Chapter Six
Ben
“Yo, Ben!”
I sighed, then slid out from under the car on my creeper. Both of the pits were in use, thus needing the creeper in the first place.
“Yeah?” I peered up at Kenny, one of the other mechanics at Artie’s Auto Shop.
“Your favorite customer is here.” Kenny smirked, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.
I got up smoothly, keeping my face neutral, and gave him the flashlight I’d been using to figure shit out. “Awesome. You can finish Shania’s wheels.”
Then I sauntered through the doors of the garage.
Look, I was gay. I’d always known I was gay.
My libido had never been the greatest and then the drugs had muddled my whole system even more.
I’d also never been a catch, looks-wise.
I looked better now, of course, and I was happier, which probably showed, but I knew I leaned a bit too much to what I was: a recovering addict, redneck mechanic werewolf.
So the fact that I had a regular who was clearly into me made very little sense, even if we had a tiny bit of shared history.
“Hey, Ethan,” I called out as I wiped my hands on the rag I always had hanging from my coveralls pocket.
“Oh, hi, Ben,” he said, blushing slightly and then gestured at his 2019 Honda Civic. “I’m pretty sure it’s making a weird noise whenever I turn right.”
I nodded and put the rag back into my pocket. “Okay. Let’s listen here first.” I couldn’t help myself and grinned. “If there’s anything obvious….” I gestured at my ears.
He ducked his head, his light blond hair flopping over to cover his face as he blushed. “Uh, right. Wolf hearing. I remember.”
He slid into the car and started the engine, popping the hood for me.
I lifted it and listened. There was nothing alarming that I could hear, so I closed it again.
“Nothing. Let me just get out of these coveralls and we’ll go for a ride, okay?”
Ethan nodded almost too eagerly and turned the engine off.
I went to undress in the locker room, because I didn’t need to feed his crush by doing it in his view.
“I’m taking Ethan for a drive. Says his car has a sound when he turns right, so….” I shrugged at Artie, our boss, when I passed him on my way back.
“Don’t take too long. Ash is bringing in his Harley in… an hour. And you need lunch before that!”
“Thanks, Boss!”
I went back to Ethan and gestured for him to get out of the driver’s seat. Blushing, he tried to keep his eyes off my forearms as he got out and went around the car to jump in again.
Since he was around my brother’s height, I moved the seat back to fit my legs better.
“Okay, so when you turn right?” I asked, glancing at him as I turned the engine on again.
“Yeah.”
The radio turned on, and in hindsight it might’ve been on before, too. Either way, I immediately recognized Luca’s voice as a Kaiju song began to play.
“Oh, I love this band!” Ethan practically vibrated in his seat.
I took the left turn out of the parking lot and smiled. If he only knew who we had at the house. Then again, next to nobody knew Luca was there.
“Sorry, but I need to turn that off so I can hear the car,” I reminded him, and turned the radio off.
“Oh, right. Sorry!” Ethan looked ashamed and blushed deeper.
“It’s okay. I like their music, too.” I couldn’t help myself as I added, “And the singer? He’s really good.”
“He’s also really, really hot.”
If only you knew, buddy.
“That, he is,” I replied.
I chose a route that gave us enough turns and little traffic so I didn’t have to divide my concentration too much.
Maybe five minutes into the drive, Ethan blurted out, “You know it’s not just that you’re a wolf, right?”
I chuckled and glanced at him. “I know.”
He nodded rapidly, then exhaled with obvious relief. “I just… I don’t want to come across like… like that.”
“You don’t,” I assured, then added, “but I’m pretty sure part of all this is hero worship.”
He looked surprised. “You remember that?”
I smiled as I waited for a car to pass us at an intersection. “I do.”
A handful of years ago, I’d saved him from a bunch of homophobic assholes outside the high school he’d still gone to back then. He’d been about to graduate, but his obvious queerness had rubbed some of the jocks the wrong way. Idiots.
It had taken me showing up and them realizing I was a wolf and older than them to erm… diffuse the situation.
“Oh.” He didn’t have much more to say after that. I just hoped that he’d come to his senses.
“Okay, let’s try this turning thing again….”
He was right. Something was grinding a little around the driver’s side wheel when I turned right, and it ended up taking half an hour to fix the issue.
Ethan was more subdued when he left, but I could tell he still carried a torch. Not that I’d thought I’d extinguish it by telling him I remember the kid he used to be.
He was a grown man now, of course, and if I’d had a type he could’ve fit into it, but…. My life wasn’t that simple. My attraction wasn’t that simple.
When I got home to the scent of something delicious being cooked in the kitchen, I smiled.
This was the home I would’ve loved to have as a kid.
The one that wasn’t possible back then. For a while, we’d had a mom who wasn’t reduced into a quivering mess of bruises, but then escaped into drugs.
We’d also had Brodie and Bella’s mom, who had been lovely until she’d gone a similar route.
Bella had been somewhat of a big sister to Max and I, too, but with what our father had done to her…
I couldn’t blame her for leaving, nor did I ever blame Brodie for running, too.
We’d done what we could after. We’d hung on to life by the skin of our teeth, but we were here now.
“Oh, hi,” Kye said when I peered into the kitchen. “Your guys are taking a nap. There was a very emotional phone call to Luca’s handler and….”
“Oh, okay.”
As I turned away, he added, “Dinner’s ready in about an hour. I forgot to turn the slow cooker on.”
Chuckling, I jogged up the stairs. I could hear the girls talking in Carys’ room, and very faint music drifted from Rian’s.
I went to the door of the room I shared with my brother and carefully slipped inside.
Max was sprawled halfway on top of Luca, who was on his back. They were both asleep, and for a solid thirty seconds, I just stood there and looked at them.
There was a comfortable ease in them like this. They were close already, and I felt like their connection was only getting deeper.
I could step back and let them figure themselves out. All I wanted was for Max to be happy. I’d seen how borderline giddy Luca could make him just by existing and being his friend.
Would either of them take any steps toward something romantic if I was in the middle? I doubted it. They wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings or make me feel like an outsider.
Luca’s eyes opened while his body stayed eerily still. Damn vampires.
“Hey,” he mouthed, then held his hand out for me. “Come nap?” he asked very quietly so as not to wake Max up.
I shook my head. “I just got home. I’m going to go shower.”
He nodded, then mouthed, “After?”
My heart clenched a little. Maybe this was the time to step back? So they could get going?
“We’ll see,” I whispered, then ignored the flash of something akin to hurt in Luca’s beautiful eyes as I slipped back out to go take my shower.
When we sat down for dinner, we chatted about our days like usual.
“Anything new at the garage?” Holden asked after telling us about how Holly, the now former Sheriff Gerrell’s very estranged wife, had glared at him while passing on the street earlier.
I wasn’t sure what made me do it. Maybe it was how Luca had come to the kitchen with us and sat on the window seat, watching Max like he knew my brother was special.
I cleared my throat and drank a bit of water. “Do you know Ethan Andrews?” I asked Holden, because as the Deputy Sheriff he probably knew most people around here.
“I think so. Human, mid-twenties, works at the lumber mill off Houston Road, right?”
I nodded, my eyes firmly in the stew on my plate. “He works in the office there, yeah. Turns out he’s a bit of a frequent flyer at the garage.”
“Oh?” Holden asked, his tone curious.
I heard my brother’s breathing get quieter as he listened to what I was saying. Everyone else’s attention was on me, too, but his was the one I cared about the most.
“He’s a bit younger than you think, but not by much.
Anyway, a handful of years ago, I was walking past the high school, when I saw a couple of jocks trying to intimidate him.
Like crowding him against his car and being all big men, you know?
” I shrugged and added, “I couldn’t let them do that, so I went and told them off.
” I glanced at Holden, grinning with humor I wasn’t feeling.
“Turns out he might’ve developed a bit of a crush on me. ”
Holden chuckled, but I could tell he was reading the room.
The humans weren’t quite as acutely in tune with everything, but everyone else was… tense. Uneasy.
Maybe it was because neither of those things were unfamiliar or intimidating to Holden, he asked, “So he shows up for no reason? Just to see his hero?”
I snorted softly. “Not too often and to be fair, it’s never for absolutely no reason.” I shrugged one shoulder as I picked up my glass again. “Anyway. Driving around with him to figure out the noise he was hearing was the most excitement I had all day.”
I felt the tension from Max. As if tuned into him, Luca slid off the window seat and walked past us, his hand touching Max’s shoulder in passing.
“I’m going to the couch. No offense, Kye, but the stew is offending my new delicate sensibilities.”
Kye chuckled tightly. “Understandable.”
Carys piped up then, and started to chat about the next week’s menu.
One by one, we finished eating and eventually Max left to go find Luca. As I put my fork and knife neatly on my empty plate, Brodie said, “Ben? Let’s do a perimeter check.”
Well, shit.
“Sure.”
In short order, we put on our boots and jackets, then slipped into the cool evening air.
It wasn’t dark with the full moon so close. Part of Carys’ enthusiasm about the menu was that she and Kye liked to cook a feast for full moons when we needed more calories after shifting.
Once we were on the path around the property, I waited for my Alpha to speak.
Eventually, he did.
“What are you trying to do?” he asked, glancing at me over his shoulder as we walked on a narrow part of the path. “Like what’s your goal with talking about Ethan that way?”
I groaned and stopped in my tracks. Tilting my head back, I stared at the moon that was shining on us from between the trees.
“I don’t know.”
Brodie came to me and squeezed my arm. “You know that nobody in the pack minds you and Max’s relationship, right? Even the humans understand that it’s very different for wolves.”
I sighed and lifted my head to look at him. “It’s not… it’s not like that. Quite.” Yet.
“The two of you are two halves of a whole, Ben. If that’s more than being brothers, we get it.”
I looked down at our feet and sighed. “I get that. I do.” Then the thing that had been bothering me came out in words for the first time. “But what if Luca doesn’t want both of us?”
Brodie patted my arm and chuckled quietly.
“Well, for one, he seems to like the two of you a whole lot. He’s comfortable with both of you.
Whether that develops into anything romantic with one or both of you is yet to be seen.
But for two, and I need you to listen to me on this, cousin.
” He waited until I made eye contact with him.
“Luca is intelligent. He knows how close you and Max are. Whether he wants you together or separately, that’s between the three of you.
But he’s fully capable of telling you what his wants and needs are, and you and Max should try to, you know, communicate. ”
I groaned and looked at the moon again. “You mean I need to be an adult about this?”
He laughed and turned to lead the way again. “Sadly, that’s how it works. You need to talk a whole lot when you’re interested in someone and want to make it work and, above all, last.”
But how was I to know what to say in a situation where my feelings for Luca were new? I’d never fallen in love with the illusion of him like Max had through Luca’s music, years ago.
Maybe it was because I wasn’t a dreamer in the way my brother could be. I was a realist, and I had to admit to myself that not only did I need to have a discussion with Luca, I also needed to have one with my brother, and that… that was the uncharted territory that scared me the most.
Because while we’d always been incredibly close, I hadn’t lied to my Alpha; there were lines we’d never crossed. Whether that was out of fear or something else, I wasn’t sure.
Luca was in our lives permanently, I was certain of that. I couldn’t see a world where he’d go back to being a rockstar. He wasn’t that man anymore.
If he didn’t want us both, I hoped he wanted Max. I could live with not having Luca, and I could live with being pushed to the sidelines a little bit when it came to my brother. But I couldn’t live with being the one Luca chose at my brother’s expense.
I would never, ever break Max’s heart like that.
Of course, when I walked into our bedroom about an hour later, Max and Luca were sitting on the bed, looking at me with expressions I couldn’t read.
Before I could freak out about that—I could always read my brother, after all—Luca sighed.
He squeezed my brother’s hand on his lap and said, “I think we need to talk.”