2. Mack
2
MACK
I look out of Bennett’s garage, waving at Aerin as she crosses the road from the grocery store to the diner. Penny helped her load the groceries in the trunk, so I didn’t go help her like I did the week before.
Aerin returns my smile before she disappears inside for their lunch date. As always, she’s beautiful, her long brown hair in a braid and her gray-blue eyes like a summer storm.
“Someone is going to mistake you for a stalker. You know that, right?” Bennett calls out.
I turn from the open shutters at the front of his garage in the center of Winter Lake. As usual, he’s buried his head in the hood of a car. But such is the life of a mechanic.
“If that was Helena across the road, I guarantee you would be standing at the door alongside me,” I say.
Helena, Bennett’s mate, is in the early stages of her pregnancy, so fatigue and morning sickness often mean she doesn’t join Bennett when he arrives to work in his garage before 6. As I’m leaving to go home with Aerin is usually when Helena is pulling up to have lunch with Bennett.
He lifts his shaved head from under the hood, and his expression is thoughtful. “Nope.”
“Liar.” A vibration pulls my gaze to the other occupant in the garage.
Colton has his cell phone in his hand and as I watch him read a message, a slow smile stretches across his face. “Penny said the grocery store manager wants her cakes in stores across the country. They completely sold out.”
He couldn’t look any prouder if he’d tried.
“That’s amazing news, but can she make that many cakes?” I ask.
They share a small two-bedroom house. Even if Penny wanted to bake that many cakes, I have no clue where she would store them.
Colton shrugs and starts typing his response. “Doubt it, but I think Pen will do everything humanly possible to try.”
“Including roping you into help?” I eye the dark-haired shifter with piercing blue eyes who, a long time ago, was a fellow Raleigh Pack member. He barely smiled when he first arrived. Now it’s rare for him not to smile. At least when Penny is around.
“I’m not sure how much help I’d be, but if she wants the help, she has it,” he says, still busy with his text message.
I leave him to finish replying to Penny as I focus on Bennett.
This has become our usual meet up.
I drive down into town with Aerin, and while she and Penny catch up and do some shopping in Penny’s happy place, I help out Bennett if he needs it. Not that he often does. He’s the mechanic here. Not me.
I scan the auto repair shop. It’s an open space with a small office and bathroom tucked in the back. There are more tools on a worktable and on a trolley he has beside him than I have names for, since I wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing a car. And I have no desire to learn. This is Bennett’s domain.
He doesn’t have as many cars which need work this morning, which must be why his blue overalls aren’t as heavily stained as they usually are.
It smells of oil and metal and fumes. My wolf never appreciates us spending more than a few minutes here. I never know how Bennett can stand to be in here for hours, but this isn’t just a job to him, it’s a passion, and he loves it.
But hanging out with Bennett isn’t the only reason I come into town with Aerin.
Winter Lake is safe. Nothing bad will happen to her in the middle of the day in this sleepy town, but I like to stay close so I can be with her if she needs me.
“I’ve been thinking about moving.” I cross over to join Bennett, standing beside the khaki-green Subaru that Bennett occasionally mutters a curse as he works on the engine.
“I’m not sure Aerin would appreciate a move before the baby comes,” he says, still focusing on his task.
He’s right. Aerin is in the nesting phase. We finished decorating the nursery a while ago, but she’s been taking the time to add color and texture to the rest of the house. I lived alone for years, so the place probably needs it. And I like seeing the small touches she’s made to the house. With every change she makes, it feels more of a home and less of a house.
“It would be after.”
“Pass the wrench,” he says, head still buried in the engine of the Subaru.
I hand it over. “What do you think?”
“Move where?” he asks.
I look out of the metal shutters, opened wide to let fresh air chase out the smell of engine grease and fumes.
My gaze snags on a navy car crawling past the diner. The registration is from out of town, and I wonder whether this new tourist is on his way to the Winter Lake Hotel, or has rented one of four cabins available for short stays in the forest. Most of the tourists who come here are older, since this retirement town isn’t exactly full of fancy restaurants and clubs to draw young people here. But it’s quiet, and the cabins offer a retreat from city life.
When the car disappears from view, I refocus on Bennett. “Not sure. Our family is growing, and we need more space.”
He snorts. “Please tell me you’re not already planning the next kid before the first is here?”
I don’t respond.
He lifts his head, revealing an oil stained cheek.
“What?” I prompt.
“I’m waiting for your answer.”
“You have it. You told me not to tell you I’m planning my next kid with Aerin, so I won’t.”
I know that I’m not the biological father of the child Aerin is carrying. That doesn’t matter to me. I’ve loved Aerin almost from the moment I saw her, and I would do anything for her and the baby. That child is mine in every way but blood.
We’ve both spoken about wanting more. Maybe not a football team like we once joked, but I love the idea of having a big family full of laughter and happiness, the occasional argument too, which is only natural. And so would Aerin.
He chuckles and returns to his task. “How do you know you even want two?”
I take a second to consider my response. “When I met Aerin, I just… I guess I felt that was it. She’s mine, and I want a family with her.”
“Spanner.”
I hand Bennett the spanner. “But the thought of moving further out-of-town doesn’t feel right. At least not yet. You know?”
“That wasn’t the spanner.”
I hand him something else from the tool kit. “And my dad… getting him on the phone these last few days has been impossible. I keep trying not to think of what he and Aerin’s aunt are getting up to. But I do. He hasn’t mentioned it, so I’m not sure if he’s waiting for me to ask about them. What do you think?”
Bennett lifts his head from his engine with a weary sigh and tosses the tools I handed him in the kit. “I think you’ll have real problems if you ever break down on the side of the road. How can you not know what a spanner is?”
Colton walks over and peers into the toolkit, whistling as he shakes his head. “You need help. Or at least someone to organize that for you. That is a mess.”
“I know where everything is,” Bennett mutters. He rummages around in his tool kit, plucks a spanner from it, and returns to fixing whatever is wrong with the engine.
“What does Aerin think about moving?” Colton asks me.
“I haven’t asked her yet. I think she likes living close to Adela and her grandparents, but we need more space and there’s no option of extending.”
I might have entertained the idea of an extension a few months ago, but time is short. And after the baby is here, I couldn’t think of anything I’d like to do less than have some building project take over the time I’d want to spend with her and the baby.
Gregory and Jude, Aerin’s grandparents, have settled in so well into the pack that it’s like they’ve always been here. Aerin visits them a couple times a week, and they often stop by for dinner, movie night, and the weekly pack run.
If we move further away, it’s going to be harder for her to see them. They’re getting old, so prefer not to drive far, and Aerin is going to be busy with a newborn.
“What do you think about buying up a big plot of land just outside town and all of us living together like a proper pack?” I suggest.
Colton and Bennett look at me.
“ Together ?” Bennett echoes.
I cross my arms and lean my hip on the side of the car. “I know we all came to Winter Lake with our own issues and problems. Living apart and figuring out pack life together worked.”
That’s what we all needed at the time.
Tina and Warren live together. Colton moved in with Penny in her little house. Adela lives with Aerin’s grandparents. Zoe is happy with Chris in his house. And I’m happy with Aerin in what was my house, but is now our home.
“Aerin still keeps calling it my house,” I say. “It’s always, ‘let’s go to Mack’s house,’ or ‘we’re meeting at Mack’s house,” no matter how many times I tell her it’s ours . Maybe having something we build together will make it feel like more of her home as well, and she’d still be close to her grandparents. Closer, even.”
Bennett tilts his head as he scrutinizes me. “Some of us have lived alone for a long time. Sharing space like that won’t be easy.”
I know.
We’re all in our twenties now, and all of us have had to deal with things some shifters might never have had to. Shifters have always functioned better in a pack than alone, just like wolves.
For different reasons, we all had to leave our old packs. They didn’t want us. We lost everyone we knew, or they chased us out.
It’s why living apart was what we needed.
We got to know each other better on pack runs, but could retreat to our separate homes at the end of each day.
We’ve lived like that for years, though, at the back of my mind, I’ve always harbored hopes of one day all of us living like a real pack. That time feels like it might be soon. Maybe even now.
“Is there any land for sale?” Colton asks.
“I hadn’t heard there was,” Bennett says.
But there might be. There are some old farms further out of town. Not many, and some are still working farms. A disused one might offer us the space and the outbuildings we could turn into a home for all of us, and we could afford it if we sold all our homes.
That Bennett and Colton aren’t immediately rejecting the idea is a good sign, and I relax. As Alpha, I’m the leader, but this is a decision everyone has to want. I don’t want to force it on everyone, and I won’t.
“I haven’t looked into it,” I say. “But I could ask around.”
Bennett’s expression is thoughtful. “It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Keeping everyone safe in a crisis would be easier if we’re all living under the same roof.”
I should have known Bennett, as my second, and the person responsible for pack security would think of safety first.
“And maybe we could get land big enough to have an outbuilding that we could convert into a bigger kitchen for Penny,” Colton says, also looking thoughtful. “She’d have all the space she needed to scale up her bakery operation.”
“Do you think the rest of the pack will go for it?” I ask.
With each word, this vision sounds more and more real. Like it might actually happen.
“We’ll talk it out,” Bennett says.
Yes, I tell myself, already excited by the possibility.
“And that other thing?” Bennett asks, studying me closely.
“The reason Ivy missed Aerin’s baby shower?”
Even Colton is paying close attention to me. “Has she or your dad said what exactly has them so wary?”
I sigh. “Like I said, trying to get anything out of my dad has been difficult.”
“And Ivy?” Colton prompts.
“Impossible. Other than saying she’ll get back to me and to make sure Aerin doesn’t go anywhere alone? Nothing. She says she’ll talk when things aren’t so hectic.”
“Hectic as in they’re in trouble or hectic as in running a pack is a lot of work and she’s busy putting out minor fires?” Bennett asks.
“Pick one,” I mutter. “I have.”