Trevor still didn’t have his answer. “How do I make sure I don’t freeze this time? If it happens again, Kelsey’s going to catch a flight to Raleigh and take Maggie with her.”
Ezra chuckled. “Doubt that. She’s in love with you.” He raised a hand when Trevor drew breath to argue. “I smell it all over her, Trev. Rhett, back me up.”
Another grunt. The wolf didn’t do them the courtesy of eye contact.
Ezra too was quiet for the rest of the task. Maybe he had no ideas, though that didn’t feel like Ezra. Trevor rolled his eyes a few times behind his brother’s back, and once Ezra gave a good-natured rumble in response without turning to face him.
“I can tell you what I’d do,” he said at last when the yard was restored to its pre-cookout sparseness.
Trevor started to make a broad gesture of sarcastic permission, then went still when the rib stabbed him. “Well, go on.”
“I’d write it down, item by item.”
“You mean…a script?”
“Yeah, you know, bullet points. You won’t forget anything, and if you have trouble you can just read—”
Trevor laughed, bent over in the chair, his hand pressed to his side. It was an outburst of mirth quickly spent, but somehow the ability to laugh brought him hope too. He couldn’t have said before this moment whether all his laughter had left him when his mate drove off down Rhett’s driveway.
“Ez, you are the most ridiculous, most organized wolf ever born.”
The third grunt from Rhett made him laugh again as Ezra growled at him, a rumble filled with humor and brotherhood. But Ezra’s humor didn’t linger either. Not as long as Trevor sat under a tree and watched others work like…well, like a faded wolf.
“Okay,” Trevor said. “I’ll consider your ridiculous strategy. Maybe I can adapt it. Thanks.”
He managed to stow away his chair and walk on steady feet to his truck. Ezra followed, as expected. Rhett did too, not expected at all.
“I think you should sleep at my place for now,” Ezra said as Trevor got in behind the wheel.
Oh for fate’s sake. “I’ll call if I need anything. Fair?”
Ezra shifted on his feet, growled low and quiet, then nodded.
“Thoughts, Rhett?” Trevor said, though poking this particular wolf had never paid off for him. Still amused him on occasion though.
“If you’re asking,” Rhett said, “I’d tell you to bunk at Ezra’s.”
What? Seriously? “Screw you.”
Rhett shrugged. “Do what you want. You were going to anyway.”
“That’s right. See you later.”
Trevor rolled up his window and raised dust under his wheels on the way down the drive. In minutes he was home. He staggered through the doorway and fell to his knees on the area rug. He knelt there for a while, breathing, fighting to be okay. Oh, the egg that would smear his face if he called Ezra less than an hour after a semi-dramatic exit.
But he hurt. No more absorbing it. Just…feeling it.
He groaned, rolled his eyes, and took out his phone.
“Trevor?” Ezra said one-point-two seconds later.
“Yeah,” he said and heard the shake in his voice, breathed deep and let himself feel the void in his chest, the faint nausea, the ache behind his eyes. “Ez, would you…would you come?”
“Be there in a minute.”
“Don’t call Mom.”
A growl, and then the call ended. Which meant Ezra wouldn’t call. If he planned to, he’d have said so. He arrived at Trevor’s door almost as fast as he’d picked up the phone.
