Chapter Fourteen

Oren

“Do you have any plans for the day?” I handed Heath a cup of coffee and sat on the stoop beside him.

The sun was mostly up, a new day starting. Archer was already talking about some work he needed to do, even though it was Saturday. I didn’t love how much he worked, but I also respected him enough to know he was doing what he felt he had to, so I tried not to push too much.

“Oh, thanks. I needed this.” Heath took a long sip of his coffee. “I hadn’t really decided for today. It was supposed to rain, so I didn’t plan anything outside, but it doesn’t look like showers are in our forecast now.”

“I don’t feel rain.” It was one of the weird things that came with being a deer—I usually felt the rain hours before it arrived. “I’d love to have a job where I got paid to be wrong,” I teased.

And it was true; the weather reports were consistently wrong around here. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t some science behind what they were doing, just that Mother Nature didn’t care what the indicators said. She was going to do what she wanted, and today it looked like that meant sun.

“What are you doing today?”

“I was thinking about heading to the big-box store. I wanted to get another bookshelf and maybe some pantry supplies.” The local stores were not inexpensive, and, while money wasn’t an issue for us, it still didn’t feel right spending twice as much as we had to—especially when I could make a day of it with someone I cared about. “Want to come?”

“Absolutely. I was thinking about getting some new sneakers anyway.” He picked up his foot and showed where the bottom of the heel had torn a little bit. “Not even sure how I did this.”

“Sounds like a date.” I loved the sound of that. Even though we were a triad, there had never been this need for us to do all things together all of the time. It had been a minor worry of mine when we first got together. Could we kiss if we weren’t all there, or shift or anything, really? But I soon realized that we all had relationships with each other as well as our group dynamic. It was the best of all worlds.

Heath leaned over and gave me a cheek kiss with a smack. “A date. I like that.” He leaned into my side, and we drank our coffee, watching the rest of the sun come up.

The drive to the box store was fairly long, but it didn’t feel like it—not when I had my mate by my side. We talked about a lot of different things, nothing too serious. The new movie that was coming out, the lack of good pizza locally—although we wouldn’t say that too loudly around any locals. They all seemed to agree that the pizza at the Grizzly was pretty good. It was fine, but it was a little too fussy to be pizza.

We even talked about what kind of flowers we wanted to plant in the spring. Nothing too serious. Just two people, getting to know each other more deeply and having normal, everyday, shared-life conversations. It was fantastic.

When we arrived at the box store, the parking lot was oddly full for the time of day. We each took a cart and headed to the back of the store to grab some sneakers first. They had an oddly large selection, and Heath was able to find a pair almost identical to the ones he was replacing.

I chose some slippers—slippers with little wolf ears on them. For some reason, they made me giggle, and Heath insisted that we buy them. I could imagine Archer’s face when he saw me walking across the kitchen one morning wearing them.

“We have two carts because we’re getting two carts full?” Heath asked as I plopped a whole case of green beans into the bottom of mine.

“Yeah, probably. I was thinking canned stuff and boxed stuff in mine. Bookshelf, shoes, possibly some throw pillows in yours.” We didn’t need throw pillows, but as we were walking to the shoes, I’d seen some that caught my eye, and it wasn’t like we were going to be back here anytime soon.

“This is so different than when I was living on the road.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Not being on the road and being here with you two is the best thing. Getting used to buying in bulk? That’s neutral.” He grabbed a case of beets. “I love them.”

“Noted.” I loved cooking for my men, and even something little like the fact that Heath liked beets was huge for me.

We ended up using half of his cart for the remainder of the boxed goods. It was going to be nice not to worry about having ingredients on hands. Ideally, we’d be canning our own, and next year we could. But to get us through this season, this would work.

It was funny because only a month ago, I was doing my grocery shopping every couple of days, not wanting to lug everything home. And now, here I was, happy as could be, stocking up for what might be a long season hidden away with just my mates and me. And I couldn’t be happier.

We were also able to get a decent bookshelf. It wasn’t ideal, but until I could take the time to construct one out of wood, the metal one would do. And the throw pillows? Once we gave them a hug, there was no chance they were staying in the store. They were far too comfy.

“We didn’t think this through,” Heath said, popping the trunk. “We might not be able to get this all in.”

“Oh, sure we can. I’m the Tetris king.” And we got it all in, but I did have to take the bookshelf pieces out of the box to make them fit, so it wasn’t a complete victory.

“I guess we’re not stopping anywhere else on the way home,” I chuckled.

“No, unless you want some lunch.”

“Lunch sounds great.”

Heath put his hand on my knee and slowly brought his fingers up my thigh. “But let’s wait for dessert until we get home.”