Page 34

Chapter 10

Addie

We set out the next morning, me, Fallon, Ryder, and Asher in one car while Nik and Tommy rode with Declan, Ronan, and Tam in another. Tonya, Davis, and Jared drove separately in a beat up pickup truck with dirty, unwashed windows, russet brown siding, and beer bottles scattered on the backseats.

Ryder drove in our vehicle, a van, while Fallon took the passenger seat. Asher and I sat in the middle section. The back was full of supplies - everything from medicine they had collected over the months to clothing and food. As Fallon had stridently stated to our team and newcomers, we would not be coming back.

Of course, that set me off all over again. Calax may not have died in the nondescript, neighborhood home, but his memory was laid to rest there. Fallon assured me we would continue paying tribute to him. Some cheesy shit that went in one ear and out the other.

Still, that did not quell the grief that threatened to bury me alive. In the proverbial ground like Calax’s body should’ve been in a proper burial he had never gotten.

I blinked away the sudden onslaught of tears, focusing on the rolling, somewhat familiar, landscape.

By the time we pulled into the house we had been staying at, twilight dawned, painting everything in palest green and pink.

“I’m surprised they’re still here,” Ryder murmured, nodding towards the candle flickering in the window. My smile broadened when the front door was roughly pushed open and Kai emerged, dressed in pajama bottoms and a white shirt. His eyes widened when he saw me.

“Holy shit! We thought you guys were dead or something.” Eating up the distance, he pulled me into his arms.

Fallon, behind me, took a threatening step closer, eyes narrowed.

“Hands off the merchandise,” he said darkly. I snorted, lifting my head from Kai’s chest but not releasing him.

“Merchandise? Seriously?”

His scowl turned into a sheepish smile. Instead of a proper apology, he grunted.

Fallon, I realized, really only spoke two languages. Grunts and growls. The double G. It was his preferred form of communication. Sometimes, I wondered if he had been plucked from the Stone Age.

His scowl returned. “You said that out loud.”

“Not sorry,” I sang, finally releasing Kai. “Fallon, this is Kai. Kai, this is Fallon and Declan. My boyfriends. And over there is Tonya, Davis, and Jared.”

Fallon and Declan both straightened imperceptibly at the introduction and title. Their chests puffed out as they extended their hands.

Oh yeah. They liked being introduced as my boyfriends.

We quickly explained the plan to Kai and Doc before retiring to our rooms. Tonya, Jared, and Davis remained in the living room, and Tommy and Nik took a guest room.

My men surprised me by all piling into my room, Tam and Ronan dragging in two spare mattresses.

“You’re all sleeping in here tonight?” I asked them, moving to the adjoining bathroom. I left the door open as I brushed my teeth using a water bottle, mint toothpaste, and a toothbrush we had found inside a gas station.

Watching them get ready for the night felt so...mundane. As if we had done it hundreds of times before. A tiny thrill went through me.

Because...ohmygawd we were doing couple stuff.

All of them except Declan looked over, laughing, and my cheeks flamed.

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” I admitted.

“But you did.” Ryder’s sultry smirk was firmly in place. “Because we’re a couple doing couple things. A...very large couple.”

“A very large couple would imply that all of you were doing couple things,” I retorted smartly. “And I don’t see any of you kissing.”

Ryder wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, a mischievous gleam in his eyes I recognized all too well, before he lunged across the bed and grabbed the back of Tam’s head.

Oh my god.