Chris and Ollie were sitting in the shade of a pine tree. Frost crunched under my boots as I came up to them, hugging myself in the cold.
“Hey, what’re you two doing all the way out here?” I asked. “It’s warmer up by the house.”
Ollie rumbled with laughter. “You forget where we live. This is almost like summer to us.”
“Except even summer doesn’t get this warm at the South Pole,” Chris added. He stood and stretched his lower back. “Everything okay, Axel?”
I shrugged. “I was just going for a walk. Too many people in there.”
Chris nodded. “I get that. You want some company or…”
I considered him for a minute before nodding. “Actually, yeah. That’d be great if you don’t mind.”
He smiled and reached to scratch Ollie’s head between his horns. “I’ll be right back.”
Rather than walk toward the lake, we took off down the tree line, moving parallel to the lake shore. At first, we just walked in silence, the frozen grass crunching beneath our feet. Wind whispered through pine needles, making the air smell like Christmas, even though that was a few months off yet.
Chris and I hadn’t been the best of friends, though we used to hang out often. He was always closer to his former military buddies, a bond we’d never share. Still, I liked him and I’dworried about him when he was going through the worst of his struggles.
“So, Honor called you all, huh?” I said after a while. “How much did he tell you?”
“Said we had one last Parker clone to take out. That was enough to get me here.” Chris shrugged and looked over at me. “How’d you get mixed up in all this, anyway?”
I sighed. “It’s kind of a long story.”
Chris stopped walking, and we turned to face each other. “Ghost…He’s from the base, isn’t he?”
