Chapter 5 Mason
Mason
Beth drops her bag on the kitchen counter, still in her green apron, breathing like she ran here. Her face is doing something I've seen once before: on a guy at the construction site who accidentally reversed a forklift into his boss's truck and was now trying to figure out how to bring it up.
"So," Knox says, padding in from the hallway in leggings and a terry cloth headband that makes him look like an extra from a Jane Fonda workout tape. A towel hangs around his neck. He's glistening slightly. "What was so important I had to interrupt my wellness workout?"
Arthur looks up from the mixing bowl he's been hovering over for the last twenty minutes—some elaborate brownie situation that requires, apparently, three types of nuts he was explicitly prevented from buying because Beth called this emergency meeting.
I lean against my room's doorframe and squeeze a grip trainer in my right hand. Sixty pounds of resistance, which is the only workout I can manage right now because Beth's text yanked me out of my workout mid-set.
Beth presses both hands flat on the counter. "Okay. I'm going to try and say this as calmly and objectively as I can." She takes a breath, straightens up and clears her throat. "So, Jessica came into my shop."
Arthur goes still.
Knox's towel slides off his shoulder. He doesn't pick it up.
My hand squeezes the grip trainer all the way in and holds it there.
"And she—okay, so she comes in, right, going oh my god your shop is adorable, like we're girlfriends, and she says she wants me to take care of her flower arrangements." Beth's hands are moving faster than her mouth now. "For her wedding. To Grant. Their wedding."
I squeeze the grip trainer so hard something in my forearm twitches. Heat starts as a sharp point behind my sternum and bleeds outward.
Arthur stares at her. "She walked into your shop and asked you to arrange flowers for her wedding. To Grant."
"Yes." Beth folds her arms across her chest, then unfolds them, then folds them again. None of the configurations seem to work for her.
"Wow," I say.
"She did the whole thing." Beth's hands are moving again, restless. "The Grant feels terrible speech. The head tilt. The—" She touches her own arm, mimicking it. "She squeezed my arm and told me she hopes I find my special someone soon."
Knox, who's been standing motionless against the hallway entrance like a man waiting for a verdict, crosses his arms. "What the hell?"
Beth closes her eyes. Opens them.
"So you have to understand—I was seeing red. Like, actual red, the color, behind my eyelids. So please don't judge me too hard when I tell you what came out of my mouth, because I wasn't—I mean, I was there, obviously, but I also wasn't fully in control of—"
"Beth," I say. "What did you say?"
She looks at the counter for a beat. Then at me.
"I told her I was dating all three of you."
My face does something, I have absolutely no idea what. I can feel muscles moving but whatever expression I've assembled, it's not one I've worn before.
Beth's gaze lands on me and immediately flinches away.
So, whatever I look like right now, it's clearly not inviting.
"You told her," Arthur says, slow, tasting each word, "that you're dating us. Pack Leroy."
"I heard it leave my mouth. And I knew—I knew—I should stop." Beth's face is going pink from the collarbones up. Her hands find her apron strings and twist. "But—"
"But you didn't stop," Knox says from the hallway entrance.
"... I didn't." Beth puts both hands on her face. "Luna was right there. She probably still hasn't blinked."
Arthur leans back against the counter. A sound comes out of him, halfway between a breath and a laugh. Then a bigger one.
"How'd she take it?" he asks.
Beth's hands drop away from her face, slowly, like she's peeling off a bandage she put on herself.
Her cheeks are blotchy. Her chin is doing a defiant little jut that doesn't match the rest of her expression at all.
"Her smile did this—" She does a smile wide and brittle.
"And she said that's wonderful, oh my god, that's so great for you, I'm SO happy. "
Something warm spreads through my chest. Not the bad kind now, though. It's more akin to the feeling you get when you've been locked out under the rain for hours and someone finally arrives to open the door.
Because I know that smile. Jessica wore it like armor, and Beth just put a dent in it.
Four months of being the pack that got left, the pack the whole town side-eyes over drip coffee, and one panicked sentence from an omega in a green apron did what three alphas couldn't manage in a hundred and twenty days.
Something behind my ribs hums, small and fierce and deeply, unapologetically petty.
At the same moment, Arthur grins. "That fucking rules."
"It does not rule, Arthur," Knox says.
"It rules a little bit." Arthur looks at me. "Mase. Back me up."
I set the grip trainer on the counter. And then...
I smile.
"Yeah," I say. "That fucking rules."
Arthur and Knox both stare at me in surprise.
Beth's hands slide down from her face in slow motion, fingers trailing off her cheekbones like she forgot they were there. The blotchy pink is still going strong, but her eyes are wide now, locked on me, recalibrating.
"So you're... actually okay with this," she says.
"I'm not," Knox says.
"We've been playing defense for four months," I say, ignoring him. "Getting pitied at every event. Showing up and absorbing it. I'm done absorbing." I set my jaw. "Jessica got rattled. That matters. I say we stop retreating and push."
Knox unfolds his arms. "Can I have a word with you two?" He looks at Arthur, then at me. "Alone."
Beth's face is the face of a dog who's been told sit and is now watching three people leave the room without saying whether there would be a treat at the end.
I give her the okay sign, the one divers use with their thumb and index finger, and follow Knox down the hallway to his room.
Arthur peels off behind us, pulling the hallway door half-shut.
Knox's room is exactly how I last saw it.
Two monitors on the desk, cables sorted with velcro ties.
A bookshelf organized in an alphabetical system with subcategories.
A topographic map of Lake Vienne on the wall—framed, not thumbtacked—and a diffuser on the nightstand pumping out enough eucalyptus to make the whole room smell like a spa.
He closes the door, leans against the desk and crosses his arms.
"So," I say, dropping onto the edge of his bed. "What's the objection?"
"Are you serious?" Knox's voice is level, controlled, which means the thing underneath is neither of those. "You heard what she said. She told Jessica that she's dating us. Without asking, without thinking about what happens next."
"I heard." I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "I also heard that Jessica's smile broke. After everything she put us through, don't you see this as a win?"
Knox rubs the bridge of his nose. "Sure, it feels good. For now. But how long do we maintain a lie like this? A month? A year? What happens when someone slips up?"
Arthur settles into Knox's desk chair. "I don't think it's such a big deal."
"Really?" Knox turns on him. "Think of it this way: Beth's been in Lakeview for less than two years.
She doesn't have family here. She doesn't have history.
Her whole life in this town is a store and a loan.
If she decides this place isn't worth the hassle, she packs up and leaves, and the whole town thinks we got dumped again. "
"She's not leaving. You just said yourself she has a loan." I hold his gaze. "Which means she has skin in the game."
"And if she does?" Knox pushes off the desk.
"If this whole arrangement evaporates, what are we gonna do?
Worse, what if people learn about the lie?
Right now, we're the pack that got dumped.
That's bad. But the pack that got dumped and faked a relationship to cope?
" He shakes his head. "That's not a setback, that's a category of pathetic Lakeview will dine out on for years. "
"You're living in worst-case scenarios," I say. "Meanwhile, right now—today—we're about to walk into that couple's shower. And by the time we get there, people will already know. They'll look at us different. For the first time in four months, we walk into a room with our heads actually up."
Arthur leans the chair back on two legs.
"He's right. And Knox, think about it. Beth said this to Jessica.
That's not a private conversation, that's a public broadcast. Jessica's probably told six people already, and those six people have told six more.
By tonight, everyone in our circle will have heard it.
By tomorrow, the whole town." He lets the chair thud forward.
"And if people hear this was a lie, they aren't going to think Beth made it up on her own.
So we're already in this whether we like it or not.
I say we might as well make the most of it. "
Knox is quiet. He looks at the topographic map on his wall like the depth contours of Lake Vienne might have an answer hidden in them.
"If I'm even going to consider this," he finally says, letting out a long breath through his nose, "we at least come up with a plan."