His gaze flicked down to the box in my hand. His frown deepened. “She uses the purple ones,” he said, nodding toward a different shelf. “Same brand, different box. She once gave me a twenty-minute speech on why it matters.”
I stared at him. “You know your sister’s tampon preferences?”
“I have four sisters,” he said flatly. “I know more about cycles than most ob-gyns. Do her a favor and grab the other ones or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
My throat constricted. “Right,” I said, clearing it. “Wouldn’t want to screw that up.”
I turned back, shoved the wrong box back into its spot, and grabbed the one with the purple stripe he’d indicated. My pulse thudded in my ears as I did my best to look like a man entirely focused on absorbency instead of trying to mentally map how fast I could circle back to the condom aisle before closing.
Hayes shifted the pretzels to his other hand and jerked his head toward the register. “You heading to Brody’s?”
“Of course,” I said. “Figured I’d roll some dice, let him accuse me of cheating, the usual.”
“Good.” He sounded like he meant it. “It’s good to get out of that house sometimes. Clara’s already worried enough.”
A huff of a laugh escaped me. “She told you that?”
“She tells me plenty.” Fondness softened his features. “Half of it is about how much of a pain in the ass you are.”
Warmth pricked along the inside of my ribs. “Keeps life exciting.”
We walked toward the front together, fluorescent hum overhead, the linoleum squeaking under our boots. The place smelled like coffee that had been on too long and cheap aftershave. A teenage cashier with a nose ring and earbuds glanced up when we approached, expression flat with the boredom of youth.
Hayes dumped his beer and pretzels on the counter. I added my very important box of definitely-for-Clara tampons. The kid beeped everything through without blinking.
We paid and stepped out into the cold, plastic bags crinkling in our hands. The air hit my face, clean and sharp, clearing away some of the static in my head.
“Seriously,” Hayes said as we crossed the cracked lot toward our trucks. “Thanks for doing stuff like this for her. She’ll act like you’re annoying, but ...” He shrugged. “You know.”
Hayes shook his head, the weight of big-brother worry sitting on his shoulders in a way I recognized too well.
“She needs somebody solid right now,” he finished.
A laugh tried to claw its way out of my chest and die at the same time. Solid was not the word I would have picked for a guy who had come in his own pants watching that same sister touch herself the night before.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I got her.”
He nodded once, satisfied. “See you over there.”
He headed for his truck, beer knocking against his leg. I stood there, bag hanging from my hand, guilt and something hotter tangling under my sternum.
Brody’s diningroom table looked like a small war had broken out on it.
Dice everywhere. Graph paper. A map in dry-erase marker that made absolutely no sense to anyone but Austin, with arrows and littleX’s and skulls scattered around a hand-drawn keep. Empty beer bottles, a bowl of pretzels, somebody’s abandoned sweatshirt slung over the back of a chair.
“Still can’t believe you almost ate it on the driveway,” Cal was saying, shuffling a deck of spell cards and teasing Hayes. “It wasn’t even a real hill, man.”
Hayes flipped him off and reached for the pretzels. “Black ice is an equal-opportunity assassin.”
“Sure,” Brody said, lining up minis. “But only you would manage to almost concuss yourself.” Brody pointed at Hayes. “Besides, I salted the sidewalk, so don’t come for me.”
My mouth twitched.
It hit me a second later that I was actually glad to be here.
The noise didn’t feel like sandpaper on my nerves tonight. The scrape of chairs, the clatter of dice in the tray, the argument about whether our half-elf ranger could seduce the NPC stablehand again—it all landed like background music instead of overload. My leg was stretched out under the table, prosthetic braced, and I shifted without thinking about who was watching.
“You’re up, Vaughn,” Austin said, tapping the map where my character’s mini figurine stood at the mouth of a cave. “Horse of the Damned or whatever you named him needs to pick a direction.”
