The banner almost hides the plywood they’d used to cover the shattered glass from Jay’s meltdown when he’d discovered Nix missing. He’s lost his temper more times in the last week than he has in his whole lifetime, and it feels shitty to be so out of control.
“Still, you keep everyone moving in whatever direction we need to, and this is my favorite meal.”
Jay kisses his cheek just to see Gideon’s ears turn pink.
The ragu is savory, and the beef is always cooked to perfection, while the homemade pasta melts in his mouth. Gideon had created the recipe for Leo to cook on his own last year when the beta had insisted he could cook after bouts of teasing from Finn and Rowan (who couldn’t cook, either).
It had been aptly namedDon’t Fuck It Up Ragu,and Leo had, in typical Leo cooking-fashion, fucked it up.
But Jay had eaten the burnt, chewy beef and gummy pasta and told his mate how much he’d loved it. He’d been the only one, but Jay took his responsibilities seriously as a mate and as Pack Alpha, and encouraginga learning mate was one of them. He hadn’t been sick for more than ten hours afterward. Jay counts the radiant smile on Leo’s face to be a reward worth the price he’d paid.
“You think he’s okay?” Jay whispers it behind his glass of wine, and they both know who he’s talking about, even though, of course, he cares for Luca’s well-being too.
It’s just that Nix has been fragile since Jay blew the lid off his beloved’s hard-earned confidence. The crash had been hard. Just thinking about what else he’s holding back makes Jay’s stomach rebel, and he takes a sip of water instead of wine to help keep it down.
It’ll be a long time before Jay can make that up to him, but it will not stop him from trying.
“I think he will be. There will be some breaks in his armor over the next few days, especially. But we’ve got our shit together now.”
Gideon puts more pasta on Jay’s plate, but Jay can still smell his calming rain scent. One of Jay’s favorite things about his quixotic mate is his ability to be soothing one moment and dangerously intense the next.
“I fucked up so bad, but I’m on it now. Thank the Goddess that he still loves me,” he says as he watches Grayson empty the second bottle of wine into Rowan’s glass while he’s not looking, busy wrestling the second bowl of pasta away from Leo.
Jay revels for a minute in the status quo—in the copious amounts of noise and laughter.
Checking on Finn crosses his mind.
Jay has always thought of him as quietly chaotic—not the loudest shit-disturber, but always one to get the last laugh. He’d been unusually quiet, just picking at his pasta in between forced smiles and missed opportunities to mock Jay’s age.
Several minutes had passed since Finn disappeared into the bathroom. If Jay was not mistaken, he’d been crying off and on all week—slipping through Jay’s periphery like a ghost. Hopefully, the avoidance wasn’t intentional—just the result of a week packed with tough emotions.
At first, he assumed it was worry over Nix’s upcoming—nope, not thinkingabout that any more than he had to. But Luca had said little about it earlier on their way to Ripley. He’d implied Finn was going through something hard and that if or when he could, Luca would tell Jay everything.
There’s a pang of sadness in his chest, as Finn has always come to Jay when he needs it, but he can’t help but feel he’s lost track of something important. Just as Jay rises to his feet to check anyway, the bathroom door opens. Finn isn’t quick enough with the fake smile for Jay to miss how sad his mate is.
Well, fuck.
“Hey, baby. Everything alright?” Jay asks as Finn resumes his seat to Jay’s right.
Finn nods in response, but he throws back his wine and starts eating with a new focus that prevents any conversation.
Okay, then. Jay might beard the lion in his den after tonight’s festivities are over and see if he can help. He won’t push, but if Finn has been avoiding him, maybe he just needs to be reminded that Jay can be there for him no matter what.
Before he knows it, he’s running his hand over Finn’s soft hair and whispering, “Okay, puppy. But you’ll come tell me when you’re ready, yeah?”
His mate pauses the chewing and gives the tiniest nod, so Jay knows that his mate has heard him.
Jay digs into his meal, basking in his family’s shenanigans because the Goddess knows what Gideon has planned for later.
He has always had a fondness for his mates in fancy clothes, most especially dress shirts and form-fitting dress pants. He’d once told Jay it was the thought of ripping shirts off, with buttons flying everywhere, that got him going—and Jay has four button-less shirts in a pile for the tailor from before they found Nix to prove it.
Life has settled into abeforeandafter—before Nix came back to them, and after.
He will forever remember that day as the best and worst day of his life, and Jay thinks there might be more coming. It has him thinking about hismates hiding away from the world under the bed again and wondering if he could slip away from Gideon while he’s busy teasing Leo—until a door opens upstairs.
And like they’ve all been waiting for just this sign, they fall silent.
Gideon is around the table and holding Rowan down in the blink of an eye, with a firm grip on his ear.
