Chapter Six #2
“Where do you want to store it until then?”
“There’s space in the garage,” I tell Ezra. “Surprisingly, it’s pretty empty in there.”
It’s when I’ve opened the garage, and the guys are hauling the desk inside, that Adam pulls up in the driveway and leaps from his gray sedan, rushing over to Jasper’s side and picking up some of the desk’s weight.
The two of them have a heated discussion, quiet enough that I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can take a guess.
Guilt settles in my chest. I shouldn’t have let Jasper lug that thing around with his obvious injury. He may have appeared okay, but Adam is obviously worried about him.
Adam’s smile seems a bit forced when he approaches me after.
I take in his pink cheeks on porcelain skin, his angular jaw, and the two perfect dimples in his cheeks.
His black hair is damp, like he came here right after a shower, and his icy blue eyes are steady on me. “Hey. I’m late to the party, as usual.”
“You didn’t miss too much.” My voice is smaller than usual, guilt still constricting my throat, which I clear. “So, what did you want to show me?”
“Follow me.”
From his sedan, Adam pulls a tablet and a laptop from the passenger seat and places them gently on the trunk. He opens the laptop and begins typing and tapping the mouse pad, then steps aside, gesturing to the screen. When I peer at what’s on there, a gasp escapes my lips.
It’s a website. Or, the start of one. There’s a logo at the top of the page with an illustration of a dog and a cat, and text that reads Springer's Sanctuary: A Pet Sanctuary of Love.
My lips part, eyes water, and when I turn to Adam, he’s looking bashful.
“I looked up your business license to get the name. I hope you don’t mind.
I wanted it to be a surprise.” He comes closer and starts navigating the site for me.
“This isn’t the real logo, it’s just a generic placeholder.
I thought you’d want to help decide what the logo should be.
” He scrolls down the page, showing me a boxed-off layout.
“We can change anything you want, or even everything, if you don’t like it.
It’s just a mockup. But I wanted people to have a place to go to donate.
And I brought my camera to photograph the pets and put them on there.
” He looks at me, and his face is blurred by my tears.
“It would be good to get a picture of you and a bio. People like to know who’s running a non-profit. ”
I can’t take this kindness anymore. I leap at Adam, throw my arms around him and squeeze the daylights out of him. “Thank you,” I breathe and hiccup. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I can’t believe you did all of this last night.”
He’s a statue in my embrace at first, then his arms gently encircle my shoulders and back, holding me against his chest where I bury my nose, breathe in his eucalyptus and lemon scent, hold it in my lungs, and savor it.
“What’s up with this love fest?”
I lean back to peer at Jasper from within Adam’s arms. “Adam made a website for the sanctuary.”
Jasper smirks and looks at his pack brother. “Oh, that’s not all he made.”
I look up at Adam then, into pale blue eyes, and he lets out a wary laugh. “I may have something else to show you. Another prototype.”
I reluctantly release him, and he heads for his tablet on top of the trunk, bringing it over to me. At first, I think he’s showing me the website again, only in mobile format, but I quickly realize I’m wrong.
“Is that an app?”
Adam nods affirmatively. “Just a basic layout right now, a little backdoor work. It’s nowhere near finished, but I have a plan in mind.
Something to get people really excited about the sanctuary, and make them feel involved.
People want to believe they’re a part of a solution, and we can help show them they are.
” He pulls up and swipes through some screenshots now, showing mock-ups of different pages, and what looks like a place for something interactive, little stick-figure doodles of animals on the screen.
I am in awe.
“You did all of this?”
His free hand goes to the back of his neck and rubs it. “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal, really.”
“Don’t let him fool you. He stayed up all night trying to make sure the flow was perfect.”
Adam shoots Jasper a narrowed glare, which makes Jasper laugh.
I rise up on my tiptoes, put my palm to the side of Adam’s face and pull him toward me to kiss the cheek of this man who’s got to be almost a foot taller than me. He fumbles with his tablet when my lips touch his smooth, freshly-shaven skin, like he almost drops the device.
“Thank you, Adam.”
His cheeks are more than pink now, and I stifle my giggle.
Adam eventually puts his devices back into his car and helps us empty out the trailer.
As I’d suspected, the items inside were nearly ninety-percent trash, which makes me wonder why in the world Jim kept any of it in the first place.
I had to second-guess myself several times on things like empty photo frames and boxes of ballpoint pens that had to be dried out by now, believing there had to be something I was missing.
But I opened everything up, took things apart, and it was simply trash.
By the time everything was sorted and cleaned, I realize we’ve worked well past lunch. “What does everyone think of pizza?”
“I love ‘za,” Jasper says at the same time as Adam says, “I could eat a horse.” Then he looks at Pie in the pasture and winces. “Not that one, though.”
As I laugh, I look at Ezra expectantly. His face is a myriad of emotions, like he’s trying hard to come up with a way to turn me down. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but all I feel is relief when he finally says, “I wouldn’t turn down pizza.”
I order from the Foo-D app, and while we wait for delivery, I assess the outside of the trailer. “This thing is rotten through and through. I’m glad no one fell through the floor in there.”
“There are a few holes, so don’t go wandering inside without a torch.” Ezra comes up beside me, close enough I can feel his body heat, elevated from working so hard. I look up at him, cowboy hat back firmly in place now that he isn’t ducking in and out of the trailer’s tight spaces.
Tapping on my phone, I pull up the searches I’d saved from last night and show him the first one. It’s my favorite. “What do you think?”
He blinks down at the screen, then shields it against the sun’s glare with his giant hand, and those pale green eyes grow wide. “That’s way too much.”
I’m frowning when I take my phone back and look at it.
The trailer is really nice looking. A two-bedroom, one bath, all modern interior.
According to the city, this trailer would be a much easier swap for the old one than an even larger one would be.
I don’t know much about utility hookups, but I assume they have something to do with it.
Ezra thinks I’m getting this for him. And in a way, I totally am. But the thing is, I’m also being selfish. And a little sneaky.
Having Ezra living here, being close to him, I keep hoping he’ll open up, let his defenses down. And one day, I hope he won’t be living in the trailer anymore. I want him to live with me. Us.
But I’m getting way too ahead of myself.
So, I look up into his eyes and cross my arms over my chest. “Well, this is the one I’m going to get, so if you think it isn’t good enough to suit your needs, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
His brow, quite a bit darker than his pale hair, furrows as his lips flatten. I keep my expression carefully stern as we stare at each other, until eventually he sighs, his entire body shrinking a bit with the action.
“All right.”
It’s like the words pain him a great deal, but to show him this was the right choice, I flash a smile and bounce on the balls of my feet once.
When our lunch arrives—or more accurately, our early dinner at this point—we eat in the backyard, which was definitely a choice I hadn’t thought completely through.
All the dogs make a circle around our table, sitting and staring at us with those adorable, pleading eyes. Then, Dini makes a rare appearance, sitting off to the side, away from the dogs and by herself. I’m guessing pepperoni may have called to her.
And, not to be left out, little Odin came outside, too, following his tiny nose and bumping into Nikki as she stares longingly up at me. Odin sits beside her, his nose wiggling with every sniff.
Remy is cuddling up against Ezra’s shin, and he keeps peering down at her inquisitively when she tosses her head back to look up at him.
Adam takes a bite of his pizza and chews around his suppressed smile, and Jasper is already making cooing sounds at Dini, trying to coax her closer.
If I had to guess by the looks of it, she doesn’t want to get closer to the dogs.
“Maybe when we’re done, Adam, Ezra, and I can get the dogs to come inside with us, and you can give Dini a treat,” I suggest. “I’ve got some of those tubes of squishy cream stuff she and Odin trip over themselves for.”
“I definitely want to give that a try.”
Once we’re done eating, the sky is a beautiful orange and magenta along the horizon, something I missed terribly living in the city. That and stars. Light pollution always robbed me of seeing the night sky in all of its glory.
“Thank you all for helping me today.” My voice is tight.
“It means more than I can really ever express. This place was everything to my Uncle Jim. He put his all into creating and running it. He loved animals, of course, but he worried about them a lot. He doted on them. They were his only family, really, aside from me.”
“He never mated?”
I look up at Adam with what must be sad eyes, because his grow sad at the sight of me.
“I don’t know if you all know this, but my family is made up of wealthy business owners going back generations.
A long line of city-dwelling packs, actually.
Jim found his mate many, many years ago.
She was from another affluent family in the city.
But her family was very old school. They still believed in arranged marriages to gain greater power, and they’d basically given their Omega daughter away to garner more wealth.
” I frown, sigh, and lean back in my chair, taking a sip of my soda.
“Jim never told me, but my dad, his brother, mentioned that he tried to get his scent match, Marjorie, to run away with him. But she wouldn’t.
And Jim was never the same again. He came out here to start over, alone. ”
“That’s so fucked up,” Jasper breathes. “I mean, if you asked me to run away with you, I’d jump at the chance.”
An unbidden laugh bursts from my chest, and I reach out to take his hand before looking into his silvery-gray eyes. “I appreciate that. I really do.”
“It must have been… difficult for your uncle to go on after losing hope like that.”
I turn to Ezra, who looks much sadder than I’d anticipated. It makes me wonder if he’s really talking about Uncle Jim.
“Well, it was difficult at first, from what I gathered when I was a bit older. But he found his happiness the best he could, and I’d like to think that he was fulfilled in plenty of ways before he died.”
Jasper turns his hand so our palms connect, then threads his fingers with mine and squeezes.
“Honestly,” I go on, “he always seemed so happy. Until the topic of family wealth would come up. Then, he’d get that kind of mad where you’re really quiet and just radiate negative energy.
My dad used to warn me never to talk to Jim about the nice things I had at home or any of the family trips we were going on.
I didn’t know why I couldn’t talk about those things, but I followed the instructions I was given.
But I think I understand a little better now. Maybe.”
“What do you mean?” Adam’s attention is solely on me, but I can see he’s feeding Crooze pizza crust under the table.
I stifle a smile. “Well, the way I see it, money is the reason Jim didn’t get to be with his mate.
Money dictated that she basically be sold to another family to grow a business.
Even though the Peppers are wealthy, we didn’t come from the same business sector as Marjorie.
Jim may have believed that if neither of them had money, they’d have been together.
” My head shakes at that. “I don’t actually know for sure.
But I do know that my family doesn’t approve of me being here and doing this.
Running the sanctuary. So I’m here and doing it all on my terms. No Pepper money. Only Adley's money.”
“Your family really doesn’t approve of you doing something noble like this?”
My laugh is bitter now as I look at Ezra.
“Uncle Jim was the weirdo who gave up all his ‘opportunities’ to play with animals all day. They were incapable of seeing why he’d want to do this—build this place, care for living creatures who can care for themselves.
Jim was his own person, and my family saw that as odd. Now, they look at me the same way.”
I’ll never forget the looks of horror on my parents’ faces, and the rest of our family pack, when I told them Jim had left me the sanctuary and I was moving to Crescent Lake. My father called it “Jim’s Curse.”
His own brother.
I was so hopping mad I didn’t speak to them again the entire time I’d put my plan into motion and made it out here.
I’d been at my job for just enough years to be bought out, so I retired early, then I rented out my penthouse to have a monthly income, packed up what little I needed, and got out here in under a week after Uncle Jim passed.
“I’m really sorry, Adley.” Jasper squeezes my hand. “That isn’t right. But you know that.”
My head is already nodding before he finishes. “But there’s something else my uncle taught me over the years. Something I promised him, and I intend to keep my promise.”
I look at each of these Alphas, my scent matches, my mates. We’ve only just met, but I already feel the beginnings of a bond forming between us all. Even Ezra.
“I promised Jim that if and when I found my scent matches, I’d never let them go.”