Page 9 of Knot the Plan
Two doors from the station, I put the phone away and rehearse the pitch one more time. I've got it polished. Calm. Reasonable. The pitch of a woman in complete control of her circumstances. Warm him up, then spring the favor. Do not apologize first. Do not turn red.
Finn Morrow is halfway under the engine on one of those little rolling boards, just boots and forearms and the occasional clank. I have not said one single word when the clanking stops.
“No,” says the underside of the truck.
“You don't know what I'm going to say.”
“You walked here from the school in the middle of the day.” He rolls out. Sits up. There's a smear of grease down one forearm, right over the burn scar he pretends he doesn't have, and he looks at me the way he looks at a hairline crack in a load-bearing wall. “Your hands are doing the thing they do when you want something. And you smell like a bake sale that's on fire.”
I put my hands behind my back. Which, fine. Is an admission.
This is the problem with alphas as a category. You can dress your panic up in all the calm you want, and your own scent will stand behind you waving a sign. Brown sugar and burnt edges. A bake sale on fire is honestly generous.
“I need a favor,” I say.
“You have a favor. One. Banked.” His eyes narrow to gray-green slits. “Which you've been sitting on for two months like a vulture.”
“A dragon, actually, was the image I was going for.”
“What do you want, Josie.”
And here's where the polished pitch was supposed to go. The gentle on-ramp. The context. What comes out instead, at speed, is…
“I told my mother I have a pack and the family reunion is in a month and I need three alphas to come with me and pretend to be my pack and you're one of them.”
Silence.
Somewhere in the back of the station, a radio murmurs about a cattle gate on Route 9.
Finn looks at me for a long moment. A muscle in his jaw ticks once. Then he lies back down on the little board and rolls under the truck.
“Finn.”
Clank.
“Finn.”
“I'm declaring the favor void,” the truck says. “On the grounds of insanity.”
“That's not how favors work.”
“New policy. Started today.”
I crouch down so I'm talking to his boots, which feels about right for where this negotiation is.
“It's one weekend. One. You stand in a backyard, you eat my mother's potato salad, you glower at people, which is free, you already do it, and you let me tell everyone you're mine. Then it's over and we never speak of it again. Which I know for a fact is your favorite way for things to be.”
The clanking stops. For a second I think I've got him.
“Say the last part back to yourself,” he says. “Slowly.”
“Which part?”
“The part where I let you tell your entire family I'm yours.”
He rolls out again, and this time he stands, wiping his hands on a rag with more force than the rag deserves. He's a foot taller than me and built like the truck he just crawled out from under, and the woodsmoke and clove coming off him has an edge on it now, something hotter underneath, and I am going to need to have a word with my body about that later.
“Your mother. Your whole family. A backyard full of people who've known you since you were born, and they're supposed to buy that you're mine.” He shakes his head. “We don't even like each other, Porter. And you can't lie worth a damn. Your ears are already red and you haven't even started.”
