I know it's her before I look up. That's the embarrassing part, the part I'd never say out loud in this town or any other. Brown sugar on the afternoon air, a little warm, a little nervous around the edges, and my hands go still on the rail.
A man my size isn't supposed to go a little unsteady over a woman crossing a yard. I've done it every time for five years, quiet enough that nobody's ever caught me. I've gotten good at wanting her with my face doing nothing at all.
“Hey, Logan.” She's got her bag over one shoulder and her hands doing something complicated around a coffee cup that's been empty for hours, knowing her. “Got a minute?”
“Sure.” I've got a minute. I've got a month of minutes invested in this fence. “What's up?”
And she squares her shoulders, and takes a breath like she's about to read a prepared statement, and says…
“I need to tell you something insane, and I need you to let me get all the way to the end before you react.”
“Okay.”
“I told my mother I have a pack.”
Something in me goes very quiet. A month of afternoons, and she's got a pack, three alphas who got there while I was out here sanding a rail and not saying a word. “Okay.” It comes out level. I don't know how.
“I don't have a pack.”
The quiet thing lifts its head. I keep my eyes on the rail and my voice exactly where it was. “Okay.”
“Stop saying okay, this is a crisis.” She sets the cup down on the rail I sanded for her, which she doesn't know, and never will. “The reunion's in a month. In Pine Valley. My whole family, my mother, a banner. I need three alphas to come with me and pretend to be mine, convincingly, in front of people who've known me since birth.”
Pretend to be mine. She doesn't hear it the way I hear it. I keep sanding a rail that's been smooth for a week.
“Hudson said yes. Finn said no. I need three and I've got one, so I'm asking you. There are rules, real ones, we go through all of it Friday, but the short version is after the reunion it ends quietly and we never speak of it again, and that's the whole deal.”
“Yes.”
She stops. Blinks. “You haven't heard the rest.”
“Doesn't matter.”
“There's a whole second page.”
“Josie.” Her name comes out steadier than anything else in my body currently is. “Yes.”
She stares at me. Out on the side street a car door slams, somebody calls see you tomorrow, ordinary town sounds going on like the ground didn't just move. Her eyes have gone big and suspicious, like a yes this fast must have a catch in it, and I watch her look for the catch, and I keep my face as still as I can while my pulse does something that probably violates a building code.
“Hudson said you'd say yes fast.” She's looking at me like she came in braced for a fight and the door just swung open. “He really wasn't kidding.”
“Was I supposed to make it harder?”
“A little? Maybe? This is a terrible plan, Logan, objectively, and you didn't even blink. You're supposed to at least think about it.” She's talking faster now, the way she does when something's gotten away from her. “Finn made me work for theno. You just handed me a yes like it was nothing.”
I look down at the rail. There's a right answer here and a true answer, and the right answer is something easy, something Hudson would say, happy to help, sounds like fun, what's a fake pack between friends. I rub the back of my neck, which my mother says I do when I'm about to be too honest, and I am, as usual, about to be too honest.
“You help everybody,” I say. “Whole town. You take the class hamster home every Christmas break because you don't want to put it on anybody else's vacations. You make Pete feel like breaking news. I've watched you carry this whole place around on your hip for five years, and I've never once seen anybody carry you.” The neck rub isn't helping. I keep going anyway. “So your family wants to see somebody take care of you for a weekend. I can do that. I'd be glad to do that. That's the whole answer. There was nothing to think about.”
The yard is very quiet.
Josie's looking at me like I'm a math problem that came out to a weird number, and the nervous edge has gone out of herscent, gone soft and warm in a way I'm doing my best not to notice. She picks up the coffee cup. Puts it down again.
“Okay,” she says, and her voice has gone a little rough, and she clears it, professional again in half a second flat. “Okay. Great. You and Hudson, that's two. Welcome to the fake pack. Planning session Friday, my place, Hudson's bringing a legal pad, it's already a whole thing. I just have to find a third before I lose my nerve.”
“I'll bring dinner.”
“You don't have to do this.”
