Chapter Two
~Nikolai~
It’s hard to keep a low profile when one is a massive, fluffy bugbear.
However, Nikolai made it ten times harder by also sleeping with the previous boss’s son.
Well, we’re roommates... More than roommates?
On again, off again? It’s rough. Point was, Nikolai had been in love with Jessie since they were teenagers.
But Jessie wasn’t ready for commitment. Nikolai was patient.
He moved in with Jessie the second he moved out of his aunt’s house and thought for sure that was his time.
Jessie, we’ve been best friends since we were kids, and I’m in love with you.
A lot of words for a man of very few. Every time he tried to speak them, he got tongue tied.
Then Jessie dated another girl and Nikolai worried he had the wrong impression.
Many years of unrequited pining flushed down the drain.
Sure, Nikolai liked girls. Nikolai liked a lot of people!
Nikolai liked soft people, ones who he could squeeze and smoosh his face into.
But he’d known in his heart Jessie was the one since they were thirteen.
Jessie was on the swing set, staring up at the school while Nikolai applied an icepack to the minotaur’s eye.
“I’m gonna fucking kill Lenny Barcroff, one day, Nik. Just you wait. I’ll get him back for that!” Jessie hissed under his breath.
And who was Lenny Barcroff? Some idiot teenager—much like them—who kept flipping Nikolai’s ears in class.
When Nikolai, instead of engaging in foolishness, switched seats, Lenny started tossing paper airplanes at him.
Then it escalated to dumping his lunch on the bugbear.
Oh, and that time he dumped a bowl of ice water over him while he was on the toilet.
All because Lenny has the misconception that Nikolai was a quiet, shy guy.
That, despite his size, he was meek and mild.
Lenny Barcroff found out—over the summer where the school couldn’t find out—that Nikolai was not meek or mild. Nikolai was patient. He promised his mother before they were chased out of town to be good. That he’d behave and do what he was told. And he wasn’t about to break that promise.
But Jessie? Jessie was passionate. He went to bat for Nikolai, defended him when everyone else laughed because that’s who the minotaur was.
A protective, loud mouthed, abrasive guy…
funny, a little bit of a goober, but a genuine guy to have in one’s corner.
Something Kierra, his aunt, used to say was important.
Every man’s got to have at least one person in their corner, make sure yours is the right one, Nikolai.
It was just pure happenstance that he was also in love with the guy, rooming with him, and every once in a while, snuggled up with him.
Jessie thought they were having fun. Taking care of business, you know.
But then he’d kiss Nikolai so sweetly that he knew better.
He just needs time. He’s got a lot on his plate. And I am patient.
So, Nikolai waited, and pined, and waited some more. Because Jessie is the one, and I don’t need anybody else.
That was, until he looked up from the engine he was inspecting for parts and nearly threw himself into the lower bay out of shock.
A tiny face stared at him through the gap between the hood and the frame.
Sweet, round cheeks, big eyes full of wonder, staring at him through the space that no longer held a windshield.
“Chimney fu-uuuuuhhhhh-dge.” He drew out the one word, remembering the tiny fiendish girl from the car they towed in earlier. Thing can’t be more than six? Right?
“Hi! You fixin’ car?” The bubbly sprout giggled, cocking her peachy head to the side.
Her hair swished from side to side as she swayed in the seat, humming happily to herself.
There were little bumps on her forehead.
Soon to be horns? Nikolai rubbed his chest to soothe the thunderous heartbeat behind his ribs.
“Uh, yeah,” Nikolai let out an exasperated sigh. Glancing around, he tried to spot the lady the tike belonged to... Where the fuck is your mom, little terror?
“Vroom, vroom! Beeeeeeeep!” The girl squealed playfully as she pretended to twist the steering wheel. “Mommy never let me drive.”
“Hmm,” he hummed to himself, walking around the hood of the car. “How’d you…get in there?”
The girl shrugged and continued to play with the steering wheel.
Sure, he’d taken the doors off as they’d been smashed to oblivion, but how did she get there?
Nikolai had been so preoccupied, in his thoughts and working hard, to see a rogue child.
Work? This car is a dumpster fire. The speaker on the insides were too old to be salvaged but the wires were good.
He was working on taking down detailed notes of everything that survived the incident.
A good report let him and Jessie talk about the payout.
Part of the business model was giving customers a fair market price for the parts.
It’s not like they needed the money from that enterprise.
And giving everyone a little more than their competitors ensured they always got first dibs.
But Nikolai was more interested in how the little shit snuck her way through the shop without a single person noticing.
“Isabella? Bella!” Until right then. Nikolai perked up, raising a hand up high so the molting mother hen could find him.
She immediately clocked him with those ruby eyes of hers, face softening from frazzled panic.
Nikolai waited for her to come to him. She rushed through the shop, easily avoiding all the normal pitfalls they warned customers about.
Jessie would tell me to walk any loose animals or children back through the shop.
Nikolai didn’t want to put hands on the tiny terror, lest she kick and scream.
Plus, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it, he was checking mom out.
I like soft bodies…and she looks so comfy.
Red hair that begged to be pulled, a strong nose to compliment her soft cheeks, and there was something about a lady who liked red lipstick.
I’m a sucker for red lipstick and matching thongs.
Nikolai cleared his throat as he stepped aside.
The woman avoided the doors laying on the ground.
“Bella, we talked about this. This car isn’t ours anymore.”
Tiny terror huffed, “But vroom, vroom.”
“No, baby, no vroom, vroom. Mommy’s got to get a new car first.”
“What’s wrong wiff-it?” The little girl pouted, pointing back at her car seat still strapped into the vehicle. “Mine!”
“Oh, shit, that is still yours.”
“Uh,” Nikolai laughed nervously, scrambling to the other side. He reached in and unbuckled it. “I’ll put it in the room.”
“Thank you…” She exhaled heavily.
“Nikolai,” he inputted, not sure what to say.
Her smile warmed his chest and made his stomach clench. It was a genuine smile, something sweet and foreign to him. “Thanks, Nikolai. I’m Katarina.”
“I’m Bella!” the tiny terror chirped, bouncing on the seat.
“I gathered,” Nikolai hummed, nodding at the tiny one. “You should get out though. I vacuumed the glass, but there’s no telling—”
“Oh! Bella!” Katarina, having picked up what Nikolai was struggling to put down, snatched up her daughter.
“Mommy! Vroom, vroom.”
Nikolai finished unwrapping the car seat and peeled it out from its previous prison.
Thankfully, that side of the vehicle got the least amount of damage.
It stopped the bugbear in his tracks for a second.
He stared at the vehicle as less a machine he was analyzing, and more a victim.
The kid said Daddy did it earlier… And that’s when he saw the bruise on Katarina’s exposed bicep. It was growing dark.
“Uh…” he swallowed the lump in his throat.
Nikolai wasn’t exactly squeamish. He’d woken up in a puddle of his own blood once or twice.
He’d mopped Jessie’s off the garage concrete.
He broke too many bones to count. It just felt wrong to see her there with fingerprints embedded into her skin.
Nikolai prided himself on being a good judge of character and Katarina didn’t give him fight club vibes. “We got stuff for that.”
“For what?” she furrowed her brows.
He poked at his own arm. Both Katarina and Isabella glanced down at her bicep. While her child softly palmed at her mother’s arm, whispering something to the bruise, Katarina sighed. “Yeah, uh—”
“Lemme grab it, I’ll meet you in the waiting room. Jessie doesn’t like when people stand in the garage.” Nikolai nodded back toward the steel door beyond the chain link fence that protected their customers from the dangers of the shop.
“Oh, yeah, because we get in the way,” she laughed.
“Slip hazard,” Nikolai hummed with a nod, marching off with her car seat against one hip.
He couldn’t fix the car. The frame was dented.
Who did she marry, a fucking bulldozer? That’s not nice Nik.
Not just that, but he smashed in a bunch on the dashboard.
Plus, the car was old, the worth wasn’t there anymore.
No, it was better to get her a good price for the pieces of it and patch up the bruises.
‘Not a lot of justices in the world, Nikolai.’ That’s what his mother said as she left him with his aunt, running out of the city before the Enforcers descended. Gotta make your own justice and fairness where you can, because the world won’t be kind.
He elbowed into the supply room and snatched one of the many jars of healing salve off the shelf.
Ignoring Oats taking a power nap in the corner, he stomped back toward the waiting room.
He passed Jessie, standing an inch beyond one of the bay doors and talking with a regular about their tires.
The desire to pass this off to Jessie was strong.
The minotaur was the charisma guy! Nikolai was the muscle.
But he spotted a pair of familiar, ruby eyes staring him down through the waiting room window.
With a sigh, he marched the rest of the way.
Through the rusty gate, into the cool ac of the office.
It’s fine, I need water anyway. He sat the car seat down in front of the kiddo.
“Mine!” Isabella cheered, rocking the chair in front of her.
“Thank you—oh!” Katarina froze as Nikolai acted on impulse.
Kneeling in front of her, he spun the cap on the glass jar off.
He set it on her thigh so he could hold the jar in one hand, and scoop goop out with two fingers off his free hand.
Katarina shifted to give him her bicep better.
He spread the blue, gelatinous creation onto her skin.
It immediately glowed like a lamp as it melted.
Man, she is so soft. She’s gotta be using lotion or something.
Nikolai tried not to gulp as he stroked her arm.
So soft. When his gaze lifted off her arm, he was trapped in glowing rubies that bore through him.
“You—uh… the car…you’re not going to find a new one tonight. Check takes three days to print.” He nodded, like he’d said anything actually important.
“So, what am I supposed to do,” she breathed to no one other than herself.
“We’ll drive you,” he answered automatically, then tried to hide the utter disbelief he had in himself. Who are you? What are you doing!
“That’s really sweet, but I’ve got nowhere to go.”
Nikolai broke the connection with her glowing rubies to focus on the jar.
Don’t do it. He wasn’t thinking. It isn’t fair.
He wasn’t considering it. She’s got nowhere to go.
She was a stranger that he didn’t owe anything to…
He screwed the lid back onto the jar and glanced back up to her. “You can stay with us.”
No! Not that!
“What?” she blurted out.
“You can’t go back to him. You and the tiny terror stay with us. I’ll go tell Jessie.” He rose to his towering height and nodded to both of them like it wasn’t completely batshit that he offered. You don’t know this woman!
It was her pretty face. The kid got to him. They were in a tough spot, and he was a big softy for people on the run. What did it matter? He opened his big bugbear mouth and he couldn’t go back on his word.
Nikolai burst out into the shop, jogging over to Jessie. Seconds after the customer walked away with their keys and the paperwork, Jessie twisted. His eyebrows furrowed. Nikolai panted for air as he came to a screeching halt.
Jessie greeted him with a smile, “What’s up—”
“She’s coming home with us tonight!” Nikolai yelled at Jessie before promptly snapping his mouth shut hard enough his tusks prodded his cheeks. Jessie’s eyebrows shot up into his horns. Nikolai, not saying a single word, threw his arms out to the side. Jessie was baffled. Nikolai was panicked.
Then Jessie sputtered, “Yeah, man, she’s coming home with us. Who?”
“Katarina—pretty lady with the fucked up car.” Nikolai propped his hands on his hips where his mechanics overalls were bunched up. He’d done all of that with a massive oil stain on the chest of his under-shirt, sweaty fur slicked across his arms, and his boots covered in tar. Perfect.
“Oh,” Jessie wheezed as Nikolai stalked away. “Wait, what?”
Nikolai threw his hands out, not speaking another word before other batshit ideas came out of his mouth.