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We spent most of our time in a comfortable silence, working side by side in the barn or in the house as the air grew more crisp. We tended to the chickens, the vegetable garden, and the property like we’d been doing it together for a lifetime, and my feeling of being home grew stronger by the day.
Several weeks went by like this—working during the day, making love at night…and on our lunch break…and in the mornings. We couldn't seem to get enough of each other, and I felt both of us falling deeper and deeper in love.
Once the pawflower had cured, Waylan began to show me how to form it into bricks, a process that would take a couple more months, and then it would be picked up for distribution.
His boss, Esteban, would be coming down to pick up the finished bricks when they were ready.
I didn't think too much more about Waylan's boss or the business side of things. I figured that was better left to Waylan, and I could make myself scarce while Esteban was around.
Once the weather warmed up, I set up an outdoor dining area on the back patio. One night, while we were eating out there, Waylan brought up Este again.
"He'll want to get some information about you, since you're a shifter."
I nodded and dished more pasta onto Waylan's plate. "That's fine. I don't have anything to hide."
"I know, and once he knows you're a fox, he'll feel fine too. But we've had trouble in the past with other packs who wanted to make a move on our lands. But gray foxes are usually solitary, or at least, not organized."
"Hey!" I playfully tossed a piece of garlic bread at him. "Who are you calling disorganized?" He didn’t mean it that way, but I couldn't shake his words. Gray foxes are usually solitary. It pained me to admit it to myself, but I was beginning to understand my dad more and more. Maybe one day, I'd pick up when he called me. Maybe.
Waylan laughed and dipped the piece of bread that I'd thrown at him into the pasta sauce.
I loved watching him eat food that I prepared for him. Something about feeding him left me feeling very satisfied. After dinner, we had our usual routine of cleaning up, then shifting to our fur and going for an after-dinner walk around the perimeter.
Back home and in our skin, we went to bed, where we shared each other with ever-growing intensity. Our wordless routine, and I loved it. I didn't think anything could ever come between us.
Chapter 11
Waylan
I remember the day it happened in perfect detail. It started like every other morning that autumn. I made breakfast while Joe fed the chickens. We ate, prepared our second cup of coffee, and then headed into the barn to keep working on the bricks. Even though it had been a couple months since we first slept together, I still felt intoxicated by Joe's presence and his scent.
That was probably why I missed the signs that someone had been in the barn.
Joe didn't sense it either.
He set his coffee down on the long table, put on his gloves, and smiled at me. Once he got the hang of something, he tended to be pretty good at it. This was just one of the many things I was learning about him. I barely had to give him any direction before he was packaging pawflower like a pro.
For me, the biggest novelty was that I actually enjoyed working beside him. I'd never been able to work with other people before. When I'd hired guys to help on the farm in the past, I usually set them up in one area, and I'd go do work someplace else. No matter what they were working on, they just got too loud.
But Joe was different.
Not only could he handle the hours of working quietly that I needed, he seemed to thrive in them too.
Bricking up the flowers was a step I'd always done alone because I just didn't trust anyone to be around the product at that stage, so having Joe with me made this year's work go by faster than ever.
I watched him picking apart the pawflower and smiled. "You know, it's really unusual that this doesn't affect you. I've never been able to hire shifters."
I'd already explained pawflower to Joe, and I'd told him a little about The Quiet. Sometimes I thought he might have it too, although he lacked the grim disposition for it. Maybe there was some version of The Quiet that was naturally occurring in gray foxes.
He brought a fistful of flowers to his nose and inhaled. "I love the smell. It's like if sunsets had a smell, this would be it."
I had just set up next to him and pulled on my gloves when I heard the sound of gravel crunching under tires. Looking out the window, I saw a white van pull up with a driver I didn't recognize. Silently, I put my hand out to signal Joe to stay back and walked toward the van.
People almost never came up my road by accident. I was too out of the way and too tucked back. Eyeing the driver uneasily, I crossed my arms over my chest and made sure I looked big and strong. "Can I help you?"
"Waylan, right?" The driver seemed too friendly to know my name.
I didn't reply, merely narrowing my eyes as the side door of the van slid open. Five more men were in the back. My hackles rose as I heard footsteps and sensed Joe walking up behind me. When he stopped beside me, his fists were clenched at his sides.