Epilogue
Six Months Later
With a heave and a grunt, I dropped the last box of food onto the stack of others and closed the back of the truck.
It was supposed to be staples that would last for months, but each box felt like it was lined with bricks.
Shivering in the icy breeze that snaked its way through the trees to my exposed skin, I tipped the dolly back and wheeled it toward the main house.
The garage door was wide open, and I could hear music as Trevor thumped around under one of the outpost’s trucks.
I did not envy him having to take a transmission out, but hey, if that was his happy place, I wasn’t going to argue.
I smirked when I heard childish laughter, which meant he wasn’t alone.
It had been weird not to be the new guy after having worked at the outpost for two months, and even weirder to have kids around the place.
And yet Leon had proven to be part of us easily despite a somewhat awkward first couple of months, and the kids?
Well, they had a whole lot of father, big brother, and uncle figures to annoy, Trevor included.
I wheeled the dolly to the back door and thought about popping in to see if he needed help, but even with the music, I could hear him chuckling and left them be.
If Trevor had been described to me, I would have been hesitant to advise having kids around him.
Yet since I knew him, I wasn’t surprised he was good with kids.
Most of the guys were, which I suppose made sense.
Reaching for the door, I stumbled back, my foot sliding on a rock, sending a new lance of pain up my leg as my knee protested being bent in a direction it wasn’t meant to.
A large wriggling shape came out the door, and I wasn’t surprised when I heard Reno shriek.
“Jake! Stop, I was kidding, I was fucking kidding, don’t do it! ”
“Evening,” Jake said brightly as he passed me, coming to a stop and still holding Reno over his shoulder. “Bitch duty again?”
“Eh, well, you know, long memories and all,” I said with a shrug and watched his expression.
Xander was…well, he was Xander, but he seemed to know his men well.
It had been Jake of all the guys on the team who had taken the longest to forgive me and repair the friendship between us.
Long enough that I was still wary whenever something was going on that reminded one of us of what I’d done.
“Ya know, Colin would probably tell Xander to fuck off if you asked,” Reno said, clearly taking a break from his ‘distress’ to help me out.
Jake pointed at Reno. “What he said.”
“Eh, I think he’s just doing it out of sheer habit…and maybe not wanting to admit he wants me around,” I said with another shrug. “That’s Xander for you.”
“That’s the truth,” Jake said with a grin. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take care of my own light work.”
“No!” Reno gasped. “Don’t you dare!”
“I really don’t want to know,” I muttered as I dragged the dolly inside, closing the door to cut off Reno’s cries for mercy, and wheeled it up the stairs and into the kitchen.
Mav and Carter were at the table in the dining area, both glancing at me before returning to the card game they were playing. “What…has Carter looking so serious?”
“Gin Rummy,” Mav explained in his deep rumble. “He doesn’t know how to play. Been teaching him for an hour.”
“Oh, of course,” I said with a laugh, and shook my head when Carter looked at me hopefully. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know how to play either.”
“You’re from the Midwest too, isn’t it like…required for citizenship for you guys or something?” Carter asked.
“Not my neck of the woods,” I said as I opened the pantry to unstack the boxes and start doing the inventory. “Cait out for the night?”
“Date night,” Mav and Carter said as one, and I snorted.
“Of course,” I muttered. Which more or less took care of everyone I hadn’t already known the whereabouts of.
Mika was back in his and Reno’s lab where I’d left him when I’d been called by Xander to unload the truck from his ‘little’ shopping trip in town.
I knew for a fact that after he’d told me what to do, growled at me not to fuck up the organization and clean up afterward, and stomped off, he had gone back to his cabin where Colin had been for most of the day.
The unloading part had sucked, but now that I was done, it was just down to the foodstuffs, mainly organizing; I didn’t mind that.
There was something comforting in the monotony of the work as I listened to Christmas music playing from the speakers.
The bright Christmas lights, tinsel, the fake fireplace with stockings for everyone, the tree in the rec room, and the candles that someone had brought in to light for the smell of cookies all just…
gave me a coziness that helped me whistle while I worked.
“Like fucking hell you can, old man,” I heard Carter mutter after a minute, and I glanced to see them leaving the dining room, debating whether Carter’s youth was going to compete with Mav’s skill in Tekken.
It was a debate I wasn’t going to touch…
I was absolutely shit at fighting games and I would not risk getting dragged into it.
I probably would have, I realized with a fuzzy glow in my chest at the thought.
Six months felt an absurdly short length of time to be forgiven by the group, and yet…
I thought we were there. Then again, at the start of that six months, I might have given up after a couple of weeks if I had known it would take six months to get there, so perspective was everything and hindsight still reigned supreme.
They’d all handled it differently, but they’d all made sure I knew they weren’t happy.
Mav spoke even less when I was around for a long time, something even Xander didn’t think was possible.
Carter was cold, and for someone who ran hot most of the time, in happiness and temper, that cut deep.
Trevor avoided me for quite a while, and Cait wouldn’t speak to me unless she had to.
The worst had been Jake and Colin, though.
Sometimes I wondered if it was a military thing, considering even Xander took a while, but well, it was Xander.
Jake glowered when he was forced to deal with me when Reno or Mika was around, but otherwise told me to fuck off…
sometimes literally. Colin had been the definition of professional and polite, though…
and its perfection had a grating edge that worked at my nerves.
Only Reno and Mika had tried in the early days, and really, I didn’t blame the others.
I had done what I’d done, knowing it was wrong, and although I had intended to tell them sooner than I would have wanted, but perhaps later than I’d been forced to, and definitely not in the way I had, I had done it.
Not that it made it easy, because even with Reno and Mika, and well, Leon had come in not knowing what had happened, and it was kind of nice to have a stranger in the mix…
it had been hard. Too hard a couple of times and I’d thought more than once it was time to give up, time to let them move on so I wasn’t a sore in their—
Cold hands slid up my shirt and made me yelp, smacking my head on the underside of the shelf I was hunched under to line up cans of tomatoes. “Motherfucker! Mika!”
He stood over me with a smirk as I rubbed the back of my head. “I see I got your attention.”
“There are better ways to get my attention,” I complained, getting to my feet with a slight wince from my knee. “You could have shown up in the doorway naked; that would have got my attention.”
“Wouldn’t that be a sight everyone wants to see?” he asked, still clearly proud of himself for harassing me.
“It’s not like Reno doesn’t see the same thing every time he looks in the mirror,” I said, watching his pride sour and deciding to go for the kill shot. “Which, if you think about it, means—”
“If you want any hope of getting laid tonight, don’t finish that,” he warned, and I was tempted. Mostly because I didn’t think he would actually shoot me down if I tried, but also…well, sometimes it was important to let the other person win.
“As if you would turn down the chance,” I said with a snort as I sidled up to him and kissed his cheek. “Get your work done?”
“Shush, don’t ruin the moment,” he said with a smile.
“Was there a moment?”
“I mean, I came in and saw you with your ass sticking out, and then you talked about me being naked, which was a nice bonus,” he said with a wink.
There were times, like now for instance, when I realized he was remembering how things used to be for us.
Except…instead of remembering and feeling the hurt, he was remembering how things had changed for the better, and how that made him happy.
That had been the only way we had got through the past six months together, albeit with considerable help from Reno.
Every little victory was important because it was a way for us to look at all the pain and anger and realize things were changing, getting better.
We had to remind ourselves of the lesson we’d already been taught once: that painful memories can be turned into happy reminders of how good things can be.
“And then you ruined it by talking about my brother,” he said with a sigh. “And now you’re talking about my work? A crime, really.”
“Are you trying to suggest handcuffs? Pretty sure we did bondage, I don’t know, a dozen or so times,” I said with a raise of my brow. “And a handful of semi-public, somnophilia, uh…the food thing was a disaster and I still say I told you so.”
He kissed me. “Shut up.”
“Fine,” I said. “Help me pack this stuff up while Xander’s not around to say I’m not allowed help, and then we can go back to our place?”
That phrase was enough to brighten his expression, and it was the goofiest thing.
It wasn’t ‘our place,’ it was the attic above the science building.
Reno had still slept there occasionally, but after the river incident, it had been less.
Nowadays he didn’t sleep there at all, and it had become a shared bedroom for Mika and me.
It was like living together for the first time in our lives.
“How about,” he said, tugging on my scarf and pushing himself against me, “we go back to our place now, I fuck you under the mistletoe you insisted on hanging up because you’re a dork who insists on making sure we kiss every time we’re under it, and then we come back because this food isn’t going anywhere and I saw our boss getting groped before going back to his cabin earlier so he’s going to be busy for a while. ”
Heh, that was my life now, wasn’t it? Back in the reasonably good graces of a bunch of men who most people wouldn’t trust with a fragile vase, much less other people’s lives.
Remembering what it was like to have a sense of family again, of having friends, and sharing an ‘apartment’ with the one who got away.
And all it had taken was for me to fuck up royally, get a kneecap that really didn’t like rain or cold or being banged on things for the rest of my life, and… him.
The wonderful, frustrating, bullheaded, stable, pain in my ass.
“You’re a bad influence,” I said as I let him tug me out of the pantry.
“You love it.”
“I do, and I love you.”
“Good,” he said, kissing me with a snicker. “Because I love you too, and you’re stuck with us, and me especially forever and ever.”
I was going to be just fine with that.