Page 73 of Out of Nowhere

“That stopped being funny after the fourth time you said it,” Saint grumbled.

“Who pissed in your Cheerios?” Sean asked, then yelled again. “Pi-vot!”

“I’m gonna PI-VOT! you, you red-haired devil!” Saint vowed. Privately, Seo-jun was rooting for him, since he was ready to throttle Sean himself.

Jude appeared at the railing at the top of the stairs, a pink scarf tied around his blond hair. “The bedroom’s all dusted, swept, and ready for the bed!” he called down to Hawk and Mal, who were balancing the king mattress between them. Logan and West stood nearby with the frame.

“Okay, as soon as the couch clears the stairway!” Hawk called back up to Jude.

“Jude!” Zion yelled from the bedroom, sounding panicked. Jude took off running. Someone cried out—Seo-jun wasn’t sure if it was Jude or Zion. The guys with the couch set it down in the hall and scrambled over it to get to the bedroom.

“What’s going on?” Mal yelled, already half-way up the stairs, Hawk at his heels.

Another shriek. “Fuck!”

Seo-jun, who had been unpacking boxes on the main floor, was the last to make it upstairs and crowd into the master bedroom with the others.

“It’s just a spider,” he heard West say before wedging himself between Logan and Hawk so he could see into the room.

“It’s fucking huge!” Jude shrieked, pointing at an alarmingly large dark spot skittering down the wall.

“Ohmygodit’scomingatus!” Zion ran for the door, currently blocked by eight men, and nearly climbed West’s body in an attempt to get as far away from the floor as possible.

Jude tried to trap the spider with a cup, missed, and then shrieked when the spider changed course and ran toward him, eight legs eating up the space at an alarming rate.

“What is that fucking thing?” Saint demanded. “That’s no normal spider.”

“What’s going on?” Seo-jun heard Dex say from the hall. “I heard someone scream all the way from the end of the driveway.”

Sean disentangled himself from the melee and pushed his way into the hall. “It’s a spider the size of Wisconsin.”

“Really? Let me see!”

God, my boyfriend is a geek, Seo-jun thought, smiling to himself. He moved back so Dex could get into the room.

“That’s a tarantula,” Dex said. “They aren’t indigenous to North Carolina. It must have been someone’s pet that got away. Come ‘ere, fella.”

“Holy shit, Dex is gonna pick up that thing,” Logan said. “You sure you want to live with him, Seo-jun? You can still back out.”

“Is the big, bad Marine scared?” West said in a baby voice.

“It might bite you, Dex!” Seo-jun called out, ignoring them.

Dex held the huge spider in his cupped hands. “It won’t. It’s a Brazilian black tarantula. They’re mostly docile. I think it’s a female, which means it was pretty expensive. Someone’s got to be looking for this spider.” He took a step forward, and all eight men still wedged in the doorway took a simultaneous step back into the hallway.

“Watch it with that thing!” Sean swatted at Dex.

“Be careful! These spiders are delicate. A fall from this height could kill it,” Dex said sternly.

“Since when are you an expert on tarantulas?” Sean grumbled, stepping back to let him through and past the others, who instantly tried to blend into the wall.

“I had one when I was a kid. I think they’re cool.” Dex descended the stairs. “Do we have anything to put this baby in?”

“A plastic bag?” Colt offered.

“What? No! She’ll suffocate.”

“Then, no. Nothing.”

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