Chapter 29 Beth
Beth
The lights come on, and I see everything at once: Mason directly behind me, one hand cupped over his nose; Ben by the couch, mouth hanging open; Arthur leaning against the wall, doubled over in a silent wheeze of laughter; and Knox at the light switch, frozen mid-reach, gaze ping-ponging between Mason and my fist.
Four men. Zero wolves.
Harper fumbles the prosecco bottle. It bounces off the armrest of the couch and lands on the rug with a dull thud.
"Benjamin Torres," she says, and the way she says his full name carries the weight of every argument they've ever had and several they haven't gotten to yet.
He grins at her, sheepish. "Hey, baby."
"Don't hey baby me! I almost had a cardiac event!"
"Are you surprised, though?" He opens his arms wide, like he's expecting applause, or possibly a hug.
"I'm going to kill you is what I am." She crosses the room and grabs him by the collar of his flannel and kisses him hard. Then she shoves him back.
"I'm still furious," she says.
"That's fair," Ben says happily.
Maren hasn't moved. She's still dripping, both hands pressed flat against her sternum like she's physically holding her heart inside her chest. "I need everyone to know," she says, "that I genuinely thought I was about to die."
"That was you guys?" I stare at them. "The howling? That was—how did you even—"
"Right?" Maren cuts in, voice still shrill. "We were convinced. I was ready to call a ranger. Those did not sound human."
"The howling was my idea," Arthur announces, pushing off the wall with pride. "We rehearsed in the car, on the way here."
"Ben really projected his inner alpha," Mason says. His hand is still over his nose, voice muffled by his palm, and yet somehow the deadpan delivery is fully intact.
The leftover laughter in my chest abruptly dies, because I see a thin, bright line of blood trickling down the side of his hand.
"Oh my God, Mason—" I step toward him. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Let me see."
He drops his hand. His nose is red but shakes his head. "It's fine."
"It is not fine. I hit you in the face."
"Alcohol's a great painkiller." He touches the bridge of his nose gingerly, testing it. Rolls his jaw once. "Honestly, past the initial shock? Can't feel a thing."
A wave of leftover adrenaline surges through me with nowhere to go, and before I can think about it, I smack Mason on the shoulder. "Don't sneak up on people in the dark!"
He absorbs it without moving. Looks at my hand on his shoulder, then at me, a flicker of amusement in his expression.
"How did you even get in?" I ask, turning to the group.
"Side door was unlocked when we got here," Knox shrugs. "We scoped the cabin out while you were in the jacuzzi. Arthur and Mason positioned in the tree line for the howling. Ben and I came in through the side."
"I also located the breaker panel," Knox adds, "in case we needed to kill the lights for dramatic effect."
"He really wanted to use it," Arthur calls from behind us.
"I said it was an option."
Maren finally lowers her hands from her chest. "Okay, hold on. Back up. You drove two hours, walked through the woods drunk, and orchestrated a multi-part wolf prank just to scare us?"
Ben slings his arm around Harper's shoulders. "No, I did it because I wanted to surprise my future wife." He squeezes Harper against his side. "And these three came along for moral support."
"I sure hope you didn't drive up drunk." Harper pulls back.
"No! No no no. We actually rented a small cabin not even five minutes down the road.
We were stone sober for the drive. We got here, unpacked, had dinner, had several drinks, and then walked through the woods to say hi.
" He ticks the sequence off on his fingers like he's presenting evidence.
"Completely responsible. Chronologically. "
"Walking through the woods drunk isn't responsible," Harper says, but the corner of her mouth is twitching.
"It's nature, babe. People have been walking through the woods drunk since the invention of alcohol. It's heritage." He wraps both arms around her from behind, pulling her flush against his chest and dropping his chin onto her shoulder. Just like that, every ounce of fight leaves Harper's body.
Arthur drops onto the couch, sprawling out with one leg draped over the armrest. "But fear not," he says. "We come bearing gifts. Well, one gift. For tomorrow. And it floats."
As someone who recently watched It, I find that really ominous.
***
"She's beautiful," Knox whispers.
"She is a boat," I say.
"Don't talk about her like that," he replies.
Knox aboard, barefoot, crouched over the engine with one hand braced on the gunwale of the deck boat. With a sun-faded bimini top, it's seen better decades, but it fits all of us, and Knox is treating it like a spacecraft that requires preflight checks.
Knox turns the key. The engine coughs, turns over, settles into a low rattle. He adjusts something I can't see, nods once to himself.
"Alright, everyone on," he calls proudly.
Ben hops aboard first, then turns and catches Harper by the hand, steadying her down onto the deck. Maren curtsies when she steps on, which makes Arthur applaud from his spot already sprawled across the bow cushions. I didn't even see him get on just now.
I'm on the dock, one foot on the boat, one still on the weathered planks, when Mason appears beside me. He's been hanging back, loading the last of the drinks into the cooler, checking the rope ties.
His nose is bruised. Purple-green at the bridge, darker under his left eye.
He catches me looking.
"It's fine," he says, smirking, before I can open my mouth.
It is objectively not fine. It makes him look like someone who starts bar fights for fun (which I thought he did back at Harper's engagement party).
He steps down into the boat and turns, offering his hand up to me.
I take it.
His fingers close around mine and he helps me down. The boat shifts under my weight and I stumble forward. His other hand lands on my waist, steadying me, and for exactly one second we're almost flush... and I can smell a hint of his cedar.
His pupils dilate. Lock on me.
Then he lets go, steps back, and turns toward the stern like nothing happened.
But something did. And I guess my stress haze is lower today.
"Anchors aweigh!" Arthur shouts from the bow, pointing forward like a ship captain in a painting. He's shirtless already and the sun catches the broad plane of his shoulders in a way that feels specifically designed to be distracting.
"That's not how anchors work," Knox says from behind the wheel. "We haven't dropped anchor yet. You can't weigh what hasn't been set."
"It's an expression, Knox."
"It's a nautical term with a specific meaning."
Knox leans over to untie us from the dock, pushes off, and steers us out past the reeds and into open water.
The engine's loud enough that you have to raise your voice, so for the first few minutes nobody bothers.
We just cruise, wind in our hair, sun on our arms, the tree line alongside the lake sliding past on either side in a long blur of green.
Harper tips her face toward the sky with her eyes closed. Maren hangs one leg over the side, toes dragging in the water, humming something. Arthur stretches out on the bow cushions like a golden retriever in a sunbeam, arms behind his head, chest rising and falling in slow, easy rhythm.
I sit on the bench near the stern, knees pulled up, and just watch. The bruise on Mason's face as he stands at the back rail, squinting across the water. Knox at the wheel, one hand resting on the dashboard. Ben beside him, Harper leaning against Ben's side, his arm hooked around her shoulders.
After ten minutes, Knox cuts the engine somewhere in the middle of the lake, far enough from either shore that the trees look like a painting. The only sound we hear is the water slapping the hull and the creak of the boat adjusting to stillness.
Knox opens the cooler and passes out sodas.
"Who's getting in?" Ben asks after taking a sip, peeling off his shirt and balling it on the bench.
"Is it cold?" Harper peers over the edge.
Ben grabs her around the waist. She shrieks—"Ben—" but he's already stepping off the gunwale, taking her with him. They hit the water with a heavy, satisfying ker-ploosh.
Arthur rolls off the bow like a seal sliding off a rock. Just a splash and a "WHOO!" that echoes off the far shore.
"How is it?" Maren calls.
Arthur surfaces, shaking water from his hair, grinning. "Get in here. Seriously. It's perfect."
Maren strips down to her swimsuit and jumps from the side, clutching her nose. She comes up gasping and laughing. "It is not perfect!"
"Your body adjusts!" Arthur says. "Give it a second!"
Maren splashes water in his face before dunking her head back under to get her hair wet.
"Knox! Beth! Mason!" Arthur waves from the water. "Don't be boring!"
"Knox," I say. "You're up."
He takes one last sip of his seltzer, sets it in the cupholder, and stands. He pulls his shirt over his head, walks to the swim platform, and steps off the edge like he's stepping off a curb.
Clean entry. Comes up pushing water off his face with one hand.
"Acceptable temperature," he reports.
"Mason," Arthur calls. "Come on."
Mason pushes off the back railing, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head in one fluid motion.
He walks to the edge and launches himself.
He hits the lake like a boulder, sending up a massive, tidal-wave splash that rivals Ben and Harper's combined entry.
He surfaces a few feet from Knox, water streaming down his face.
Which leaves me.
Suddenly, I am very aware that I'm surrounded by wet, half-naked alphas whose broad shoulders and dripping chests are doing absolutely nothing to keep my core temperature down. Plunging into a freezing lake actually doesn't seem like a bad idea right about now.
I pull my dress over my head and toss it on the bench. I step through the gate at the back of the boat, curl my toes over the edge of the swim platform, and jump.
Cold. Full-body, electric, every-nerve-awake cold. It rushes over my head and swallows me, and for a second there's no shop, no buyout, no decision, just water and pressure and the muted thump of my heartbeat in my ears.
I surface.
The sun hits the crown of my head. Arthur and Ben are splashing each other like twelve-year-olds.
Maren is floating on her back, arms spread, face tilted to the sky.
Harper is laughing at her man, who has his hair slicked back and looks younger than he has in weeks.
Both Knox and Mason immediately close the distance toward me.
Mason pushes his wet hair back with one hand. "Cold?" he asks, his voice a low rumble.
"Freezing," I manage.
But the truth is, I'm suddenly not cold at all. Knox drifts a few inches to my left, while Mason stays planted on my right, and the sheer, radiating heat of their proximity is enough to make my blood run warm.
From across the water, Arthur yells, "MARCO!" and Maren yells back, "We are adults!" and Ben yells, "POLO!", and the lake fills with noise and laughter.
I float on my back and let the water hold me. My ears are underwater, everything muffled, and I think about what Harper said yesterday. About having exactly the life I wanted, with them.
I'm still not sure what I'm going to do. But being here, right now, I definitely do feel swayed a certain way.
***
Back at the cabin, we're spread across the deck in various states of sunlit collapse: towels on the planks, legs stretched out.
Harper is lying on her stomach on a beach towel, chin propped on her folded arms, while Ben sits cross-legged beside her, feeding her slices of peach from a paper plate.
She takes each bite without even lifting her head, looking exactly like a pampered housecat.
He wipes juice off her chin with his thumb, chuckling softly as she nips the pad of his finger before melting back into the sun.
I'm in the wide porch chair, watching the lake through the railing. Arthur is on the deck beside me, back against the wall, working through a container of strawberries. Knox is in the other chair, doing something on his phone. Mason is at the railing, forearms flat on the wood, facing the water.
Arthur picks up a strawberry, turns it once to inspect it, and holds it out to me. "This one's yours."
I look at it. "You're giving me your strawberry."
"I'm giving you the best strawberry," he says, offering a wink that sends a sudden, heavy thrill straight down my spine.
He says it casually, the way you'd hand someone a chip from a bag. And I guess I should take it the same way. Except when I lean forward and take it from his hand, my lips brush the edge of his thumb.
"Good?" he asks, his voice dropping a fraction of an octave as his pupils visibly dilate, suddenly swallowing up the green of his irises.
It's perfectly ripe. "Yeah," I say, my cheeks flushing. "Good."
He goes back to the container and keeps doing it. Every third or fourth berry, he'll inspect one, decide it meets some invisible standard, and hold it out to me. Each time there's a half-second where my mouth brushes his fingers, and the air between us thickens by a degree.
At some point, a small plate appears on my armrest. Cubed watermelon. Knox pushes the plate a quarter inch toward me.
I take a piece. Cold. Clean. Perfect.
"Thank you," I say.
"Pleasure," he rumbles.
I reach for another piece at the exact same time he adjusts the plate, and his fingers close over mine for a second. My hand stays there, trapped under his, much longer than it needs to.
Then Mason walks over.
He's holding half a nectarine, peeled and pitted.
As he holds it out to me, I reach for it, and my fingers slide against his where they're wet with juice. His hand is warm and rough, and neither of us lets go.
"Thanks," I manage to whisper.
I bite into the nectarine right out of his grip, the sweet juice running down my wrist.
I could really get used to this. The sun. The deck. Three gorgeous alphas hand-feeding me fruit. All while enveloped in the sudden, intoxicatingly rich scent of cedar, the bracing winter chill of amberwood and fir, and fresh rosemary.
Wait, their scents, again—
I go completely still.
Arthur stops reaching for the strawberry container. His hand hovers in midair. His head snaps toward me.
Knox goes perfectly rigid, his hand freezing on the rim of the watermelon plate, his gaze locking onto my face with laser focus.
Mason straightens. Slowly. Like something just pulled him upright by the spine.
All three of them are looking at me.
I'm looking back.
Nobody says a word.