"Among other things. I could teach you. Private lessons."
"Robin," Vaughn warns.
"What? I'm being friendly. Neighborly. Grateful."
"You're being a menace."
"That too."
Silas finishes his glass and goes back for more boxes without being asked. He's careful with everything I marked fragile, quiet and thorough, and there's something sweet about how he doesn't rise to my flirting. Ezra gives as good as he gets — "So these romance novels. Any with lions?"
"Hundreds. Very educational about anatomy." — and somewhere behind us Vaughn drops a box.
"You okay there, big guy?" I ask innocently.
"Fine," he grits out, but his ears are crimson and his hands are gripping the box hard enough to dent the cardboard.
Here's the thing about flirting: I'm good at it the way Vaughn is good at engines. It's instinct. Muscle memory. I flirt with baristas and old ladies at the grocery store and the mail carrier who always lingers a little too long at our old mailbox. It's armor and it's currency and it's the only language I've ever been fluent in.
But when Vaughn's ears go red, when his grip tightens and his jaw flexes and he looks at me like I'm a problem he can't solve, something underneath the performance sits up and pays attention. I flirt with everyone. With Vaughn, Imeanit.
Which is exactly why I flirt harder, louder, with everyone else in the room.
By the time we're done, my bedroom at Ash's is stacked with boxes and possibility. The lions are sweaty and slightly irritated and devastatingly attractive, and I'm standing in the middle of it all feeling grateful in a way I don't entirely know how to express.
"Thank you," I say, and I mean it. "I owe you all dinner. Or dessert. Or whatever meal you prefer."
"It's fine," Vaughn says. "We help pack."
"I'm pack-adjacent at best."
"You're Toby's family. Jason's family." Silas says it simply, like stating the weather. "That makes you pack."
The warmth that hits me is stupid and inconvenient and I absolutely refuse to examine it. "Well then, as pack, you're obligated to let me feed you. This weekend. I'll make something incredible."
"We'll see," Vaughn hedges.
"We would love that," Ezra corrects. "Vaughn's just worried you'll flirt more."
"He should be worried. I'm very good at it."
"We noticed," Silas says dryly, and when did the quiet one get funny?
They leave on their bikes, engines rattling the windows of Ash's quiet street. I stand in the kitchen surrounded by boxes that need unpacking and a fridge that's empty except for the leftover lemonade, and I feel — something. Not sad, exactly. Not happy either. Just aware that my life is rearranging itself around me, and I'm not entirely in control of the shape it's taking.
Everyone's pairing off. Knox has Toby. Ash has Jason. Even Silas seems content in his corner with his books and his quiet. And here I am, moving into my big brother's spare bedroom with my stand mixer and my romance novels and a truly mortifying attraction to a man who communicates exclusively in monosyllables and disapproving looks.
I unpack my knives first. Then my baking pans. Then the box of spices that Ash will absolutely reorganize by morning.
My phone buzzes. Toby:How's the move? Did Ash help?
Ash was MIA. Called the bar. Vaughn, Silas, and Ezra came instead. I was SURROUNDED by hot lions and it was a CRISIS.
Toby:A crisis how?
I start to type something flirty and deflecting. Delete it. Try again.
I miss you. The apartment looked weird empty.