I nodded but was cringing inside. I had to turn left. Against traffic. In Clay’s new SUV. No—our new SUV. And Charlie was in it with me. A pregnant Charlie. With twins.
“Are you and Clay going to try for kids? Are you taking suppressors?”
I blinked a few times, then looked at Charlie. “What? No. Umm…yeah, we tried for kids. I wasn’t taking anything,” I told him.
“What do you mean you tried?”
“I had my heat a few weeks ago. Right after we claimed each other. We didn’t use any?—”
“What? When? Why didn’t Silver say anything?”
I checked for traffic. “I don’t know. Maybe because he doesn’t talk about our sex life with his brother?” The road was clear, and I turned right onto the main street that went by the neighborhood. “How long before the food is ready? And did you still want to get ice cream?”
“It said fifteen on the app.” Charlie woke his phone again and looked. “I’m good without the ice cream. I plan on having a double piece of that cake.”
“All right. Should I be worried about Clay?”
“I don’t think so. He’s bigger than Flint. And this is such an odd thing. Flint has never been like this, so I’m not sure what his issue is.”
I stopped at the first stoplight. “Do you think it’s just his mate? Or something else?”
“I’m not sure,” Charlie said. “He’s always been a bit quiet, but super sweet. Today, he was incredibly rude to me, and I think that was what really set Silver off. I know he’s been cranky at work as well, which probably really is what started all of this. Him being like that is just the final thing.” The light changed, and after checking, I drove through the intersection. “Yeah, it says fifteen. You know, I didn’t think about it. Should we really put the food in your new vehicle?”
I shrugged. “It’s not like Clay isn’t going to clean it out later anyway. And really, it’s pizza and wings.” I caught up with a bunch of traffic and had to slow down. We rolled through the second light though, and then the third when I saw the pizzaplace there on the left. Thankfully, it wasn’t too close to the intersection. “Do you think they’ll have fixed things by the time we get back?”
“Probably. I know that every so often, they have a go at one another. It’s just a brother thing. Sam and I do the same, but we’re not massive gorillas.”
At the mention of their animal halves, I thought back to the time I’d spent with Clay in shifted form. My little panda loved running around in the backyard or even inside the house since I was so small. “Yeah, can’t relate to that,” I said. “I grew up around other kids, but we didn’t go at one another. We usually just did whatever we could to stay out of everyone else’s way.” The last thing we wanted was to be put in detention. That meant moving all of our things into a different room and being completely isolated for however long they deemed we needed to be kept away from the others.
I was able to make the turn into the restaurant lot and sighed internally. “Did you want me to run in and get it?”
“Naw. If you pull around, they have a drive-through.”
I looked at Charlie like he didn’t know what he was talking about. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. They also have a massive parking space over there, so if our order isn’t ready, we just park, and they bring it out.”
This was unheard of to me. Why hadn’t I known about this place before? I thought about that for a moment before I remembered that, yeah, I wasn’t from this area. My apartment was some distance away, and although Clay and I had been mated a while, we hadn’t really ventured out much. That was all changing tomorrow morning though. He was going back to work, and I would be working the afternoon and evening shift.
I pulled up to the window, gave them Charlie’s name, and then was told to pull around and park in number three.
“It’s over there,” Charlie said. I followed his instructions and found the spot where they’d told me to park.
“Sweetie, how are you doing?”
I smiled. “Good. We just got to the pizza place. How are things there?”
“Flint has a sore jaw, and Silver is quite proud of that. Mica is upset that his grill is broken to the point it needs to be replaced, but Dad was the one who really put Flint in his place.”
“What?”I looked over at Charlie with wide eyes. “It sounds like their parents arrived.”
“That I knew. Silver told me.” Charlie pointed to the side.
A guy walked out of the building carrying five pizza boxes and two buckets. That had to be the wings. I quickly got out, went to the back of the SUV, and opened the liftgate. “Thank you,” I told him.
“No problem, man. Enjoy what looks like is going to be a party.”
The kid waved and walked off. It was time to head on back and meet the in-laws. Would they like me? Would they approve? Only one way to find out. I pressed the button to close the back and then went back to the driver’s seat. It was time to get back to Mica’s and meet Clay’s parents.
