Page 65 of At Their Mercy: Part I

I opened the little envelope and pulled out a printout of a screenshot. A mattress? One of those with layers of memory foam and gel. They were thin, made for camping. A Post-it was stuck to the printout. In Shay’s handwriting, it read, “Three of these are waiting in the bed of the truck. Kisses!”

“A new tent for the truck…?” Reese pulled away more wrapping paper to reveal the imagery on the box. Sure enough, it was an upgraded version of the tent we attached to the back of the truck for road trips.

It wasn’t long ago at all that we’d bought one, but it had turned out to be shitty after a few nights.

“As much as I wanna see the whole world with you, this will always be my favorite,” Shay admitted. “Heading out, the three of us—and the pups—in River’s truck and just go where the road takes us.”

I smiled and glanced over at him. That was my favorite too. Backroads, the roads less traveled, finding hidden gems, and spending time with my two favorite people.

We never ran out of things to talk about, and every stretch of silence was comfortable.

“I don’t have words.” Reese cupped our boy’s face in his hands and kissed him hard.

I didn’t have anything to say either. This was the rest of my life, and I couldn’t spend it dreading the end. That was how I’d miss out on everything.

Shay soon urged us to keep opening gifts, and he hadn’t been lying about the theme. We unwrapped everything we could possibly need for future road trips and camping adventures. Reese got his ergonomic pillow. I received a battery/power bank that literally held up to two hundred charges. Flashlights, a lantern, new mosquito netting, a camping shower, a portable fan for hot nights, and foot warmers for cold nights.

Shay had omitted something about these “extra” gifts, though. Extra in this context implied cheaper, but I knew my way around these brands, and he was evidently gonna give me an early heart attack by joining more fights. He’d dropped an absurd amount of money on these gifts, and we weren’t done.

With the camping theme out of the way, Shay continued with personal stuff. We each got limited edition Path of Destruction records⁠—

“Holy shit, it’s signed,” Reese blurted out.

“It is?” I eyed my own, and I’d be fucking damned. Mine was signed too, by Lincoln Hayes.

Reese and I had rocked out our teen angst to music by this band. God bless the nineties.

Shay smirked.

“Did you find these on eBay or somethin’?” I wondered.

He shook his head. “I know people.”

Uh, who?

“Okay, this is actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” Reese declared. “I’m ready for my next gift.”

Shay laughed and started picking those blue-wrapped gifts. “The ones with a yellow sticker dot on the underside are River’s.”

All right, fine, maybe I was enjoying myself too.

Reese and I didn’t waste time. We checked the underside of each gift and forked them over when we found something belonging to the other.

“Basically, I wanna head out soon—for another road trip,” Shay said. “So, I’ve been preparing, I guess you can say.”

He was just gonna keep amazing us, it seemed. The blue gifts were…snacks. Our favorite snacks. Really, the kinds of snacks we’d proclaimed as favorites. Like the olives I preferred, our favorite cheeses for movie nights, my favorite taffy, and our favorite potato chips. Shay had bought us our pantry stuff for our next camping trip.

More than that, he was showing us how much attention he paid to serving us, to being devoted to us, and how much he loved us. He listened all the time. He could anticipate our needs and knew just the type of snack that could improve a shitty Monday mood.

At one point, I had to go over and hug him to me.

This boy was our fucking world.

“We love you so much, pup.” I tightened my hold on him and kissed his temple. “You made today mean something.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Reese reached over and kissed him too. “We should—” He was cut off by the buzzer, indicating someone was at the gate. “I guess we should continue this conversation later.”

“Oh fuck, I hope they like me.” Shay suddenly looked nervous.