“Nail.”
Trina scrambled to grab more nails from the box that rested on the grass beside her, and then handed Nuke one.
The framework for the deck was already in place, and his trailer had stairs. Over the past three hours, she’d come to learn that her new best friend could probably build anything. He wasn’t even using a blueprint or anything, and this deck was big enough to cover the entire front of his trailer.
He hammered it in, and she hurried to peel her hoodie off before he needed another nail. The sun was high in the sky now, and she’d grown hot hauling the framework wood from the bed of his truck to their construction area.
She was learning so much!
Nuke held his hand out and she slapped a nail into it.
“Thank youuuu,” he drawled out as his eyes went to her tank top. “Holy shit,” he whispered.
Oh! Her tank top had pulled down a little under her hoodie and was showing a lot of cleavage right now. She pulled it up an inch and laughed. “You’re such a boy.”
“You have…nice…” He swallowed hard and ripped his gaze from her curves. “Hair.”
Hmmmm. “I’m going to pull more wood,” she told him, sliding the box of nails right beside him. He was nailing down the last two-by-six they had cut as floorboards.
“Do you think you are confident enough to make the cuts now?” he asked from behind her.
She did a dramatic about-face, sashaying her hips, and moseyed right back to him. “You bet your nuts I am,” she lied. Confidence hadn’t been her forte for a few years, but today was a good, easy day, and she could pretend. “No yelling at me if I screw it up,” she demanded as she plucked the safety glasses from where they rested on top of his head. She put them on her face and yep, they were way too big, but he was grinning up at her with a hotboy smile.
She struck a pose, butt popped to the side, hands on her hips.
“Pretty fuckin’ cute. Here,” he said, pulling the pencil from behind his ear. “You’ll need this.”
She took it from him and put it behind her ear like he’d been wearing it, but the pencil fell off immediately and landed on the grass.
“So smooth,” he said.
“It’s the giant ears,” she said, pointing at her ears that did, in fact, stick out a little too far to be aesthetically pleasing when she looked in the mirror sometimes. If he saw her monster’s ears, he wouldn’t be laughing right now though.
He brayed a donkey call, and she stuck her tongue out before she picked up the pencil and made her way to the back of the truck, still stacked with wooden boards.
She pulled one out so she could get a better grip, but hesitated when she saw what he’d snuck into the bed of the truck. There were two hanging flower pots with purple flowers sitting in the very back. They’d been blocked by the wood when she’d been unloading. He’d listened to her when she’d talked about the donut shop with the two hanging flower pots full of purple flowers.
He’d snuck these in here for her.
When she looked up, Nuke was watching her. “I got a couple of hooks we can put on the trailer. We can hang them on either side of the door if you want.”
Her heart had never been so touched in all her life. “Thank you,” she murmured.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a handsome, crooked smile. “You’re welcome.” And then he bent his head and went back to his task, nailing down boards. As the whack, whack, whack of the hammer on a nail head echoed through the woods, a feeling of deep guilt washed over her.
She was supposed to be here spying on these people.
Nuke was working hard, trying to make a space for himself, not harming anyone. And oh, she knew he had potential for great harm, but he was just trying to make a life. And Amos? Over there drinking a…she squinted at the drink he’d pulled from a cooler beside his chair. Seven-Eleven grape-flavored Slurpee. Enjoying a day off from his new job doing whatever he did for a living. He wasn’t harming anyone. Ren? She was happy. She had been through a lot and deserved happiness. Her mate Bron, and her king Krome, and Krome’s mate, Cora were just trying to carve out a safe spot to exist.
And Trina was supposed to betray this little slice of sanctuary, and expose people who had done no harm to her? But…Tory…
She’d left her phone in her trailer this morning on purpose, just to avoid Manning’s messages for a few hours, but now she had this deep urge to go check it just to make sure he hadn’t sent her any new video updates of her sister. What was happening to her right now? More guilt rippled through her, because she was here, having a good morning, while her sister was waiting for Trina to complete her job so she could be set free.
She’d never quite understood that ‘between a rock and a hard place’ saying until this very moment.
Amos meandered over to Nuke’s deck-in-progress and slurped on his grape drink as he watched him.
“Fuck off, man,” Nuke growled.
They were probably going to fight. From her experience, that’s just what male shifters did.
Trina walked the flower baskets to her trailer, set them on the stoop, and then unloaded a few pieces of wood and set one on the sawhorse to measure it out. All of the boards were supposed to be the exact same length on the part they were building now, and the number was burned into her brain.
She measured it out like she’d seen Nuke do, and then set it under the saw to make her first cut.
“Are those wing tattoos?” Amos asked loudly.
Trina froze, her hand on the saw, ready to pull the trigger to the blade. That. That was why she’d worn her hoodie this morning.
Slowly, she turned to see both boys watching her, and now one of the shifters she hadn’t yet met a few trailers down was standing on his stairs, staring at her too. Great.
“I got them when I was young,” she lied. “I thought they were cool.”
“Liar liar, wings on fire,” Amos crowed. “You’re an avian shifter, aren’t you?”
“Amos,” Nuke warned. “It’s none of your damn business what she is.”
“Humming bird shifter,” he said, pointing at her. “No! You’re a goose. One of those badass ones that is super mean and chases everyone and bites all the children.”
“Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m a goose.” They would never guess it, so she went back to work cutting wood while Amos droned on about something she didn’t have the patience to listen to, because she had a deck to build. One of his answers poked through the noise though and made her have to hide a giggle. “She’s a sexy little sugar glider, I freakin’ know it, I can feel it in my boner…”
“Feel it in my bones,” she called. “The saying is I can feel it in my bones. Not my boner.”
“Potato, potahto, Sugar Glider,” Amos called. “Do you need help with that saw? I don’t want you getting sawdust in your giant sugar glider eyeballs.”
“She’s fine!” Nuke barked out. “Help us, or fuck off to anywhere else. Those are your two options.”
“Don’t you think the stain you picked out is too dark?” Amos asked.
Nuke looked right at Trina with conviction written all over his face as he said, “I’m going to kill him today. Today is the day I’m going to eat a bald eagle.”