Page 30 of Grin and Bear It

“You knew about that?” Cole asked, leaning forward. Those cool blue eyes searched my face, making me wonder if they faced a lot of discrimination. Of course, they would have.

“Yeah, we got the down low from our year level coordinator. They were initially concerned, when the boys were in Year 7, that they’d cop some shit about it, but most of the students don’t know or care.” I smiled then. “Kids are a lot more flexible about these things, so you don’t need to worry. The fact the boys are living with you guys now isn’t likely to be an issue.”

“Why… would it?” Nash asked, looking around him with a frown, but Tyson started to smile, it getting broader as the lot of them conferred.

“Well, I mean…” My heart started to race as I realised I’d said something dumb, very dumb. “You guys are together, right?”

“So that’s what you thought?” Tyson chuckled and I could feel that sound all the way down to my toes. “No, Ellie, we’re one hundred percent straight.”

Chapter16

Tyson

I watched our mate’s cheeks flush bright red and if that wasn’t the cutest thing I’d ever seen, I didn’t know what was. One minute she was all momma bear, protecting those boys from their punishment, and making Nash see just how asleep at the wheel he’d been, and the next? That explained the casual comments about our hotness.

She thought we batted for a whole other team, not understanding that we were Team Ellie, all the way.

Either way, she’d work it out eventually. But I just smirked to myself as the boys walked back in. Mads eyeballed us, reading the room as he always did. He knew something had gone down and he frowned slightly at that.

“Take a seat,” I directed the two of them. “Listen to Miss Ellie and do what she tells you.” I’d said that every morning when I took the boys to school, but now they knew I could hold them accountable if they didn’t. “We’re going to look at the plumbing and see if we can fix the pipes.”

“She thinks we’re fucking gay?”Nash hissed as soon as we were out of earshot.

It was good to see him so animated. Nash had been closer to the walking dead than my sleuthmate ever since he’d heard the news about Adam, but fuck. Part of me got riled up at that, wondering where the fuck this was before? The boys had turned to us when they found out they’d been orphaned and Cole, Lin and I had done our best to step up.

But where had Nash been?

“I keep telling ya,” Cole said with a wicked grin. “Those cock-sucking lips of yours…”

He reached over to press his thumb against Nash’s mouth, but the other man slapped his hand away to the sound of Cole’s cackles. Fuck, who woulda thought I could miss the sound of these knuckleheads fooling around.

“We should’ve played along,” Lin said, smirking as he crossed his arms. “The way she smelled when she was watching us measure shit up? I think she was giving herself permission to objectify us because she thought we were ‘safe’.” He nodded at the hallway. “Would’ve been nice, showing her just how not gay we were at a later stage.”

“Lying to our mate?” Nash said with a frown. “On top of everything else.” He rubbed his hands across his face. and was I the only one that saw the shake there? “At least she’s cool with a poly relationship. Now we just need to work out how she feels about blokes who go furry every now and then.”

“First we need to sort these pipes out,” Cole said. “I reckon we should replace all the taps and fittings. Put in something new obviously, and modernise the place.”

“Kinda like polishing a turd without finishing the job.” Lin’s nose wrinkled. “We could make this place so nice…”

“And make Ellie suspicious as fuck as we try to love bomb her into submission,” I said. “We know what we gotta do here. We all know the stories.”

“Take shit at her pace. Try to fix whatever she’s comfortable with.” Some of the spark had gone out of Nash now and the rest of us all eyed each other, wondering just how much further he’d fade. We’d nearly lost our shit when we’d discovered he’d come over here last night, claiming he’d found our mate. One, because he’d found the woman we’d been waiting for all this time and two, because Nash had rejoined the land of the living. “OK, let's get our crap out of the car and start work. I’m going to shut the water off, empty the lines and see if that helps and if it doesn’t, I’ll see about putting some arrestors in her pipes.”

There was something about it, moving as a team again. The rest of us had tried to keep up with jobs, but the business had always been Nash’s baby. He was the one who’d hustled for more work, organising quotes and talking to the right people and we’d just got the work done once it came in. When he checked out, we all did in a way, and it felt good to step away from that. Cole went to the laundry to see what needed replacing there, Lin got to work in the kitchen, so I got the bathroom. When I stepped in there, it hit me.

Her, everywhere. Her honey sweet scent was in my nose the minute she walked into that conference room at school, but here it was ten times as concentrated. Not just that though, but all the little traces of her. Her toothbrush in a mug on the sink with a cute little cat printed on it. A hairbrush with a few strands of hair caught in it, my fingers moving automatically to see if it was as soft as it looked before I stopped myself. My mom was always the centre of our family and when I was a little kid she used to tell me stories about other bear sleuths finding their mates, stroking her fingers through my hair as she promised me I’d find mine someday… My fingers tightened into a fist, and now here I was.

“Water’s off!”

Nash’s shout was muffled, but I was willing to bet we all moved as one, turning on the taps and letting what water was left in the lines out, the house making a groaning sound in response. I felt the shudder in the sink like it was my own, then the water trailed off to a trickle and stopped.

“Turn the taps off!”

I tightened both up, feeling the corroded chrome under my fingers, the worn washers struggling to do the job when a familiar sound started up.

“Fuck!”

The favourite curse of any tradesman. I knew that Nash had wanted it to be an easier fix than this, even though part of him had to be happy it wasn’t. It was the war between the selfish desire to spend more time in Ellie’s house, versus the need to provide. Fuck, I felt it too, beating hard and true in my chest. I didn’t want her here, washing her hands in a sink with porcelain crazed from age, looking into a mirror that had started to desilver at the edges. My baby deserved the best and…

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