My Boyfriend Cheated With My Best Friend, So the Pack Law Handed Me to His Brother novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Five A.M.

On the dawn auction floor the whole waterfront knows. Tomás comes to charm and beg; Duarte puts his coat on her shoulders and says nothing; Bianca is waiting at the shed gate with a box of Zia's things.

At five in the morning the State Pier smells of cold iron, diesel and the sea, and I have weighed scallops there every day for six years.

I came in at half past four with no sleep behind my eyes.

The auction floor is a long concrete shed under sodium lights, with the day boats tied up outside and the catch in plastic totes on the wet floor.

I stood at my scale with the clipboard, and every man in the building went quiet when I walked in.

The whole waterfront knew.

A wolf pack in a port town has no secrets, only people who pretend not to know them.

The auction clerk would not look at me.

The deckhand from the *Santa Rita* tipped his cap, which he had never done, and then looked sorry he had.

"Morning, Zia," said the old man who runs the ice machine, and for the first time in six years he said it softly.

I hated it.

"Totes," I said, and picked up the first one.

Forty-one pounds, dry weight, and the number was the same as yesterday.

The scale did not care what my boyfriend had done.

It was the first thing all night that felt solid, and I wrote the weight down very carefully.

At six, someone said my name at the end of the floor.

"Zia."

Tomás stood in the doorway with the dawn behind him.

He had showered and put on a clean quarter-zip, and his hair was damp and wavy.

His eyes were red.

He looked like a man who had practiced in the car.

"I'm working," I said.

"Please, five minutes."

"You're standing where the forklift goes."

He didn't move.

He came three steps closer with his hands out, palms up.

"It was one time. I swear to you on my grandmother's life."

"Don't swear on her," I said.

"It meant nothing. Bianca started it, you know how she is. I was drunk, and I was scared, because of Duarte, because of whatever is going on with you two."

"There isn't a me and him."

"There is, though." His voice cracked. "I saw his face. I've seen him look at a boat that way, a boat he wanted."

"Tomás."

"I can fix this. Give me one week and I'll make it right, I'll tell the pack it was a mistake."

"It was a sofa," I said. "It wasn't a mistake. It was a Saturday."

He flinched.

His charm comes on automatically when a door opens, and I watched it flicker.

I had loved that light.

"You don't get to cry at my scale," I said.

"Zia, please, I love you."

Behind him, the floor had gone quiet in a different way.

Heavy boots came down the concrete aisle, slow and even, and the old man at the ice machine took his cap off.

Duarte came in out of the gray in a black coat and no hat.

He did not speak.

He stopped four feet behind his brother and stood there, hands at his sides.

Tomás felt it before he turned.

He went rigid, and his whole face shrank.

"I was only talking," he said.

Duarte said nothing.

He looked at his brother steadily, the way the pack says he looks at a ledger that does not balance, until the numbers confess.

The silence went on long enough that a deckhand set down a tote.

Tomás gave a small, broken laugh.

"I'm going," he said. "I'm going."

He backed away across the wet concrete and went out through the bay doors into the light.

The floor started to breathe again.

I stayed at my scale.

I was suddenly cold, because my apron had no sleeves and the draft off the water came in under the doors.

Duarte took off his coat.

He did it in one movement and held it out in both hands, at arm's length.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I didn't ask for that."

"No," he said. "I'm not putting it on you. It's yours if you want it."

I looked at the coat.

It was a good black wool, heavy and lined, and I could smell cedar and wet stone on it from where I stood.

Everything in my body wanted to lean toward it.

I took it out of his hands.

My fingers brushed his scarred knuckles for half a second.

Heat went up my arm and my knees nearly went with it.

I put the coat over my shoulders and told myself it was only for the cold.

"The term about the shed stands," he said.

"I know," I said.

"I'll leave you your floor."

"Thank you, Mr. Cabral," I said.

He nodded once and turned, and I watched his back as he walked away across the concrete.

Under the coat, my skin was still warm where his hand had been.

I wrote the next weight down in a handwriting I didn't recognize.

At seven I walked down the wharf to the Pacheco shed, and the hands had the roll door up and the lights on.

My mother stood at the counter with her coffee.

She saw the coat and did not ask.

There was a woman waiting at the gate in a camel coat and red lipstick, holding a cardboard box with my name on the side in her handwriting.

Bianca.

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