Page 127 of The Rust in Her Hair

Holding it up to the light, I stare at the pale splash near the button. It wouldn’t be so bad if the shirt wasn’t navy blue. How did I even manage that?

I toss it on the bed with the reject pile, but the problem is every other button-down I own is flannel. Soft and worn and good for a worksite but nothing else.

"You’ll find something," Nico says as he breezes past the bedroom door in a charcoal suit.

It’s the one he bought for the day he married Owen. He’s worn it maybe three times since. It’s a little snug across the back, but it still fits him. That leaves Mack and me to build something out of a closet that's ninety percent flannel.

I move back into the closet, leaning as I reach, being careful my feet don’t disturb Lyra’s nest. The whole space smells like her, vanilla and toasted almond wound all the way through Mack's hazelnut and my pine, and every time I reach past into the closet the scent pulls at something under my ribs.

Mack ducks in beside me and grabs an armful off his side. He drops everything on the bed next to mine and we sort through it there. He manages to find one dress shirt with a scorch mark where an iron sat too long a decade ago.

"I've got nothin’." Mack pulls out the scorched shirt, looks at it, then tosses it aside. "Everything I own smells like diesel or looks like trash."

"Why didn’t you toss that?" I nod at the scorch.

"You never know," Mack says with a grin. "It might come in style one day."

"Honestly, wear whatever." Lyra's voice comes from the doorway. She’s in one of my old flannels, swallowed up in it, her legs bare underneath and her hair still damp from the shower. "My parents won't look at either of you long enough to notice. They'll be too busy finding things wrong with me."

I reach for the bleach-stained shirt again. "They're not going to spend the night finding things wrong with you."

"You've never met my mother." She smiles when she says it, and it fucking guts me.

I want to scoop her up and tell her that the second anyone in that house says one wrong word to her, I'm walking her back out to the truck. But I don't. She doesn't need me winding tighter than I already am. So I file it down, and I make myself focus on the pile of clothes.

"Owen's got suits," Mack says as he goes through a stack of plain black shirts.

"Owen's a good fifty pounds lighter than you and four inches shorter." I hold up a shirt against my chest. "Nothing of his is fitting either one of us."

"Yeah," Mack grumbles as he ducks his head back in the closet. He pushes up, reaching for something on a far shelf, then he comes up with a cowboy hat.

It's old, with tan felt gone soft at the brim from years of handling. The kind of hat that takes years to break in. Mack turns it over once in his hands. Then he sets it on his head, tips it back with one finger, and studies himself in the mirror over the dresser.

"Now that," he says, "is a formal occasion."

I laugh before I can help it, then look over at Lyra, expecting her to be laughing at how ridiculous our mate is. But she’s not. The omega’s eyes are lit right up, honey-brown gone bright, and a slow grin is pulling across her whole face.

"I love that," she says.

Mack raises a brow. "Yeah?"

"Yes. My mother will hate it." She pushes off the doorframe and steps in, looking him up and down, delighted. "It might actually kill her to have that sitting across from her at the dinner table." Her grin goes wicked. "You have to wear it."

"Well, hell." Mack adjusts the brim, pleased with himself. "If the lady's demandin’."

The front door slams hard enough to rattle the house.

"Lyra!." Renata's voice carries all the way down the hall, loud and certain. "I found a body-con dress in my trunk that should fit you. Some black sandals, that might be too big, and some matching nail polish to top it all off."

Lyra lets out a long breath, her shoulders dropping like something just came off them.

Then she frowns and turns to me.

"What's a body-con dress?"

I shrug then Lyra disappears down the hall after Renata. The house fills with the two of them, Renata's voice and Lyra's laugh braided together behind the bathroom door.

Mack pulls a pair of jeans off the pile and turns them over in his hands. He runs a thumb along the hem, checking the stitching.