Status: major editing, rereading is suggested

Beckett

five.

The next few weeks passed by uneventfully. I attended school and made my required appearances at club meetings and then went straight home. Reed spent a lot of time at work, probably because the actual winter weather had decided to make its grand appearance and hit the area hard. Not hard enough to cancel school, but it hit enough to add up. No one else knew why he needed the money so much, but I knew: the wolves. With so many inches of snow turning into feet on the ground, it would be a real struggle for the wolves to find any food. Reed did spend more time at home too, apparently his friends actually like being wolf more in these conditions than not.

It was a Thursday the next time anything in my life related to the werewolves took place, because the story is about the wolves after all. I had just gotten back from a student government meeting, which earned me piles of papers and hours of projects to do seeing as we didn’t have many students so our group of incredibly small. I was also one of the presidents, but whatever.

The roads were slick with a thin layer of ice that the road guys were trying their hardest to control with piles of salt and it didn't help that at the time, snow flakes were gently falling down from the sky. They were almost peaceful had they not been creating a mess. I parked the car I was borrowing in our driveway and was struggling to get a hold of all my papers and my other things when a pair of hands appeared ready to help.

“Look who’s home,” a male voice piped up behind me as I stepped a bit to my left so those hands could actually help me with my papers. Having a hold of some of the pile, I stepped back and watched Reed fling my book bag over his shoulder and gather the rest of my papers in his hands.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“Can’t a brother help his little-?”

“No,” I cut him, making my way to our front door while he closed the driver side door and fast walked to catch up with me.

“Whatever, I need a favor.”

I rolled my eyes at his words, opening our front door and waiting there with it open until Reed had gotten inside. He stopped at the small table below the hook for our coats that lie on the wall to the left of our front door, placing my papers down onto the table and hanging my book bag on the hook. I added my papers to the pile and then hung up my thick, and slightly damp from the snow, winter coat. A good sister probably would have yelled at her brother for not wearing a winter coat outside in that weather, but I wasn’t a good sister.

“What do you need?”

“Okay,” he began, grabbing my hand and tugging me over to the couch in living room and sitting me down along with him, “hear me out. Since the weather hasn’t been that bad, I mean it is now, but it’s not supposed to stay like this. The snow’s supposed to stop soon so it’ll just be really cold but-“

“Why thank you for the weather update.”

Reed made an annoyed face at me, “Shut up. I don’t know where I was going with my point so I’ll just get right to it: I need you to get a job.”

“What? Why? This is my senior year, I thought we agreed I needed all my time to study. It’s not easy taking two APs and some Accelerated courses you know. That’s why I quit that ice cream and burgers place.”

“I know, but,” Reed dared at me for a bit before continuing, “I need help okay? Business has been really slow, especially since Lloyd’s is kind of out of the way and people don’t want to risk the roads too much. I don’t have the money to get as much food as needed and also to be able to keep saving up for that apartment. I know you have a lot going on but I really need the help and I have no one else to go to.” I bit my lips, twisting my hands in my lap nervously.

“I don’t really have the time, Reed,” I replied honestly, not wanting to even risk looking up to see his sad eyes watching me. I was a complete push over and I still am. After a couple minutes of complete silence and us just sitting there on the couch, I caved, “Fine, Reed, I’ll do it, but I’m taking minimum hours and you have to help me.”

Looking up, I catch just the right time to see a grin break out on his face as he watched me. “Thank you so much, Sof. There’s an opening at the coffee shop. I already talked to Mayer and you start tomorrow right after school. I know you have no meetings so you’ll be fine. She’ll have your uniform ready when you get there and you only work three hours.” As his words sunk in, my jaw dropped. He had expected me to cave, and i’d caved and he’d won. He knew all along. I smacked the back of his head, jaw still slacked.

“You idiot! What if I said no?”

Reed chuckled lightly, “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“Whatever, I have a lot of work to do for gov so I need you to go,” I rubbed the area between my eyebrows, standing up and going to retrieve my stack of papers. Reed sighed, making his way into our kitchen through the joined dining room. I set my stack on the coffee table and planted my butt on the floor between the table and the couch. “Where’s Mom and Dad by the way?” I yelled.

“Mom’s got an emergency at the hospital and Dad left this afternoon to go do some business at West Ward,” Reed explained, reentering the living room with a cup of steamy hot chocolate. I can remember it always being that, never coffee, because he called coffee “the work of satan.” No one will ever know why. “Both should return tomorrow some time. Mom probably during the morning and Dad probably more into the evening.”

I spread out all my papers in front of me, running my hands over each thin pile as my mind raced to decide just where to start. “I still can’t believe you just got me a job without my consent. You owe me.”

“I know, I know,” Reed mumbled, cup held in front of his lips while his other hand was busy taping on the surface of his iPhone. Without a word, he placed the cup on top of one of my papers—earning him a yell from me—and headed straight for the back porch in an alarming determination. Reed didn’t have many friends lately, which thinking back was probably because of his newfound friendship with the wolves, so it was pretty worrying when I heard voices along with his sound off from inside our kitchen. “Sofia, I need you to come in here please,” I released an annoyed breath, “and bring some towels.”

I furrowed my eyebrows but nonetheless followed his orders. It never crossed my mind that I may be getting these towels because, at that moment, four men (give or take) were standing nude in my kitchen with my brother running his hands through his hair anxiously.

“Oh god,” I groaned, tossing the towels at the closest guy before moving next to Reed. I recognized, now that they’d put on the towels around their waists, Lou and Beckett, but the other two were strangers. They looked identical in the brotherly kind of way, not in the twin kind of way. “What’s going on?”

“Hello Miss Sofia,” Lou beamed over to me, smiling like I was the see best thing he’d ever seen step foot in this kitchen, “we’re just visiting your brother here. We heard it was safe to.” His smile turned uneasy and I raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t question him further, just went back to the endless piles of government.

If I didn’t think it would sound absurd, I almost could feel Beckett’s eyes on me the entire time I was with them in the kitchen. If I’d have looked at him, I probably would have seen them shine, but that sounds stupid.

“Sofia?” A voice piped up from the space not too far away from me.

“Yeah?” I asked blindly, finishing off writing my note before I actually looked up and saw Beckett standing there with his towel. My face burned red. “Do you guys want me to steal from of Reed’s clothes?”

“No,” Beckett replied, brushing it off with a gesture of his hand, “they’re too big and he always seems to wear the same stuff so I’m guessing he doesn’t have much. Please, the smell of wet wolf is awful.” I felt a smile tug onto my face as he wrinkled his nose in adorable disgust. Why was I calling him adorable? He was a monster.

“Can I do anything to help you with your current situation?” I asked, gesturing in a circle toward him with my pen before putting the cap-clad end between my teeth. Something flashes in Beckett’s eyes when I did that, but I’d rather not dwell on it too much. He sat down on the other side of the coffee table before me. My only thought was that this boy’s ass was now firmly planted on my Mom’s carpet.

“I’m fine, Sofia,” he replied.I nodded to him, fully aware of the heat blooding on the tips of my ears as well as the fact they were probably beating a pretty sweet shade of red. Regardless I went back to writing out my notes choosing to ignore the guy sitting nearly naked watching me. “What are you studying for?”

“AP Government.”

“So you’re a senior right?’ His voice was low and timid, like he was striking up a conversation with a small child. I felt a bit of annoyance bubble in me, but I contained it. I even stopped the eye-roll begging to happen. I nodded. “So you’ll graduate in the spring?”

I pulled my bottom lip in between my teeth and shook my head, eyes on the cluttered table, “Um, no, I’m actually eligible for early graduation so I graduate January. It’s kind of pointless though. I still have to come back to take my AP exams and I still walk a cross the stage in the spring. I just don’t have to attend classes second semester”

“You can do that?”

“Normally, no,” I answered, bringing all my notecards onto a giant stack in the middle of the table, “but my Dad pulled some strings and yeah,” I bit my lip, giving him a nod. Beckett raised his eyebrows, now staring at the table in front of him. It was this moment that I looked back on when I got pissed off and needed to know what those stupid wolves had faults too. They make their lives seem almost nice the way they talk about it, but I know it’s actually a pretty bittersweet life.

“Is it confusing?” he asked, nudging his chin toward the table.

I furrowed my eyebrows, just watching Beckett sitting there looking at my notes like I was watching someone stare at a foreign language. “Sometimes.” He nodded slowly. “Was school hard for you?”

“Not really,” he answered, bringing his eyes up to meet mine, “but then again, i wasn’t in it very long. Shit hit the fan when I was in sixth grade and then it got too dangerous.” I nodded, just watching him and listening to what he had to say. But also, more importantly, ignoring the fact he was still very attractive and sitting in only a towel in front of me. “We lived in Detroit. I can’t remember how it happened, but my Dad knew Lou and then, now I’m here. We can’t attend school in case someone finds out about us. We can’t do much of anything.” That was Beckett’s fault: he never finished school. At least he viewed it as a fault. He didn’t like to talk about it. I’m not even sure why he even mentioned it this time. He never did again.

“Can you date?”

Beckett laughed, looking at me with these amazing eyes that seemed to hold this special something to them as he smiled at me, “No we couldn’t. Not outside of the group of us, anyways, but sometimes we found other means.” His smile grew wider at his last comment and I knew my face turned red at that. I could feel my ears warm. “I have a couple times myself.”

“Thanks for sharing, Beckett,” I said, making a face to show exactly how unthankful I really was. But it’s hard to appear unhappy when you’re around someone like Beckett. I didn’t realize that then, but looking back now I do.

“Mouthful, isn’t?” he asked, leaning forward to place his elbows on the table to rest his head on.

“Hm?”

“My name,” he explained, ”Beckett. It’s a mouthful, isn’t it?” I watched him, not adding in any commentary while shuffling up my notecards. “You can call me Beck, you know, like everyone else does.”

“That’s so boring though. Everyone calls you that.”

“And what?” he narrowed his eyes at me, his head slightly tilted and I felt my stomach drop because right then, I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking, “You think you’re special enough for a different name?” Having been around the guy more, now I can tell you that he was joking, but it got lost in the world of wolf pelts and human skin. He just wasn’t used to having to keep up with human quirks and he was so helplessly lost in the werewolf ways of talking. But I didn’t know that so I stared at him, confused, with my mouth opening and closing. Beckett frowned before adding, “Call me whatever you’d like, Sofia.”

“Pup?”

“Not that.”

“And not Beck,” I smiled, slowly remembering there were others in the kitchen, “It’ll come to me eventually, but until then I’ll calling you Beckett.” I continued smiling at him for a while before looking back down at the contents on the table. I could feel his eyes still on me though, just watching. For some reason, it wasn’t unnerving even though I still thought of them as disgusting creatures, not human in the slightly. Horrible things. Dangerous things, but maybe my stomach and nerves were okay because Beckett wasn’t a monster. Not a scary one at least.

Replaceable.

“Whatever you’d like,” he repeated, leaning back to sit up straighter.