Page 127 of All Packed Up

Nic avoided his gaze, cheeks flushing his favorite shade of pink. “I told her we were… exes.”

He hated that word.

“Is that it?”

“She wanted to know why we didn’t work out. I told her the truth,” he admitted, lifting a hand to scratch at his cheek. “If you’re worried, don’t be.” He smirked before shaking his head and his smile dissolved into something softer. “Wendy was mostly concerned with the fact that we… uhm, dated.”

“Dated,” he mused. That was what Nic wanted to boil their relationship down to? Dating?

Focus.

“So you told her I did time then?”

Nic nodded, ducked his head in an apology.

“And the other two?”

With a chuckle, Nic shrugged. “They literally didn’t ask where we were going. Just got in the car and followed once they knew Wendy needed them.”

The tight spot in his shoulders faded a little, and he huffed out a semblance of a chuckle. “Sounds very alpha,” he said with a shake of his head, the tension finally broken. “You didn’t tell me you were an acrobat,” he teased with a laugh and a shake of his head.

Nic turned on him with a huff. “What the hell are you on about now?”

“You know, jumping to conclusions like that,” Grif answered.

Nic’s cheeks flushed. And dammit, he was too old to find that as adorable as he did.

“It’s a hobby,” Nic answered with a laugh. One that was somehow so familiar and yet deeper and more delicious than he remembered. Grif eyed the house, wondering how long it would take for him to convince Nic to kiss him.

Oh how he’d missed this tension. This flirty banter with the underlying promise of more.

Except… there wasn’t really a promise anymore, was there?

“Hey.” Nic waited until Grif looked back up at him. “Sorry I had to let the cat out of the bag. But the story is still yours to tell, if you even want to tell it.”

Apparently Grif wanted to tell it, since he’d confessed it all to Arlo last night. But would the others be as forgiving?

Wendy was already so skittish of alphas because of her experiences. He didn’t want to give her more reasons to fear them.

But Griffith also wasn’t going to lie to anyone. His past was a part of him, and even though it had been derailed a bit, he felt like he’d been on the road to normalcy ever since.

Hah. Nothing about this was normal.

“I told Arlo,” he admitted, shocking himself.

Nic’s brows rose to the ceiling before he nodded. “I can see why. Arlo is cool.”

“He was so chill about it,” Grif mused, still bewildered.

A strangled noise got trapped in Nic’s throat, and Grif looked over at him.

He looked pained. “Grif, you know you didn’t actually do anything bad, right? It was m—it was pure bad luck that you got sent to prison.”

Grif shrugged. “However I ended up there doesn’t matter to most people, only that I was there in the first place.”

Nic frowned, but Grif was tired of the subject. He didn’t like talking about it.

“I haven’t completed my list yet, but I’m planning on making another trip to town for supplies to fix the fence. Will you check with everyone and see what else we might need? Ideally this will be the last, last time we go into town.”