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  He ran out to the backyard with a roar, making Nadia and Neil shriek and laugh. They barreled right at him and tried to let out roars like he did, but they sounded more like gurgles so far. He let himself fall down on the grass, spreading his arms wide.

  “I’m beat,” he announced. “Two of the strongest wolves ever caught me sneaking up to attack their pack and they dealt with me without mercy.”

  Nadia scrambled onto his chest and Neil followed her, settling on Ollie’s stomach. Their knees connected painfully with his ribs a few times, but it could’ve been much worse. The day before, Neil had accidentally kicked him in the crotch. Ollie winced at the memory alone.

  “Are you dead?” Nadia asked, running her fingers over his cheek. She looked so much like Desiree, but her hair was all braids tangling around her face as she leaned over him, while her mama kept her curly hair short.

  “No, I’m captured,” Ollie said. “You’ve captured me and now you can take me to your Alpha for her to decide my fate.”

  Nadia grinned. “We’re going to see the Alpha today.”

  Ollie might have not thought this one through properly. “Ah, that’s true. Well, maybe she will spare me. Your grandma’s food usually puts people in a good mood.”

  “Pie!” Nadia shouted, wiggling, and Ollie had to steady her so she wouldn’t fall down. All thoughts of handing him over to the Alpha seemed to have been forgotten as Nadia started to list everything she was going to eat at her grandparents’ place, with Neil adding his own ideas from behind her.

  God, I love them so much.

  Before Ollie could reach out and smother them with hugs, Sylvia and Desiree came out of the house.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” Desiree announced and the kids scrambled to run to their moms.

  Ollie winced at the few kicks he received during their dismount but followed the twins up, brushing off his T-shirt that had gotten wrinkled by two little werewolves sitting on it.

  Sylvia sighed and ran her hand over the back of his shirt a few times after he walked up to them, but she didn’t say anything, so Ollie resisted his own teasing as well. They’d had numerous fights over this in the past—Sylvia needing to look perfect all the time and taking forever to get ready and Ollie barely making any effort at all when he wasn’t at work. Although, he had started to pay more attention to what he was wearing on occasion. He just really didn’t mind much now, when they were only going to their parents’ BBQ. Sure, the pack was going to be there also, but pack was pretty much the extended family. Most of them remembered him from his moody teenage years, the lone human kid among the werewolf army that was the sheriff’s household at the time. If they’d accepted him back then, they shouldn’t care about a wrinkled shirt today.

  Their parents lived within walking distance, but with one heavily pregnant woman, two kids and three pies, they decided to take Desiree’s car. A few minutes later, they were parking behind the sheriff’s cruiser and the twins were wriggling out of their seats before Ollie could unlock their belts.

  “Come on. Work with me here,” he told them, but they were shouting for their grandpa and probably hadn’t heard a word Ollie had said.

  Finally, they were all out of the car and, a second later, the twins’ grandpa did appear in the driveway. He’d probably heard them from the backyard.

  “Are you two here to report a crime, huh?” he asked, lowering himself into a crouch.

  Nadia and Neil ran to him, laughing and screaming “No!”

  Ollie grinned at the sight before taking two of the pies from his sister. Their foster parents had usually taken in older kids—teenagers—but seeing them now as grandparents and how they interacted with little kids made him wonder why they’d never chosen the newborns or toddlers. They would have been great with them, too.

  After greetings, they all moved toward the backyard, with the twins running at the front and all the grown-ups following at a slower pace. Ollie had visited his parents earlier in the week, of course, but this was the first pack outing he’d attended since he’d arrived—not counting the Full Moon Run the previous night, which he hadn’t gone to for obvious reasons—and he was excited to see everyone.

  But he’d barely said hello to a few people before his mother dragged him off to the kitchen to help out. Or rather, she tried to. Right as they were about to get in, someone walked out, barely avoiding colliding with Ollie as he did so.

  Ollie moved aside but froze when he saw the man in front of him.

  It was Patrick. Hook-up-from-the-bar Patrick.

  “What are you doing here?” The words were out before he could stop them, and Patrick narrowed his wide eyes slightly.

  He glanced to the side, probably at Ollie’s mom, before looking back at him. “I was in the bathroom.”

  It was Ollie’s turn to narrow his eyes, but before he could open his mouth again, his mom cut in. “Excuse him, Patrick. He has no manners to speak of and he’s only been back in town for a few days,” she said, smiling gently at the guy who had fucked Ollie and ditched him only a week ago.

  God, what a mess.

  “He hasn’t had the chance to meet some of our newest pack mates,” she added. “Anyway, Patrick, this is Ollie, one of my kids. Ollie, this is Patrick, the latest addition to the pack.”

  That’s great. That’s awesome.

  “Nice to meet you,” Patrick said after a bit of silence and even offered his hand, leaving Ollie no choice but to shake it.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” he forced himself to say. Then, Patrick nodded and excused himself, and Ollie was left staring after him.

  His homecoming had just gotten a lot more complicated.

  * * * *

  Sylvia cornered him a few hours later, less than a minute after he’d been left alone at the table when Zack and David had gone for another helping of pie.

  “Okay, spill,” she told him, putting a fresh beer next to his plate.

  “Why would I do that to a nice drink?” He curled his fingers around the cold bottle and enjoyed the shiver that ran through him, a small comfort against the afternoon heat.

  “You’re not even half as funny as you think you are.”

  Ollie raised his eyebrows. “I’m hilarious.”

  “You wish.” She shook her head. “Seriously, what’s the story?”

  “I don’t—”

  “If you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m telling Dad what really happened to his cruiser you-know-when.”

  “Hey now.” Ollie straightened in his seat. “I thought we had an agreement. There’s a statute of limitation on those stories.”

  “And we agreed that the most serious stuff is getting fifteen years. That means this story is still game for another two months or so.”

  He took a deep gulp of his beer. “I hate you.”

  “You love me.” She shrugged. “Come on, spill. We don’t have all day. What’s with you and—”

  “Shh.” No one seemed to be interested in what the two of them were talking about, but still, werewolves could hear a conversation from pretty far distance, so he didn’t want to risk it. “We’ve met previously,” he told Sylvia in a low, quiet voice he knew was hard to overhear.

  “You mean you hooked up,” she said, thankfully keeping her voice low as well.

  Ollie took another sip of his beer. There was no use in lying to her, since she would be able to pick up on it, but he still stalled.

  “Yeah,” he finally told her. He caught himself looking around the yard to see if he’d catch Patrick somewhere, but Ollie hadn’t seen him for over an hour now, and even then it had only been for a second as he was disappearing behind the other side of the house.

  “Ended badly?” Sylvia’s voice made him turn back to her, only to find her staring at him with that piercing gaze that always made him spill his guts in the end.

  “Not badly, just…you know,” he finished with a shrug. He wasn’t lying. It hadn’t ended badly. He’d been disappointed when he’d woken up
to an empty bed, sure, but it was what it was. One-night stands held no promise of anything, including a morning after.

  Sylvia rolled her eyes. “No, Ollie, I do not know.”

  That was right. His sister hadn’t had a hook-up even once in her life. She hadn’t had so much as a date before she’d met Desiree during her senior year in high school and they’d been pretty much married ever since.

  “Well, hook-ups don’t usually involve stumbling into each other at one’s parents’ house. I can tell you that much,” he deadpanned.

  It made her laugh. “Oh, that’s right. I didn’t even think about the part about the parents’ house.”

  Ollie half-smiled, amused, almost despite himself. “Lucky you.” It would be awkward to bump into Patrick anywhere in Harrington Hills, but to have it happen here? He had the worst luck.

  “Well, it happened.” Sylvia shrugged. “And since you’re here and he’s here, maybe you should try again?”

  He pushed back hard on the still-fresh memory of Patrick fucking him into the mattress and shook his head.

  “There was no trying in the first place. We weren’t dating. We just hooked up once then we went our separate ways. That’s it.”

  “Sure. Only your separate ways led to the same place.” She pointed at him with her bottle. “Think about that.”

  Yeah, I’d rather not.

  Chapter Five

  Patrick couldn’t relax for the rest of the afternoon. Adrian and Roy were giving him worried looks and, at some point, even Bill—with whom Patrick had reached something of a mutual stand-down pact after a somewhat rocky beginning—seemed ready to reach out and calm him down.

  Which, yeah…no.

  He sidestepped all of Adrian’s questions and kept changing the topic. Finally, his friend seemed to give up on trying to make him talk, at least for now. Patrick was pretty sure they would come back to it the next time they were alone.

  Fortunately, the seat he’d picked earlier allowed him to avoid seeing Ollie again and, after a while, he’d stopped turning around and focused on the people at his table.

  Which turned out to be easier than he’d thought, thanks to Rosa, who was a pro when it came to drawing attention to herself. She could be calm and lovely when she was sitting in someone’s lap and entertained, but once said person took too long talking to somebody else, she would either start singing, launch into a story or just wiggle her way off one lap to go to the next. Connor and Jack had tried to stop her from wandering to others at first, but no one at the table really minded. Adrian and Roy seemed to love it, especially whenever Rosa landed on Bill’s lap, since she looked particularly tiny next to Bill’s impressive bulk.

  At least that was why Patrick thought they loved it. He hoped Adrian wasn’t thinking about having kids of their own so soon after getting together with the two werewolves. Introducing a triad to the pack had been hard enough—and Patrick had to admit, he’d struggled with the idea of it, too. If they wanted to add a kid to the mix… He shook his head. No, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t be in any hurry to do that.

  “Uncle Patlick!” he heard, right before Rosa closed her two small hands around his arm.

  He turned to the little girl, who was frowning at him from Adrian’s lap. Patrick still couldn’t quite believe he’d become an uncle to her somewhere along the way, but he had to admit, he liked it.

  “Yes, Miss Rosa?” he asked her, settling her on his thigh when she started slipping from Adrian’s.

  “Uncle Adlian said he nevel met youl old pack.”

  Patrick raised his eyebrows. Apparently he’d zoned out more than he’d thought. When he glanced at Adrian, his friend just shrugged, so Patrick went for the easiest answer. “That’s right.”

  As he could have predicted, that wasn’t enough for Rosa. “Why not?”

  He tensed at that. Suddenly, he felt everyone’s eyes on him, but he didn’t lift his gaze from Rosa’s to check. He preferred not to know.

  He shoved a piece of his steak into his mouth to buy himself some time as he searched for the right answer. There were a few things he could say—that he’d lived away from his pack when he’d met Adrian, that he hadn’t visited often back then—and they were true. But they weren’t the whole truth.

  Still, there was no way he was going to tell this precious little kid, who was half-human herself, that his old pack didn’t welcome humans—or gay people—the way this one did. With Adrian being who he was, he had two strikes against him, and Patrick had never even considered taking him to meet his family.

  “I wasn’t living with my pack back then,” he finally told her. “We’d met working for the same company, so we mostly spent time with other people from there.”

  She opened her mouth, no doubt to ask another question, but thankfully, Connor intervened.

  “Rosa, do you want to finish my piece of cake or should I do it?”

  And just like that, the topic of Patrick’s old pack was forgotten as Rosa ran to her father to claim her cake. Patrick was tempted to send Connor a grateful look, but he also didn’t want to drag more attention to the fact that this topic was a tricky one.

  In the end, he just went back to his food and the conversations kept flowing around him as he tried not to let his memories ruin a perfectly good afternoon.

  Well. He glanced back toward the house, remembering who else was in attendance. A passable one, at least.

  * * * *

  The next day, he couldn’t concentrate at home for longer than fifteen minutes, so he finally gave up around noon and packed his laptop to go to his favorite café. Ollie might have the same foster parents as Sylvia, the owner of the place, but it didn’t mean he would be there. He probably had other things to do.

  Meanwhile, Patrick needed to work, not wonder about when he’d next stumble onto the guy he’d thought he would never see again. He knew it was a matter of when, not if, but it didn’t help anything to worry about it.

  When he got to the café, he went straight to his favorite seat—a big, comfy armchair in the corner, facing the big window with the view of the forest nearby. The secluded spot with only one seat helped with keeping other people at bay, and when in the zone, Patrick could forget about them even being in the same room. He would only take breaks and watch the trees to give his eyes a rest from time to time before going back to his work, undisturbed.

  But today, on one such break, he caught the familiar voice in the background and he was listening in before he could stop himself.

  “You know I love you, but I was kind of hoping for a break from tending bar,” Ollie was saying somewhere behind him, probably in the front room.

  “Well, you’d be a barista here, not a bartender, if that helps,” Sylvia told her brother and Patrick snorted quietly, ignoring a pang in his chest at the memory of his own sister, whom he hadn’t talked to for months now.

  “It doesn’t change much, no,” Ollie said, but he sighed right after. “Fine. I’m here already, anyway.”

  “You’re the best. And I swear it’s not for long. Joy should be back in no time.”

  “She broke two of her fingers. It’s not something a human just bounces back from in a day.”

  “Well, you did it in what? Three? Four?”

  Ollie huffed. “No, I didn’t. I just stopped wearing the brace because everyone was picking on me.”

  Patrick could hear he was trying for a light tone, but there was an edge of something that hadn’t been there before—something that made Patrick want to turn around, to check if Ollie was okay.

  He didn’t move.

  “Oh.” Sylvia’s voice turned soft and hesitant, but Ollie didn’t give her time to say anything else.

  “Forget it. I was just making a point. Joy won’t be back in a few days, but I’m here for now, so you can relax. We can talk later about the shifts and all that, since I was supposed to be taking care of the kids.”

  “You’re the best.”

  Ollie chuckled. “I know. Now, shoo. Go h
ome already.”

  Sylvia said her goodbyes, leaving Ollie to mind the café and Patrick to… Well, to sit quietly in his corner and not draw attention to himself. He knew Ollie couldn’t see him now, but at some point, he would spot Patrick and it was going to be awkward again.

  Patrick could try to sneak out unnoticed, but it was stupid to even really consider it. He’d known he couldn’t avoid meeting Ollie forever. They were bound to stumble onto each other again and again around here. It was a small town, after all. And maybe it was better to deal with the awkwardness now, without the entire pack watching.

  Before Patrick could talk himself into actually going up to the counter and getting it over with, he heard steps behind him. He straightened in his seat.

  “Hey there, do you need—” Ollie stopped as soon as he came close enough to see Patrick.

  For a moment, they just stared at each other. Patrick couldn’t turn his gaze away.

  “Hi,” he finally said, not sure what to follow that up with. It’s good to see you? It’s awful to see you? Can I have another cup of coffee? What?

  “Well, this is awkward,” Ollie muttered and that seemed to break the tension a bit, because Patrick chuckled and Ollie cracked a small, one-sided grin.

  “Yeah, it is,” Patrick offered with a nod, happy the café was practically empty at this point and all the regulars present had their headphones on.

  “I’m sure you didn’t expect that when you snuck out in the middle of the night, huh?” Ollie grimaced right after he said it, but it was too late. The air had become tense again.

  “I’m—” Patrick started, wanting to defend himself, but he found himself at a loss for words.

  Ollie shook his head and took a step back. “Never mind. I’ll leave you alone now. If you want to order another coffee, just”—he shrugged—“come up to the counter.”

  “I will.”

  As he watched Ollie turn away and go back to the front room, Patrick wanted to say or do something but he was stuck, trying to figure out the best way to move on from this. They didn’t have to become friends or anything, but they also didn’t have to avoid each other like the plague, did they? They could be casual acquaintances, moving in the same circles but never coming close to each other.