Page 51 of Lifeline

“Yeah, fuck you too, Trev,” Jake chuckled, some of his normal demeanor faded in the face of everything we’d been dragged through over the past few days. Which was strange, even tired and worn out, Jake was normally a font of sunshine and perkiness, but the past few days he’d been quieter, more subdued.

I stepped out and almost slammed into Carter and Mav. “Jesus.”

“Oh, thank God,” Carter said in a tired voice. “I was hoping I didn’t come all the way out here and there wasn’t going to be any dinner ready.”

“Freshly done,” I said, and then hesitated. I knew the walk from here to the building they normally stayed in wasn’t that far, but after the past few days, it probably felt like miles. “Might want to ask everyone else about the latest…update. Inside.”

“Uh, sure,” Carter said, and when Mav looked at me, I shrugged. I didn’t want to linger anymore than Carter probably did, and I definitely didn’t want to risk being overheard because I didn’t know if Colin had really gone to the medical cabin and if Xander had really gone back to his cabin. No way in hell was I going to risk making myself a target for either of them.

Aidan came out after me and nodded at them. “Oh, Mav, I…can you come find me tomorrow? I needed to ask you something about tracking and catching. It’ll be good for some educational reels I thought about putting out since a lot of the people who follow us are into that, educational stuff and what not.”

Mav peered at him for a heartbeat and nodded. “Sure.”

“Really?” Carter asked in surprise as they walked past Aidan. “I was so sure you were going to do that creepy stare thing that means no, but like, fuck no.”

Mav grunted, and I snorted as I continued walking with Aidan at my side. “Mav is going to help you with the social media stuff?”

“Yeah, but really it’s because he asked me to look for something for him and I found it,” Aidan said with a chuckle. “And I didn’t want to make a big deal of it in front of Carter.”

“It’s that bad?” I wondered.

“More like, Mav doesn’t want Carter to know because the object in question is for Carter,” he said with a smirk. “And if you tell anyone, I’m never giving you head again.”

“Liar,” I muttered as we reached the science building door, and I sighed when I saw it was open a crack. “Dammit, Reno.”

I bumped it open and looked around after flipping on the light. Aidan closed the door behind him. “What’s up?”

“Oh, Reno loves not closing that door right, and we’ve had a few…invasions because of it,” I said as I watched a big moth flutter its way to a lamp. “Kind of like that, though larger and more mammalian. Trust me, nothing beats waking up in the middle of the night thinking someone’s rummaging through your lab only to find a raccoon going through your samples hoping for an easy meal.”

“Aw, I love raccoons,” he cooed as I set my food down and took a bite. I was at the point of hunger where nothing sounded good and I didn’t want to eat, but it was important to stuff my face with the large amount of food if I didn’t want to feel like hell on wheels tomorrow.

“I remember that opossum you were obsessed with outside your apartment building,” I said with a chuckle. “Never understood your obsession with them.”

“And yet you still bought me that stuffed opossum,” he snorted as he chewed robustly.

“I didn’t need to understand why you loved them so much,” I said with a shrug. “Just that you did. Do you, uh…still have it?”

“Believe it or not, yeah, I do. Just because you were a dirtbag who skipped town rather than tell me to my face, I still loved that thing,” he said with a smirk. Then grew quiet. “It was one of the few reminders of you that didn’t make me want to put my fist, or your head, through the wall.”

“Mmm,” I said thoughtfully, then lapsed into silence while we ate. “Us.”

He looked up from whatever he was looking at on his phone with a frown. “What?”

“When you were talking to Mav, you said the people who followed ‘us’ would like that kind of content.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, the pictures of the beavers and their dam that Reno gave me went crazy. I did a follow-up where he gave some beaver facts and whatever, filmed it where Reno thought it was safe and people went crazy for it,” he chuckled. “Probably because, and I mean this strictly platonically, your brother is kind of adorable when he’s geeking out about something.”

“It has its charm,” I admitted begrudgingly. I loved my brother to death and beyond; there was no doubt about that, but that didn’t mean I was going to refer to him as cute, even if it was innocently meant. “But again, you said us. As in we. Or our account. You’ve always referred to yourself as separate from us, even last week you were doing it.”

“Huh,” he said, chewing with a thoughtful expression, and then took a drink. “I guess…when you get into a bar fight with the same guys you’ve been rubbing elbows with for weeks and then get collective punishment with them because y’all refuse to back down…it changes the way you think.”

“Apparently,” I said with a smile.

“What?” he asked with a frown.

“I just…like that is all,” I told him. “I like that you’re here, and I like that you think of yourself as one of us.”

“Am I not?”