Page 133 of Wanted Beta

“Oh,” Gio nods. “Yeah. I’m almost done.”

He continues running the handheld steamer over the arms of the suit jacket.

I can’t see any creases, but what would I know?

I’m not the one dropping a grand and a half on a single outfit.

“You could stick around and watch with us, you know,” Arrow tells him as he sinks into the middle of the three-seater leather couch.

“I think he’d rather poke his eyes out with rusty nails.”

“That’s a bit overly dramatic,” Gio says as he finishes with the steamer. “I wouldn’t be able to sit still, la freccia del mio cuore. TV doesn’t capture my attention.”

“I know,” Arrow says, sighing. “It would just be nice if we could find something we could all do together, I guess. Enzo included.”

“We do stuff together,” I protest.

“Non sex stuff? Like what?” Arrow asks, staring at me like he’s daring me to come up with an answer.

I wrack my brain, but I can’t find one.

Then, it hits me, and I click my fingers.

“We eat together. That’s a non sex thing.”

Arrow nods slowly. “Okay. That’s valid.”

Gio smiles at us. “You two have fun watching those singing puppets. I’ll be cleaning the bathroom, and taking a relaxing bath, with my ears plugged.”

“Aw, that sounds good,” Arrow complains.

“We don’t have a big enough bath to do that as a pack,” I warn him. “Besides, you know Gio does that to relax, and there’s no way we’d just lay around relaxing in that situation.”

Gio goes into the bathroom next to our bedroom.

He’s probably putting those earplugs in right now, before he even starts to clean.

“That would make it sex stuff,” Arrow realizes. “And that’s the main thing we do together.”

“Is that a complaint?” I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.

“No,” he says. “But it would be nice if we could do something else together as a pack sometimes. Something fun that we’d all enjoy.”

It sounds like a tall order, at least for now.

Gio needs some alone time, and it’s gotten to the point where he seems to need it every day.

It’s not a problem, but it makes what Arrow seems to be craving kind of hard to achieve.

Then there’s Enzo, who’s hyper focused on cooking the best food he can for the restaurant which means he spends a lot of time prepping, testing out new dishes, and hunting down the best ingredients he can get his hands on.

He’s supposed to be cleaning up in the kitchen now before he comes upstairs, but he’ll probably also look over the contents of the cold store and the pantry and make a list for an early morning shopping spree tomorrow.

Nothing can really shake Enzo out of hyper focus when he’s in that zone.

It’s usually better to leave him to work through it, but that means they’ve both been a bit absent lately.

I guess that’s why Arrow feels like he wants them to be spending more of their free time with us.

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