Chapter 31 Wrung Out #2
The boys drifted into easy banter after that. The longer I sat there listening to them argue and laugh and insult each other, the more the tightness inside my chest slowly loosened.
Soon enough Lia steered the conversation toward the years they had grown up together.
“You should’ve seen Jackson at thirteen,” she said, smiling faintly into her drink. “He got into a fistfight because some kid told me I looked annoying.”
Rick barked a laugh. “You do look annoying.” Lia kicked his boot.
Jackson groaned. “I was thirteen.”
“You broke Devin Walsh’s nose,” she said.
“He deserved it.”
“You only say that because you won.”
Jackson shrugged. “Nobody bullies my chosen sister.”
Lia’s smile slipped for a fraction of a second before she found it again.
After that she kept reaching for old memories—the water tower the summer they turned fifteen, the night Jackson carried her two miles home on a broken ankle.
Names I had never heard, fights I had never seen, a whole shared history I couldn’t step into.
Every memory circled back to the same place, and I was absent from all of them.
"You kind of had to be here for it," she said once, warm, apologetic. "It's a pack thing."
"Sounds like it," I replied.
The boys didn’t seem to notice. To them it was just Lia getting nostalgic. But I sat on the outside of it, and I knew her well enough by now to understand she had placed me there deliberately, one shared memory at a time.
I let it go. A girl reminding me I was new barely registered after everything else today. I held my hands closer to the fire and let the boys pull me back into the present, where I still had a place.
The conversation drifted away from the past soon after. Jason launched into a story about a professor everyone hated while Jackson crouched by the woodpile for more logs. When he came back he dropped into the chair beside me and fished something from his pocket, opening his palm to show me.
A heavy-duty laser pointer rested there, the kind used for outdoor presentations.
“Why?” I asked.
“It has extra range.”
I kept staring at it. He shrugged, then aimed it across the yard until a bright red dot appeared on the far fence.
My eyes tracked it on instinct. The dot danced and I followed, only jerking my gaze away the second I realized what I was doing.
Jackson’s mouth twitched.
I kicked his boot under the chair. The dot disappeared, and he slipped the pointer back into his pocket.
That was when the frog appeared. A fat, ordinary little thing hopped out from beneath the woodpile and straight toward Lia's chair.
Before I could blink, Lia made a strangled sound halfway between a gasp and a shriek and launched herself upward.
The blanket flew off her lap. Logs scattered across the ground.
Suddenly she was in Jackson’s lap with both arms locked tight around his neck, her feet dangling completely off the ground.
“You cannot be serious,” Jason wheezed.
“I thought you outgrew this,” Rick said.
“It touched me!”
“It hopped within six feet of you,” Rick corrected, clearly fighting a laugh.
“That’s basically assault.”
Jackson was laughing too now, trying unsuccessfully to pry her arms from around his neck. “It’s literally a frog,” he said.
“I hate them.”
“You’re a wolf.”
“And frogs are disgusting.”
I watched the whole ridiculous scene for a few seconds, then pushed to my feet.
“Where are you going?” Jackson asked.
“Relocating your guest.”
The frog sat under the chair, blinking. My cat blinked back. Really?
I crouched, scooped the tiny thing carefully into my hands, and carried it toward the far side of the yard away from the fire. I released it near the bushes.
When I walked back, Lia narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously. Apparently Jackson had finally managed to pry the barnacle off himself.
“You touched it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily.”
“It’s a frog, not radioactive waste.”
Jackson caught my hand when I sat back down and tugged me sideways into his lap. His smile said he approved.
“Lia is deathly afraid of frogs,” Jackson explained, wrapping an arm loosely around my waist.
“Every single time,” Rick said, still laughing. “Twenty years old.”
Jason pointed across the fire. “My sister can throw a wolf twice her size but loses a battle against amphibians.”
“It’s the way they move,” Lia muttered with visible disgust.
The fire burned lower as the night stretched on.
I should’ve stood out like a sore thumb, a feline among wolves, an obvious outsider.
Instead, I fit in surprisingly well. After a while someone put music on near the porch.
Jason attempted to roast six marshmallows simultaneously and lost four directly into the fire.
Rick claimed it was “a metaphor for his academic career.”
Around eleven the conversation settled into something quieter.
Rick wandered over for another beer from the cooler beside me. As he straightened, he glanced toward Jackson, who was arguing with Jason about pineapple on pizza.
“You know, I’ve never seen him so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he’s been these last few weeks,” he said.
I didn’t answer. I just watched Jackson laugh.
A little after midnight, a yawn slipped out of me before I could stop it. I’d slept badly the night before, and the emotional weight of the day still clung to me.
Jackson noticed immediately. “You tired?”
“A little.”
He stood and offered me his hand. “Stay tonight.”
I looked at him for a second before placing my hand in his. “Okay.”
Rick made exaggerated kissing noises. Jason lobbed a marshmallow at him. We ignored them both.
“Gotta put my girl to bed.”
He didn’t wait for permission. One arm slid beneath my knees, the other behind my back, and he lifted me clean off the ground.
“Really?” I asked.
“You’re tired.”
“I can still walk.”
“Hmm.”
I rolled my eyes but let him carry me inside, my arms settling around his neck. By the time we reached his room, I was too comfortable to argue anymore.
He handed me one of his old T-shirts before I disappeared into the bathroom to change. When I came back, he was already waiting in bed. I slipped under the blankets and curled against him without thinking.
“Lia spent the whole night telling stories I wasn't part of,” I murmured. “Every single one.”
His arm tightened around my waist.
“I didn't notice,” he admitted quietly. “I'm sorry.”
After a moment he added, “I'll talk to her.”
I nodded against his shoulder. He would or he wouldn't. Tonight I didn't have the energy to worry about it.
He kissed the top of my head.
Wrapped in his warmth, I fell asleep almost immediately.