IN TOO DEEP || Liam Dunbar [3]

ZERO

For early December, Beacon Hills was unusually cold.

Christmas break had just started, and they were all woken up by a fresh decent fall of snow that morning, which Katherine had loved. She'd spent the majority of her day sitting at her bedroom window on the floor with a cup of hot chocolate filled to the brim with marshmallows, watching the sky in case any more fell, and was a squealing childish mess when it did.

She was wearing a worn out pair of leggings, a crew-neck sweater Brett had left behind in one of the several times he'd come over to hang out and talk shit with her, as well as her favourite stripy pair of fuzzy socks to keep her feet warm as she watched the tiny flakes fall to the ground, a wide smile on her face and her phone completely forgotten on her bed.

The sound of someone thundering up the stairs snapped her attention away from the scenery at hand, and she twisted around on the floor just in time to see Mason bust through the door, dressed fully in his snow gear — just a poofy coat, hat, and boots — staring at her with narrowed eyes. "I've literally been calling you for an hour, you asshole. Get dressed and put your snow boots on; we're going on an adventure."

Katherine grinned at him and quickly changed into a pair of black skinny jeans, kept Brett's sweater on and artfully stuffed her fuzzy socks into a pair of brown boots with fluff at the top and stiff cords for laces. She quickly grabbed a hat from the table beside her bed and stuffed it, along with her phone, into the pockets of her sweater and she bounded down the stairs after mason.

"Stiles! Wake the fuck up! I'm going out with Mason!" She hollered up from the bottom of the steps, pausing patiently for a response.

"You got your phone?"

"Yes!"

" 'Kay cool! Be back by 11 or I'll call the cops on you!"

"Hardy har har, asshole! I'll call Dad on you for being stupid!" She yelled back.

"Dad is the cops are you dumb?"

"Yes, I'm aware that Dad is the cops, Stiles!" She huffed, then shouldered the front door open and slammed it shut behind them.

Corey was waiting outside dressed similarly to Mason, and she gave him a great big hug the minute she saw him. "We're meeting Liam and Hayden there, and then I asked Brett if he'd want to come too and he said he'd meet us on the way," Mason announced as she was set down on the ground, and she just nodded. He seemed to read her mild twitch of a frown all too well. "That okay, Kat?"

"Yeah, for sure," she smiled faintly at them rubbing her palms together.

She talked to Brett a whole lot more often than she ever wanted to admit out loud, which Mason of course knew about, and it made her happier than she'd ever expected it to. True to his word he hadn't asked her out again but was still as gentlemanly as ever; buying her a Doug the Dog stuffie from Up on Amazon and spraying it with his cologne because well, they didn't have any wolves, so— and then giving it to her when she finally was allowed to walk without crutches, giving her a sweater when she'd decided she wanted to go swimming in the middle of November, and then froze her ass off.

Just thinking about wandering home from the beach in a bikini and his sweater while he wandered beside her completely fine and laughing at her made her grin. Truthfully, since Liam and Mason were both busy with their significant others which wasn't anyone's fault, Brett had easily become one of her favourite people to spend time with.

Her cheeks were already numb and as they wandered through the streets of Beacon Hills, she could feel the snow sticking to her hair and eye lashes and the cold was seeping into her hands so much that she begged one of them for a piggy back, and succeeded. She hopped onto Mason's back as they wandered off the road and into the woods.