Page 93 of Claiming the Pack's Omega
“Yeah, there’s an outage. Someone has to go look at it.” Milo glances up at me, his amber eyes sad and a little guilty.
“Go take care of it,” I say, flashing him a reassuring smile.
He melts with relief the moment he sees my expression. He seems to need a lot of reassurance from me. Considering that’s only a smile, on my part, I’ll give him all the reassurance he needs.
He pauses. “Are you sure?”
“Seriously,” I say, waving a hand at him. “I can make a frozen pizza.”
“Okay,” he nods. “I’ll be in my room if you need anything, okay?”
“Sounds good.” I turn back to Stone. “I’ll be back with your pizza. Then you can take your meds and get some rest.”
“Thank you, Wildflower.”
“No need to thank me,” I shrug. “It’s just a frozen pizza. I’ll be right back.”
It takes me a few minutes to figure out how the hell to work their fancy oven.
I swear, some of the times it beeped at me, it was mocking my inability to use it. I’m used to the old gas oven we had back at home where you just turn a knob and pray. Not the fancy double oven model with a shit ton of buttons.
The timer goes off and I take one of the kitchen towels hanging on the handles of one of the ovens and take the pizza out.
Now we have a problem. I have no clue where they keep their utensils. I glance around the kitchen, trying to figure out which drawers they’d keep it in. I don’t want to go snooping. That feels wrong. I’ve barely been in their house an hour and now I’m going to rifle through their shit?
I’m tempted to run back upstairs to ask Milo, but I don’t want to bother him.
That’s when the silliest idea ever comes to mind.
“Steve, what drawer is the pizza cutter in?”
“Second drawer to the left of the sink,” the robot assistant says over the speakers.
“Perfect!” I say, opening the drawer and pulling out the pizza cutter. “Thanks, Steve.”
“You are most welcome.”
Glad Steve likes me. I’d never be anything less than nice to those kinds of robots. Who knows when they’re going to take over the world?
A couple minutes later and I’m headed up the stairs with a steaming plate of hot pizza and a few paper towels tucked under my arm. Turns out these guys don’t have napkins.
I mean, neither did we, at our home, but that was more so because we couldn’t afford them, when paper towels worked just fine. I think the Graylock not having napkins is more so because they’re… well, a pack of guys.
“I come bearing gifts,” I say, when I open the door to Stone’s room.
He glances up from his phone, a tension around his eyes that betrays how much pain he’s in.
“Thank you,” he says, taking the plate and instantly shoving a slice into his mouth. He manages to fit in two thirds of the slice in one go.
Damn. What else does that mouth do?
I think he’s too preoccupied with his pizza to notice me turning away to hide my blush. Or at least I hope he’s too preoccupied with the pizza.
I busy myself with collecting all the different pills he needs to take and placing them on the nightstand.
“Why’d you refuse pain meds at the hospital?” I ask him, once he’s on his last slice of pizza.
He wipes his hands and mouth with the paper towel before setting it on top of the dirty plate. It’s like he’s trying to buy time to avoid answering the question.
