Page 36 of Knot a Chance in Hell

I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. The fact our pack had been shattered was tearing me apart. In my ideal world, Nicolette would let me claim her, and we’d have a happy life together with Ezekiel and Silas as our pack. I didn’t want to share her, but damn if I didn’t want to lose my friends.

And there was what she wanted. Fuck. It wasn’t as if we directly talked about it. Yet she basically made it clear. I’ve seen her with Ezekiel. He treated her like a queen and made her happy.

“I’m not good at sharing,” I grunted out the words.

“I know.” Lucky for him he didn’t expand on it. “It’ll be difficult, but we could make it work. I want to try to make things right with Silas too. He’s having the hardest time. All the shit that happened with Sarah is coming back on him, and he’s not handling it well. Plus, it doesn’t help that he’s compatible with Nicolette too. You did notice she has some of his stuff in her nest, right?”

“Maybe.” I did, and it pissed me off to no end. “She also has a crate of peanut butter in there, so it doesn’t mean anything.”

Ezekiel chuckled. “She’s so cute. I thought we could stop by the bakery on the way home today and get her some stuff. Ginny makes a wicked peanut butter pie.”

“Fuck right, she does.” I’d buy Nicolette everything in the bakery just to see her smile.

We pulled into the lot and parked the truck. I noted Silas’ pickup was there, but it didn’t look like it had been driven in a day or two. What was he doing?

“I just wanted to say my piece before we went out there today. It’s felt like we’ve had a truce, and I want to keep the peace. You can think on it. No decision can really be made until she’s no longer in heat anyway.” Ezekiel exited the truck and eyed Silas’ vehicle too. He turned to peer down the dock at our boat. “He’s not there. Shit.”

“Yeah, well, fuck him. We’ve got a job to do, and if he isn’t there, he isn’t getting paid.” I slammed my door shut and marched down the dock to our boat. Silas had always had troubles. He had mood swings and a temper, but Ezekiel and I could always help him. Now I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t going to send Nicolette away. Silas would just have to learn to live with it.

As we walked along the dock, someone in their old liveaboard opened their door and emerged from their cabin below. I didn’t look, but Ezekiel stopped walking.

“Silas?”

I spun, and my eyes went wide to see Silas locking the cabin door and putting a tarp over it. The boat he was on was dented and weather worn, and I’d never seen it before in my life. “What the hell?”

“What?” Silas shot us a glare. “I needed my own place. I can’t start to build until next summer, and even then, doing it myself, it’ll take at least a few years. So this is my home until then.”

Several people had liveaboards in southern Alaska, but I never thought any of us would be up for that sort of lifestyle. For some reason, it made me angry he chose to live like this. He had his own room at the cabin, or he could stay with my dad. This was bullshit. “It’s a piece of junk.”

“It’s a classic Bellboy.” Silas shot back. “It needs work, but I could make her pretty again. All that matters is that it has a bed and heat to get me through the winter.”

“Whatever.” I didn’t like it. He was being a stubborn ass. I continued to our boat and started to remove the tarp.

“You totally could make her beautiful again.” Ezekiel was ever the peacemaker. We desperately needed that between Silas and I, but it still grated on my nerves. “Who did you get her from?”

“A couple from Juneau decided to retire here and were selling cheap since the motor was having issues.” Silas came over and started untying the knots which tethered our mini tugboat to the dock. Ours wasn’t a pretty craft either, and it didn’t have a sleeper cabin, but it belonged to all of us. It was the pack’s boat. The cabin we had built together was our pack’s home. Silas needed to be with us.

While the two of them talked about the liveaboard, I made sure we had everything we needed and drove us out to the worksite. It was quiet and still in the morning. A few local fishermen were out, and they waved our way.

We docked at our makeshift pier and gathered our machinery and tools from the shed. All of us fell into the rhythm of the day. We knew our jobs and we worked well together. I was still pissed at Silas, but the sooner we got today’s trees down, the faster I would be home to Nicolette.

The first tree of the morning came down smoothly in less than two hours. We moved the logs to the water to be towed bythe contractor later and continued to the next Sitka spruce. It was slightly bigger than the first, but it sat on a down slope.

Ezekiel and Silas climbed up, and I secured the ropes while they sawed the branches off. The ferns were thick around me. Such a rich green it reminded me of Nicolette’s eyes. I wanted to take her into the Tongass soon and lay her out in a bed of ferns. Awake or asleep, it seemed all my thoughts went back to her these days. I never thought I’d fall so fast, but she had owned my heart the first time I saw her smile.

Someone yelled, and a branch crashed to the ground not three feet from me. If it had hit my head, it could have killed me.

I looked up and scowled at Silas. “Watch where you’re dropping them, asshole!”

“I fucking shouted at you,” Silas yelled. “Not my fault you weren’t paying attention.”

I flipped him off and cursed him under my breath as I dragged the branch off to the side with the others. The bastard did that purposely. I’d kick his ass once he was back on the ground. The beating I gave him the other night wasn’t enough to knock any sense into him.

I’d tried to reason with him. Maybe I wasn’t so great at it as Ezekiel would have been, but I’d been through rough times with Silas before. He knew I had his back. When he downed that shot and looked me right in the eye as he did it, words weren’t going to cut it anymore. My fists had more impact.

We didn’t say anything once it was over. Silas gave as good as he got, and we supported one another as we walked out of the bar afterward. In my head, everything was sorted. But the second Silas saw Nicolette, everything went to shit again.

The branches were cleared in just over an hour, and Ezekiel and Silas returned to the ground. None of us said anything as we took a break for lunch. I hated this uneasytension. Not even my favorite salmon sandwich helped my mood.

---