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“Brownies,” he answered, pulling the necessary ingredients out of a cupboard.

“You got stuff for brownies?” What fucking grocery store had I been in this morning? I guess it was a pretty big sign that my head really had been pretty far up my ass, because I’d missed him taking mescal from my dad, shot glasses and towels from my mother, and buying a bunch of shit at the storewhile I’d literally been with him. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Obviously.” He went into the fridge and put eggs, butter, and a block of cream cheese in front of me, alongside the other ingredients. “Two kinds, please. Peanut butter and cream cheese swirl.”

“You only love me for my baking,” I accused him.

“I love you for many reasons,” he answered, a small smile curving his lips and warming my heart. “Your baking is one of them.”

I smiled back at him, feeling a sense of relief that I could still make that expression with my face. We hadn’t really done much in the four-and-a-half hours Elliot had fucked off—watched some TV, cuddled on the couch, spice-rubbed and slow-roasted the chicken and beef—but justbeingwith Taavi had reset some of my equilibrium.

It has sure as shit convinced me that my harebrained idea of trying to leave him was astronomically fucking stupid. I couldn’t even function normally without him.

It was a little scary how quickly that had happened. I went from not talking to him to living with him in two months, and two goddamn weeks later I couldn’t do jack shit without him. And, yeah, I know he came all the way out here with me, but I hadn’t been able to actually spend time with him—to reground myself at night to the beating of his heart and the warmth of his skin.

I needed him like I needed fucking air. And that was kinda terrifying. Don’t get me wrong—I loved it, lovedhim, too. But I’d gone from complete jackass loner to codependent in fucking record time, and I had a little bit of emotional whiplash.

I finished mixing up the brownie batter, then swirled first the peanut butter, then the cream cheese, before putting both pans in the oven. I was cleaning up—putting mixing bowls and so on in the dishwasher after Taavi emptied out the lunch dishes—when I heard a weird scrabbling sound.

“The fuck is that?” I wanted to know.

Taavi was carefully pulling the beef off the roast with a fork. “I would imagine that’s what it sounds like when a badger claws at a glass door to get in,” he remarked calmly.

“Oh. Shit.”

I put down the towel and went back into the main room, finding Elliot completely coated in mud blinking his shark-eyes at me through the now-filthy glass door.

I had a flashback to a time when we were in our teens—sixteen, maybe, or seventeen—and I’d gone out with him when he’d decided to get completely, disgustingly filthy like this. He’d just gotten dumped by one of the football players from our high school who’d decided that he would rather pretend to be straight than admit that he was dating a gay Indigenous shifter. If I remembered correctly, all of those things were part of why Tanner had dumped Elliot—and then the jackoff had gone ahead and started seeing Cindy McClintock with cascading blonde hair and boobs the size of my head, even in high school.

I spared half a second to wonder what Tanner Albrecht had decided to do with his life, because he’d broken Elliot’s heart and that asshole deserved some shit because of it. I mean. It’d been a good twenty-five years at this point, but I wasn’t currently feeling very charitable.

But what had come back to me was the fact that Gregory Crane had stood in this doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and looked at us, both of us absolutely filthy and covered in mud, and told us in no uncertain terms that we could either be carried into the shower or he’d turn the hose on us in the yard.

It had been November—early, but still—so both of us had opted for the embarrassment of being carried into the shower. The same shower. I’d pulled the hand-sprayer off the wall and soaked and scrubbed Elliot still in badger form before dumping him on a towel and telling him not to peek as I stripped down and washed myself.

It was Naomi Crane who hated dirt on her floors—but Gregory had maintained the same standards even after her death. I sure as shit wasn’t going to be the one to break them.

So I opened the door and stood in the doorway, blocking Elliot from dragging wet mud all over his mother’s floors.

“Either I carry you to the bathtub, or I get out the hose,” I told him.

He gave me a look that said he didnotthink I was funny or amusing. Then he tried to push past me.

“Fuck no, Bucky. I mean it. Hose or bathtub.”

He glared up at me and bared his teeth.

“Biting me is not a choice.”

He growled at me, the sound low and threatening.

“Nope. Not happening,” I told him.

I bent down and wrapped his body behind his forelegs with one arm, holding the back of his neck with my other hand to keep those bared teeth away from me, grunting as I heaved his filthy, furry bulk against my chest so that I could awkwardly shuffle down the hall to the bathroom, an oversized badger squirming against me and making me almost as muddy as he was.

“Fucking hell, Elliot. What thefuckis your problem?”

“Val—” Taavi had come out of the kitchen.