Page 31 of Knot the Plan
His laugh is surprised out of him, warm and bright, and he's still smiling when he taps the roof of my car twice and steps back, and I drive off down the quiet road with a terrible screw crammed into a deck frame somewhere behind me and two alphas' worth of feelings I absolutely did not sign up for.
The plan. The plan is going so well it's going terribly. I genuinely cannot tell anymore.
Chapter 10
Finn
The diner was my idea, which I am already regretting.
Not because it's wrong. It's the smart play, and I knew it the second the schedule came up, the rotating schedule, a day for each of us, like she's running a campaign.
The other two took her out where nobody could see. Grant put her in a boat on an empty lake. Walker had her at a job site at the edge of town with one cow for a witness. Sweet. Useless. You don't sell a pack to a town by hiding from it.
You sell it at Dottie's, on a Monday, in the window booth, where Pete can see you from the second stool and have it half across the county before the pie comes.
My mother will hear about it by Wednesday. That's the entire point. That's the only point. If she thinks I'm spoken for, she stops. No more omegas conveniently seated next to me at dinner, no more “I just gave Dana your number,” no more standing in her kitchen getting interrogated about my future like it's a missing person case.
One public booth at Dottie's and the whole campaign ends. That's why I picked it. That's the only reason I picked it, and if I drove over here a little too ready to, I'm not looking at that.
She's already in the booth when I get there. Of course she is. She came straight from the school, still has the look of a woman who spent her day being shorter than everyone she's in charge of, a smear of something glittery on her sleeve, hair coming out of whatever she did to it this morning.
She's reading the laminated menu like there's going to be a quiz. She knows the menu. Everybody knows the menu. Dottie hasn't changed it since the Clinton administration.
“You're late,” she says, not looking up.
“I'm on time. You're early.”
“Same thing, from where I'm sitting.” She sets the menu down. “Sit. People are already looking. Pete's vibrating.”
I sit. The booth is small and so is the table and there is nowhere to put my hands that isn't six inches from hers, which I notice, and then decide not to have noticed. Her scent's already in the booth, brown sugar and warm oat, and my alpha instincts take a slow inventory of it without asking my permission.
Dottie's on us before I've got my elbows settled, coffee pot already tipping, like she's been standing by with it. “Well,” she says, looking between us with the open delight of a woman who has waited a long time for material. “Isn't this something.”
“Evening, Dottie,” I say.
“Finn Morrow. On adate.” She says it loud enough for the booth behind us, the booth in front of us, and arguably the parking lot. “In my diner. I have been serving this man black coffee and a sad single egg for nine years and he has never once brought aperson.”
“It's dinner, Dottie.”
“It's not—” Josie starts, and I watch her remember, mid-sentence, that yes it is, that's the whole job, and pivot so hard she nearly sprains it. “—it's not anything we want a fuss over. So if you could keep it low-key.”
Which, to Dottie, is the same as a starter pistol. Her eyes light up like a slot machine paying out. “Low-key,” she says, in a stage whisper you could hear from the road, and pours two coffees nobody ordered, and sails off toward the kitchen at a speed that suggests a phone.
Josie waits until she's gone. “She heard 'low-key' and somehow that means 'tell everyone immediately,' doesn't it.”
“Your mother will have it by Wednesday.”
“That fast?”
“Dottie called my mother when I got my learner's permit. They have a system.” I turn my mug a quarter-turn on the table, lining the handle up square, because my hands want a job and that's the one available. “This is good. This is the play. Let it spread.”
Dottie comes back for the order. Josie gets the patty melt and a chocolate shake, which is a child's dinner. I get the meatloaf, because it's Monday and Dottie does meatloaf on Monday, and because ordering the same plate for nine years is the kind of stability a man can build a personality on.
Across the diner, Pete has abandoned all pretense of his own dinner and is openly watching us over the rim of his coffee, the way you'd watch a deer come into a clearing. When I catch him at it he doesn't even flinch. Just raises his mug an inch, a toast,good for you, son,and goes right on staring.
“Pete's going to pull a muscle,” Josie says, not turning around.
“Pete retired from the mill eleven years ago. We are his entire personality now.” I don't look at Pete. Looking at Pete encourages Pete. “Eat your child's dinner.”
