Chapter 33 #2
Milo’s eyes sweep the shop and find me on the workbench, and something moves across his face that looks almost like shock.
"Elle." His eyes narrow, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. "You’re really here.”
Raff moves before I can even open my mouth.
One second he's leaning against the Camaro with Perrin, and the next he's crossing the shop floor in long, unhurried strides that somehow still manage to eat up the distance in no time at all. He stops between me and Milo, close enough that Milo has to take a small, involuntary step back.
"Can I help you?" Raff asks forcefully.
Beside me, Odette rises from the workbench without a word. She shifts her tall frame forward, positioning herself at my side. Her cinnamon scent sharpens almost imperceptibly, and I feel the shift in the air around her the way you feel a change in weather before it arrives.
Milo’s eyes go wide as they flicker to her, then back to Raff, and something in his expression recalibrates.
"I'm just here to see Elle," he says, his eyes darting briefly to me around Raff's big body.
"How do you know her?" Raff's voice has gone completely flat now, his eyes locked on Milo like he's daring the beta to say the wrong thing. "And how did you know where to find her?"
Milo shifts his weight, from one foot to the other. "We worked together," he says, his eyes cutting to me again briefly. "Anton told me she’d probably be here.”
Did Anton send him, or is this something else entirely?
Milo has always been very nice to me, but he’s also worked for Anton for a very long time. They have a relationship that goes back years. So it’s very possible that Anton sent Milo to deliver some kind of message.
At least he’s not Anton.
Milo doesn't have Anton's authority or Anton's reach, and he's never once in six months made me feel like I was in immediate physical danger.
Which doesn't mean I trust him.
It just means I'd rather be the one talking to him than have Raff do it for me.
I slide off the workbench. "It's okay, Raff," I say carefully. "I know him."
Raff doesn't move. He looks at me over his shoulder with an expression that says he has heard me but has zero interest in moving even an inch.
I step up beside my alpha, close enough that our arms brush. Odette’s shoes tap against the concrete, moving with me, staying right at my back.
"Hey," I say to Milo, keeping my voice easy as I really look at him.
Up close, he looks even more off. His jaw is tight and his eyes are glassy. He's holding the soda can at his side, and every few seconds his wrist jerks, making the liquid slosh against the aluminum in a thin, restless rattle, like he doesn't even know he's doing it.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
Milo lets out a breath, his shoulders dropping slightly, like my speaking to him directly has given him permission to relax. "I've been trying to get a hold of you since the market," he says. "You just disappeared. No call, or message." He shakes his head. "I was worried about you, Pérez."
I want to point out that we didn’t call or text before, so why would I now. But I keep that to myself.
“Hey, uh.” Milo glances at Raff, then back to me. "Can we maybe talk somewhere a little more private?"
Raff makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh, but makes it very clear Milo is not going to get me alone.
"No," I say pleasantly. "We can talk here."
Something flickers across his face. It's quick and small and he covers it well, but I saw it.
"Right." He nods slowly, one hand pushing into his pocket. "Okay." He looks around the shop, taking it in, his gaze moving over Odette, Perrin by the Camaro, then back to me and Raff. "So you know these people?"
"They're my pack," I say, and the words come out so naturally that it surprises me to some degree.
Milo's eyes move to Raff. Then back to me. "Your pack," he repeats, like he's turning the information over carefully. "I didn't know you had a pack, Elle."
"There's a lot you don't know about me, Milo," I say.
He's quiet for a moment, and I watch him decide something behind his eyes.
"I found your purse," he finally says. "At the market. After everything went sideways." He swings the backpack off his shoulder and reaches inside.
Raff goes completely still beside me.
I feel it more than see it. The shift in his body, every muscle locking up at once, his weight dropping forward onto the balls of his feet. The alpha doesn’t actually move, but the readiness in him is so total and so immediate that the air in the shop changes by several degrees.
Milo looks up, reads Raff's expression in about half a second, and his whole body slows down, moving with exaggerated care.
He pulls out my small purse with two fingers and holds it toward me like he's defusing a bomb.
"Just returning this," he says, his eyes flicking briefly to Raff. "That's all."
Raff’s tense body stays locked in place, watching Milo's hands, as I reach out and take the purse from him.
I close my fingers around the worn leather. It's mine. Small and battered at the corners, the zipper broken on one side, exactly as I left it in the pharmacy tent when my heat hit and everything fell apart.
"Thank you," I say.
"Of course." Milo's eyes stay on my face, and for a moment he doesn't say anything else.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other as his hand pushes back into his pocket.
I can see him turning something over in his mind, deciding whether to say it or not.
He looks at Raff, then at the floor, then back at me.
"There was a work badge inside," he says finally.
"From a pharmacy." He clears his throat.
"Not the Morder." Another pause, shorter this time, like he's already committed to whatever he’s trying to say, and just needs to get it out. "Cassville Care Pharmacy."
The name of my parents' shop hits me somewhere I wasn't prepared for.
I can see the bright red and white sign. My mother's handwriting on the prescription labels. My father's laugh carrying through the back room on a slow Tuesday afternoon. The smell of the cleaning solution he used on the counters every single morning without fail.
I swallow hard, and for one terrible second I'm afraid I might cry.
"You went through my purse?" I ask softly.
"I was trying to figure out who it belonged to," Milo says, and his tone is reasonable and even and gives me absolutely nothing to push back against. "There wasn't much in there. The badge fell out of your wallet.”
I look at him for a moment, then down at the purse in my hands, my fingers tightening around the leather.
"Did you work there?" he asks, his voice casual. "At Cassville Care?"
I look back up at him. His expression is open and friendly and his eyes are doing that thing again, moving over my face with a careful, patient attention that has nothing to do with friendliness.
"For a little while," I say carefully. "Why?"
Milo shrugs one shoulder, the picture of casual.
"No reason really. It's—" He pauses, scratching the back of his neck.
"I grew up not far from Cassville. Small world, kind of thing.
" He smiles, and it almost reaches his eyes.
"Did you know the owners? I actually think they were the Pérez family? Right? Any relation?”
The floor drops out from under me.
I feel it physically, a cold, dizzying lurch in my stomach that I have to breathe through very carefully. My fingers press into the worn leather of my purse, hard enough that I can feel the broken zipper digging into my palm, and I use the pain to anchor myself.
What the fuck is he asking me this for?
I keep my face completely neutral. “No relation,” I say simply.
“Oh.” Milo nods slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. "They died," he says, and his voice is perfectly, carefully sympathetic. "A few years back. I heard it was a robbery gone wrong." He shakes his head. "Terrible thing."
The silence that follows is so loud I can hear my own heartbeat.
"That is terrible," I say, and my voice comes out steady, which feels like a small miracle.
Raff moves, one small shift of his weight that brings him half a step closer to me, his arm pressing firmly against mine. I don't look at him.
I can't afford to look at him right now because if I do something is going to crack open in my face that I can't afford to have Milo see.
But I feel my alpha there, solid and warm and completely certain, and it's enough to keep me standing upright while Milo watches me with those careful, patient eyes.
"Did you know them well?" Milo asks. "The family?"
"Not really," I say. "I was only there a short time."
He nods again, slow and thoughtful, like he's simply taking it all in. Then he looks around the shop one more time, his gaze moving over Odette and Perrin, over the Camaro, over the tool chests and the hydraulic lift and the cluttered workbench where I was sitting five minutes ago.
"Well." He looks back at me. "I'm glad you're okay, Elle. After the market." He taps the side of his leg once with his palm, a small, restless movement. "Anton was worried about you."
And there it is.
"Tell him I'm fine," I say pleasantly.
Milo holds my gaze for one long moment. Then he nods. "I'll do that," he says quietly. And then he turns and walks back out through the open bay door into the afternoon sun.
Nobody speaks for a moment.
I stand there in the middle of the shop floor with my worn-out purse in both hands and listen to the sound of Milo's footsteps on the concrete outside, then the distant sound of a car door, and finally an engine turning over and pulling away.
Then nothing.
Raff turns to me first. His intense expression is gone, replaced by something considerably more tender.
"Who is he?" he asks quietly as his dark eyes move across my face.
"He worked with me at the Morder," I say. "He’s a pharmacy tech.”
"And the pharmacy he mentioned." Raff's voice is careful. "Cassville Care."
I look down at the purse in my hands. At the worn leather and the broken zipper and the work badge somewhere inside it with my mother's pharmacy printed across the top in the clean, simple font she chose herself because she said it looked professional without being cold.
"That was my parents' pharmacy," I say.
Raff's jaw tightens, but he doesn't say anything. He just watches my face.
"It's fine," I say, and I mean it. Mostly.
"People used to ask all the time before I left Cassville.
" I squeeze the purse over in my hands, running my thumb along the broken zipper.
"After my parents died, the police asked me about it a hundred times.
Neighbors asked, even strangers who read about it in the paper and recognized me in the grocery store.
" I shrug one shoulder, trying to make it feel as casual as it sounds.
"People are morbid. They want the details.” I look up at Raff.
"Milo probably heard about it somewhere and wanted the story. That's all."
I say it with enough conviction that I almost believe it.
Almost.
Raff's hand comes up slowly, his palm cupping my cheek, his thumb brushing right below my eye. He looks at me for a long moment, his gray eyes quiet and searching. "Are you okay?" he asks softly.
"I'm fine," I say again, more to myself than anyone.
Then I pull in a slow breath, straighten my shoulders, and push every uncomfortable emotion back where it came from.
I pick up my coffee mug from the workbench and look at Perrin. "Okay," I say brightly. "Show me what you're doing with that transmission."