Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
TOM
The courier’s text came in just after six a.m. Tom met him out in the parking lot, where he signed for three large crates. The air was still, and the lot quiet enough that the thunk of each crate sliding into the SUV felt louder than it should have.
He was closing the hatch when Bryce pulled in. He stepped out of the truck, wearing worn jeans, dark shades, and that easy smile.
Heat curled low in Tom’s gut, but he shut it down fast. It was one thing to find Bryce attractive—anyone would—but he knew he was reacting to more than that.
Bryce was warm, bright, the kind of person it felt good to orbit.
And that would be fine so long as Tom remembered it wasn’t personal.
Bryce didn’t shine like that just for him. It was who he was.
“You always start your mornings with clandestine tech drops,” Bryce asked, “or is today special?”
“You know how it is,” Tom replied. “Romantic gestures are different in my line of work.”
He regretted it the second the words left his mouth. Too flirty. Way too telling.
But Bryce laughed, and the sound wrapped around Tom, feeling like comfort and home.
“Needed to pick something up from the hardware store,” Bryce added, all casual. “Figured I’d swing by, lend a hand. I didn’t expect you to be this efficient.”
It sounded like an excuse. But it probably wasn’t—Tom had learned the hard way not to trust his read on people once feelings were involved. For someone who read a room for a living, he sure was bad at it when it became personal.
He’d thought Zack’s shiftiness meant he was planning a surprise for Tom’s birthday. A weekend away, maybe. Something sweet and small. Instead, he’d come home to bags by the door.
So no, he wasn’t going to misread this. Whatever Bryce was doing, it was just friendliness. Just his natural warmth.
Tom would enjoy it, and try not to want more.
* * *
They reached the ranch as the morning haze was burning off. Karl and Colby were outside, examining a rough sketch Karl had spread across the hood of one of the trucks. Karl nodded in greeting, his gaze taking in the crates as Tom and Bryce unloaded them.
“Morning,” he said. “We ready to do this?”
Colby’s greeting was quieter, but his posture was alert, more sure of himself than he’d been the previous day.
“Split the work?” Tom suggested. “Karl, if you want to handle the base station and relays, Colby and I can help Bryce set up the perimeter sensors.”
Karl nodded. “Sounds good. I’m putting the base in the barn. Less traffic than the house, and no one’s going to accidentally unplug it to charge their phone.”
From there, alerts would route straight to everyone’s phones, with permissions set by role and need. Clean, calm, and efficient—just how Tom liked it.
After splitting the gear, Tom and Bryce set off on foot, while Colby took the ATV, stacked with crates and a collapsible ladder. For an instant, Tom was sorry they weren’t riding again, but he swiftly realized what a pain it would be, having to hobble the horses each time they stopped.
Bryce moved ahead with a sure-footed ease that Tom found himself watching. Bryce’s low-slung jeans, the way his shirt fitted his broad shoulders… It was less like observation and more like longing.
Bryce caught him looking once. He turned his head, raised an eyebrow—pleased, and maybe curious. Tom looked away, fast. He wasn’t going to fall into that again. No matter how much he wanted to.
Colby was waiting for them at the perimeter. After a brief assessment, Tom selected a sturdy pine for Colby to set the ladder against and climb up, Bryce steadying the base of the ladder. Typical of all he’d seen of Bryce, Tom thought. He was the one holding things steady, letting others climb.
The camera safely mounted, Tom tested the range of the sensor.
“Good?” Bryce asked, shielding his eyes against the sun.
“Solid,” Tom said. “Trigger radius is a bit tighter than optimal, but it’s good enough.” He tapped his screen. Still no handshake icon. “Once Karl’s got the boosters up, I can sync the lot from here.”
He glanced at Bryce, whose brow was slightly furrowed as he concentrated on Tom’s words and on keeping his pack safe. He was focused, steady, and deeply distracting.
Tom looked back at his screen, pretending that helped.
* * *
They worked their way slowly along the ridge, spacing motion sensors every couple hundred feet, each disguised as a fence post. A single strand of wire ran between the posts, enough to make the setup look like a regular, if half-assed, perimeter fence.
Bryce marked GPS coordinates while Colby made detailed notes for the system map.
As the morning warmed, they all stripped down to t-shirts, and there was something infinitely distracting about the way Bryce’s pulled across his back whenever he bent down to the sensor case. The hair on the nape of his neck was clinging in the heat of the sun.
At one point, Tom tore his gaze away from the muscles of Bryce’s back and saw Colby watching him. Their eyes met, and Colby blinked before turning away.
“Going to check coverage back toward the bend,” he muttered, and melted into the trees before Tom could say anything.
He dug out a bottle of water and held it out to Bryce, who straightened and took it gratefully. And Tom emphatically did not watch the way Bryce tilted his head back, the way his throat bobbed as he drank, or the way he dragged a hand across his lips afterward. Lips that…
Tom turned around abruptly and snagged his own water bottle. He was here to do a job. Not to want something he couldn’t have.
brYCE
They were almost halfway through when they stopped for lunch, the three of them sitting on a fallen tree and eating the sandwiches Colby had put together while Bryce had been in town, meeting Tom.
Bryce hadn’t needed to do that, as it happened, but he’d thought Tom might need a hand loading the gear.
And maybe he hadn’t wanted to wait an instant longer to find out if the distance he’d detected at the diner was still there.
Problem was, he couldn’t tell for sure, not with Tom in professional mode today, getting the kit set up.
Bryce crumpled up the tinfoil his sandwiches had been wrapped in, and Tom passed him another foil-wrapped package. He took it without thinking, and then paused.
Tom had done it without a word, just like earlier with the water. He’d noticed what Bryce needed and made sure he had it.
Bryce didn’t know what to do with that. He’d spent years taking care of other people.
It’d been that way since he and Matt left Cheyenne.
For months afterward, he’d spent his time dragging Matt out of fights, mopping up the vomit from his drinking bouts, and just trying to make sure he survived until the next day.
There was a time he’d thought it would never get better, but slowly, Matt got himself together again.
While he might not be wiping up blood and vomit any longer, he was still there when the pack’s emotional messes spilled over, trying to make everything better in any way he could. It was how he was wired.
This small, thoughtful gesture hit differently. It wasn’t anything dramatic, but it was just for him. He wasn’t sure if no one had ever thought to do that before or if he simply had never let them. Yet somehow, Tom had seen him.
And yeah, that left Bryce feeling warm and squishy. And maybe a little ridiculous.
“Can’t believe I’m calling security installation relaxing,” he said, aiming for casual, like a pack of sandwiches hadn’t just quietly knocked him sideways.
“Manual labor,” Tom said, uncapping his water bottle and taking a swig. “Oldest therapy in the book.”
“The thing that’s worrying me is Tristan’s damn goats,” Bryce said. “There’s no way they should come out this far, but they do everything else they’re not supposed to, so it’s probably too much to hope for. Any way to make the sensors goat-proof?”
Tom blinked. “You’re asking for a goat-specific override code?”
“You’ve met them. You really think we don’t need one?”
“Good point,” Tom admitted. “I’ll program a low-sensitivity mode for small, overly confident quadrupeds.”
Bryce grinned, and as he forced himself to look away from Tom’s face, his gaze met Colby’s. Oh, that was definitely a small smile trying to suppress itself at the corners of Colby’s mouth as he watched the two of them.
“Guess we’d better get on, if we’re going to finish before dark,” Tom said, standing up and stretching.
Bryce stood too, brushing his hands on his jeans. “Right. Let’s go make the place goat-proof.”
Tom laughed as he slung his pack over one shoulder. “Honestly, that might be the most impossible job I’ve ever taken on.”
As they moved back toward the trail, Colby fell in step a polite few paces behind. When he first came to them, he used to do that to show respect, but Bryce didn’t think that was the reason now. He was trying to be tactful, giving him and Tom space without drawing attention to it.
They didn’t speak much as they worked that afternoon, hard, repetitive work that swiftly established a rhythm between the three of them. Tom was skillful and decisive, identifying choke points with an ease that spoke to his sharp mind and calm control.
Bryce swallowed. Damn if that wasn’t hot.
TOM
He stayed for dinner again, and tried not to think how he could get used to it, how it compared to a sandwich at his desk buried underground while he worked late before heading back to the empty, cold apartment.
They were all tired—the good sort of tired from a day’s hard work outdoors—and the atmosphere was quiet and easy. Karl hadn’t joined them for dinner but had gone out to patrol overnight.
“It’s not that he doesn’t trust us not to do a good job,” Bryce had explained. “Just, he can’t leave the pack’s safety to anyone else.”
Sounded suspiciously close to a trauma response to Tom, but for all he knew, it could be a need for control rooted elsewhere in his personality.
None of the pack seemed to find Karl’s absence strange as they tucked into Jason’s comfort food—meatloaf with mashed sweet potatoes and sautéed green beans.
God, Tom was going to find it hard to go back to takeout after this.
He used to cook sometimes, but between their long hours and Zack’s martyred sighs whenever a carb appeared on a plate, it had stopped being worth the effort.
Matt had already inspected the base station and made sure he understood exactly how it worked.
“I guess the lessons for everyone else can wait until tomorrow,” he’d said, as Bryce yawned, and Colby looked a little droopy around the edges.
It wasn’t the physical labor that had worn them out so much as the fresh air and constant focus—aligning beams, double-checking coverage, and making sure the power nodes were well hidden.
And now Tom was leaning on the rail of the porch, because if he sat down, he thought he might fall asleep.
Bryce was stretched out in a chair, mug of coffee balanced on his stomach, though Tom hadn’t seen him drink from it in at least ten minutes.
He kept an eye on it, just in case he needed to dive over and catch it.
“You’re coming back tomorrow?” Bryce asked. His voice was low, a little rough with sleep, and God, it made something in Tom shiver. Both the voice and the need in it.
He should have kept it professional and simply said yes, reminding Bryce he’d be bringing Jax with him. But something in Bryce’s voice—it had sounded like longing, Tom was almost sure of it. Just for him. Maybe.
Only one way to find out.
“If you want me to,” he said, and waited for Bryce to turn his neediness into a joke.
Maybe Bryce knew what that had cost him to say, because he didn’t laugh. He held Tom’s gaze and said quietly, “Yeah. I do.”
Tom’s heart thudded unevenly as he saw the unaccustomed seriousness in his eyes. This, between them, it was something. It was real.
Hooves clattered on the porch steps, startling him for an instant.
“Damn goats,” Bryce muttered. “Tristan! Your goats are out again.”
Tristan barreled through the back door, a half-eaten cinnamon roll in his hand.
“Well, damn,” he said, as the black goat took one look at him and headed off into the dark.
The moment between them had been shattered, and Tom had a drive ahead of him before he could crash.
“I’d better get going,” he said, and made his way toward the steps.
“Night, Tom.” Something in Bryce’s voice, a slight, unaccustomed roughness, sent a shiver down his spine.
He glanced back to find Bryce still watching him. “Night,” he said.
His boots stirred little clouds of dry dirt as he headed toward his car, and he didn’t glance behind him. But he felt Bryce’s gaze following him into the dark. Warm, steady, and with a tendril of heat that Tom felt deep in his gut.