Page 254 of Come Back to Me

“Here’s to never letting women come between us,” I propose, holding up my beer to clink.

He taps it. “Think Tee’ll try?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t, huh? Speaking out of my ass, am I?”

“You always talk out of your ass. It has a mouth and everything.”

He flips me the bird but he’s smirking. “You’re keeping this one close to the vest.”

“Still completely in the dark, Bast.” In the distance, the sound of a vehicle rolling up has me twisting back to look at the driveway. “You expecting Colt?”

He shrugs. “Told Theo we were gonna drink some beers.”

When his older brother appears from out of nowhere to slap Colt on the shoulder and they both amble our way, I arch a brow at the pair of them. “We’re not moving.”

“We’re not ten anymore,” Theo says dryly.

“Yeah, if we were, you’d have given us black eyes, then stolen our stoolsandour beers,” Bast grumbles into the mouth of the beer bottle.

I hold out my fist for his to bump.

Colt drags something out from behind his back. He passes one to Theo and retains the other. His grin is shit-eating as the pair of them unfold their own camping chairs and plunk their asses onto them.

“Hand out the beers, Bast,” Theo orders.

With an eyeroll, he tugs them from the box. “You better have brought your own.”

“Cool it. They’re in the refrigerator.”

The pair of them pop the caps and sink back into the chairs with a sigh.

And it’s… nice?

Weird because Theo and Colt hung out separately to Bast and I when we were growing up, but stillnice.

We barely talk. We just drink and sit and don’t work and, fuck, it’s adult andnice.

As night drops, the bugs make themselves known, and I pass bug spray among ourselves while Theo goes into the house to grab more beers.

And we stay out here and we sit and chill and it’snice.

Until something weird happens.

A white sheet pops down in front of us.

Twisted, with knots and everything.

“Ah, fuck,” Theo snaps, immediately on his feet as he runs into the house.

“What the hell?” I jerk upright so I can peer at the veranda roof. “Jesus, Elena. What are you doing?”

“Clay, oh, god, you have to help me!”

There’s a whoosh, but that’s all the chance I have to prepare myself. Somehow, I manage to grasp a hold of Elena as she plummets to the ground, just before she makes a literal dead drop.

Bast, cursing under his breath, tries to help me, and Colt races to take some of her weight too when I’m left half-dangling over the rail thanks to that little thing called momentum.

---