I pointed to where Trevor sat, reading a book and eating a sandwich. “That’s Trevor. He and Maverick can fix anything around here. Incidentally, neither talks much, Trevor especially. Trevor, this is Aidan.”
“Mav talks,” Trevor said, nodding in greeting toward Aidan.
“To Carter,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders. “And the two morons you can hear right now are, of course, Jake?—”
“Jake!” Reno bellowed, and I sighed. “Quit! I said get rid of the junk!”
“You’ve got junk,” Jake teased, their voices rolling out of the garage, “in da trunk!”
Aidan eyed me and smirked. “He’s painfully straight.”
“Agonizingly,” I agreed. “I don’t hold it against him, though.”
My exasperated amusement continued as the two came into sight, Reno strung over Jake’s back as the larger man stumbled into the building and out of sight with a crash as they hit the wall. It was followed by a thud and a pained groan from Reno. “Dammit, Jake!”
“Damn, you’re heavy,” I heard Jake grumble. “Maybe you should start working out more.”
“Get off me!” Reno barked, but I could hear the laughter in his voice. “Talk about my trunk having junk, the hell do you have in yours, lead?”
“All muscle, baby, feel and see,” Jake said.
“No!” Reno cried out. “Get away from me!”
“C’mon,” I said to Aidan. “Leave the bottle in case it becomes a casualty of war.”
“Sure,” Aidan said, and we walked out into the hallway. Jake was slumped against the wall. Reno was beside him, using Jake’s broad shoulders to get to his feet.
“What the fuck,” Aidan gasped beside me, and all three of us looked at him in surprise.
“Uh, hi,” Reno said, shoving Jake, who was trying to use Reno’s leg to get up. “You must be the new guy. Sorry about?—”
I couldn’t blame him for trailing off as Aidan gaped at him, his mouth snapping shut and his pleasant expression shifting to one of disbelief. He clicked his tongue. “Seriously?”
“What the fuck did you do?” Jake asked Reno with wide eyes.
“A good question,” I said, confused by the reaction as much as by how befuddled Reno was, so the tension was purely one-sided.
“A real good question,” Reno said cautiously, and I could see him resisting the urge to hold his hand out. “Uh, hi…you’re the new guy?”
“You said that,” Jake pointed out helpfully.
“Fuck you,” Reno grumbled and whacked Jake on the head with the thick pair of work gloves he had in his hand.
“Hey!”
“I…seriously?” Aidan asked, and I was taken aback by the hurt on his face. “That’s how you’re going to play it?”
“Someone help me,” Reno pleaded, and despite everything, I was amused to see that he looked like he was about to bolt.
“I don’t know how,” I said, turning when I felt something and saw Trevor behind me, looking on curiously.
“It’s nothing,” Aidan said with a harsh snort that told me we were about as far from the country of Nothing as one could get. “Just…nothing.”
Before I could even think of how to salvage a disaster I hadn’t anticipated, I could see Mika coming in through the garage door, a frown on his face as he followed the path of destruction that Reno and Jake had left behind in their buffoonery. “Ugh, why does this have Reno’s stink all over it?”
“Why the fuck is everyone ganging up on me?” Reno demanded, looking and sounding pitiful.
Aidan had gone tense again and whirled around to face Mika. I had never used ‘grinding halt’ for anything other than machinery, but that was the only description I could come up with for what Mika did when he saw Aidan. His green eyes went wide, and the device he held up went down to his waist limply as he stared.