Page 63 of Knot All That Glitters: Part 2

“We need to pretend like we’re going after her father,” I say, standing back from the wall to take in my work. Fucking perfect.

I drop my paint brush onto the drop cloth and start wrapping everything up to be tossed.

“You want us to lie to her again?” Jude asks, sounding pissed off.

“No, I want us to put some of our smaller plans into action. So she can see that we’re still working toward that.”

Creed has a furrow in his brow as he looks up at me. “She’s getting suspicious.”

I nod. “Yeah. And I’m worried about what she’ll do about that.”

“If she thinks we’re not going after her dad,” Hale stands up a shelving unit and pushes it against the wet paint of the wall I just finished. I let out a sound of protest, even though I knew it was going to happen. “She might do something stupid, like go after him herself.”

“Exactly.” I help push a second shelf into place, and then Creed slides a storage bench between them, more like a bed than a bench, with drawers underneath for storing things like lube, spare pillows, blankets, bottles of water. Anything we might need during a heat. Or I guess just anything Haven wants to keep in there.

It will be her space, after all.

Behind us, Jude makes a satisfied sound and then I hear him gathering his drop cloth as well.

“How long until it’s dry?” Hale asks, stacking the broken down boxes in a neat pile and tossing them into the hall.

“Completely dry? Probably not until tomorrow. But in about an hour, we should be able to touch it without getting paint on ourselves.”

“Can we hang the lights on the ceiling?” Creed asks, tipping his head back to examine the space.

I nod. “Yeah, I think that should be fine.”

“What about the canopy over the bed?” Hale asks, sending out another pile of the boxes.

I give both of them an exasperated look. “The ceiling and the wall behind the bed are both dry. It should be fine.”

“I’ll start bringing up the cushions and bedding and stuff,” Jude offers, scooping up more trash and then leaving.

For the next few hours, we add the finishing touches on our girl’s space. The bed gets made in cream, blue and gray. The canopy gets hung and more twinkle lights line it. The little bench between the bookshelves gets its cushion and throw pillows. We carefully move all of Haven’s clothing, her journals, everything into the new space. Even when Creed mumbles it might be a little presumptuous to do it for her.

He’s not wrong. We don’t know how she’ll react to us moving her into our house nest. But it probably won’t be good. I’m hoping she’ll see the effort we went to, the care we took in picking each piece of furniture, each throw blanket, each pillow.

I’m pretty sure Jude will happily tell her about every one of our choices. In fact, I’m banking on it. I want her to know we’ve been working on this for weeks. Since the day we told her about Janie. Not one of us doubted for even a second that she’s ours, will always be ours. Even if she doesn’t believe it yet.

She will.

Fuck. I hope she will.

The scent of fresh paint is still thick in the air, but hopefully by the time Haven gets back from Ren’s, it’ll have faded. But just in case we spend some time scent marking the soft goods in the room, rubbing our faces and necks on them. Only feeling slightly ridiculous.

Creed mumbles again that it might be presumptuous to scent up Haven’s room, but he’s right there with the rest of us, rolling around on the bed.

“She had pieces of our clothes in her room,” Jude says casually, like this isn’t monumental news.

“She what?” Hale hisses. Not mad, just shocked.

Jude nods and saunters over to the little reading nook between the two bookshelves, plopping down onto the cushion. “Yep. She’s been doing it for weeks, though she’ll never admit it.”

Creed smirks like an asshole. “I thought I was missing some t-shirts.”

Hale’s face goes all soft in a way that he only gets when he’s thinking about Haven. “And my gym shorts.”

I nod. “Come to think of it, my cardigan went missing. I just assumed Jude tossed it in the dryer, shrunk it and tossed it in the trash in a panic.”

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