Page 44 of A Farmer’s Guide To Gamers

“Not for the phone calls from jail because of whatever she’s been up to recently?” Elizabeth teased, tossing her long, red hair over her shoulder.

“That’s normal,” I replied with a smile, my nerves finally settling down as we kept looking at titles and there was no sign of Jonathan joining us. “I don’t know what happened, Elizabeth… All of a sudden he was just so mean.”

“Forget about him,” she urged me. “Don’t let him ruin your day. Plus, I know that you’re going to have to go over all of this with your pack later and reliving it more than that will be no fun. Now, tell me about this pack! When exactly did that happen?! We had family dinner just a week or so ago.”

My face heated, thinking of last night and the one night stand with Jack that had set this all off. It was still the beginning, but the sense of ‘mine’ filled me just thinking of the four of them.

“Oh, that look tells me there’s a really good story there.” Her green eyes sparkled in mischief as she looked around the store as if trying to see if her packmates were near.

“We just recently met, actually,” I started, trying desperately to look anywhere but at Elizabeth. “Though, I did know one person beforehand.”

“Oh my god… don’t tell me it’s Dean Ames?!” she said in shock, her voice rising a few octaves.

“What about Dean?” My brother’s voice rumbled from behind me and I closed my eyes wishing the floor would swallow me whole.

“Go away, I’m getting details,” Elizabeth laughed, pulling me deeper into the store and leaving my grumbling brother in the romance section.

“It is Dean,” I admitted when we were out of earshot.

Or at least I thought we were.

“What?!” Clearly, my brother had followed us around the store. We weren’t the type of siblings to share, but he wasn’t going to let this go when it involved someone he knew.

I gave up on hiding and decided to just own it.

“Yes. He met his pack in college, they’re back after landing a really good job working on a game for a developer, now they’re working on their own,” I explained. “Though, I met Jack, his packmate, first.”

“Where did you meet him?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes excited as she leaned in, fully locked in now.

“At a bar,” I hedged, trying not to tell my brother I’d had a one-night stand. There was sharing and then there were sex stories. Definitely not sharing that last bit with my brother. “He was awkward as heck and started with this super cheesy pickup line. It’s now our running joke to use awful pickup lines with each other.”

“Oh my god, that’s so cute,” she squealed.

My brother didn’t look convinced as he stared down at me.

“It’s fine, Drew. I really like them and they treat me so well. Nothing like that asshole out there,” I promised.

“Good. If that changes, you call me and tell me,” he said firmly.

“Aw, look at my man getting all growly,” Elizabeth said, giving him a wicked grin.

“He’s gone, we watched him drive away,” Lucas called out from the front.

I let out a sigh of relief. My body had been so tense that I nearly toppled over. I wasn’t used to being around men who reacted that way.

“I really have to get to the store. The guys mentioned they had some work to get done, so I was going to bring by dinner,” I said. “Thanks for the rescue. Seriously.”

“Anytime,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just glad we were nearby.”

“Me, too,” I agreed as I hugged her goodbye and walked back to the grocery store. I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder the entire way.

Jack

Tillie was late.

I didn’t want to look into it too much, but she was five minutes late and something was just giving me all kinds of warning signals in my mind.

“Jack, man, you need to chill. She will be here,” Kai said, clapping my shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “And if this is nerves about the game… Well, we’re making progress!”