Chapter 12

I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings when I called you a fucking useless cunt. I thought you already knew.

-Baylor to a person whose car he just repossessed

Lark

He woke up early and slipped out of my bed.

I would’ve ignored the pain in my chest at him leaving had he not placed a soft kiss on what he thought were my sleeping lips.

But he did place that soft kiss there.

He also started the coffee for me, took my trash out and locked my door with a key I wasn’t aware he found.

Him leaving without waking me wasn’t something an uncaring man would do.

Then, when I heard him start his truck up and back out of my driveway, I got up and watched him go.

He gave one last longing glance toward my house before he motored down the road, narrowly missing his brother leaving as well.

I grinned when I saw him glance suspiciously at the retreating truck.

It was impossible to mistake those bright colors for anything but a Hail tow truck.

And eight hours later, after arriving back from what I considered my second job, I parked my ass on my front porch and contemplated my life.

I contemplated it so long and was so immersed in my own head, that I almost missed Baylor running past.

Since I was behind a huge fern that hung from my roof in a large, ornate planter, he missed me there.

I didn’t miss him, though. I watched him look at my house, hesitate and take a stutter step, but then shake his head and continue on down the road.

I knew where he was going.

To see his dog.

And that made me sad.

I’d done a whole lot of thinking over the majority of the day, and I’d come to two realizations.

Sal would not own my life. He didn’t get to make me scared enough to refuse to live my life. I couldn’t let him continue to play a role in how I lived based on what he’d done to me in the past.

I was protected. Sam and Free had made sure that I had resources. Sure, Harold was a dick, and he deserved to rot in hell for the number of tickets he handed out, but since he wasn’t doing it to just me, I could deal.

What I couldn’t deal with was the regret. The regret that if I didn’t try to pursue what I felt for Baylor, I’d never know how good or bad it could be.

I was tired of being scared.

I wasn’t dead.

Sure, Sal wasn’t dead either, but he couldn’t get to me. Not anymore.

And an hour later, when Baylor started to run past my house again, I saw the sadness on his face.

He missed his dog. He missed him so much that on his way past my house, he didn’t even glance around. He didn’t glance at his brother’s house where I could hear kids screaming in excitement in the backyard. He didn’t glance at mine, where he could clearly see me from the front porch.

He didn’t do anything but run with his head down.

I pulled Baylor’s hat down lower over my eyes and watched him run into the setting sun, a plan forming in my mind.

I could do this.

I would do this.

For him.

It was foolhardy, and might very well backfire on me, but I couldn’t be the girl that I used to be. Rita Marie Donovan, the ex-wife of Sal Donovan, was no more. In her place was a new woman. Lark Mackenzie Lawrence. She wasn’t a scared mouse. She wasn’t afraid of her own shadow. She didn’t fear her husband and what he might do to her if he ever found out where she lived.

She didn’t fear anything.

Not anymore.

I stood up and moved down my steps, intending to walk just a little bit down the road, but something black caught my eye.

A shirt.

I hurried toward it and realized rather quickly that it’d been the shirt that Baylor had been wearing when he’d run by the first time. The second time he’d had it tucked into the waistband of his pants.

However, he’d been so determined to run away from what he was feeling that he hadn’t realized he’d dropped it.

I bent down, picked it up, and brought it to my nose.

It smelled like him, and it was wet with his sweat.

I inhaled again, loving the hint of deodorant that I could smell when I did.

I’d asked him that last night—why he’d smelled so good.

He’d laughed and told me that it was a combination of his soap and deodorant, but mostly his deodorant.

Underneath the smells of his body, I could determine the faint scent of his laundry detergent and fabric softener. It wasn’t overpowering…just enough to make me realize that we used the same brands.

Smiling, I walked back to my house and placed the t-shirt on the back of the couch.

I’d intended to give it back to him.

However, I never realized how handy it would come in when I did what I did three days later.

***

Three days later.

0012 hours

I’d never been scared of the dark.

Of Sal, yes. Of dying, sure. Of running out of oxygen in a shallow grave after being buried alive? Check, check, check. But of the dark? No. That wasn’t one of Sal’s torture tactics.

But, as I walked through the woods blanketed in nearly complete blackness, I realized that it was rather eerie.

I could hear movement in the woods, and although logically I knew it was possibly a raccoon or possum, my mind told me it was a person.

I knew it wasn’t a person.

Only animals made that scratching sound…right?

I’d just about convinced myself that I was going to have to turn my flashlight on when I saw the light in the distance.

The moon was out, and it illuminated the path that Baylor had forged through his hundreds of trips, but it wasn’t enough to keep the shadows deep.

That light, though? I’d never once been so excited to see one.

As I tried to calm my racing heart, the light got closer and closer, and soon I was on the edge of the road staring at the fenced yard.

I was going to do this.

Checking to make sure that everything on me was covered, including my hands, I took the first step off the road and started across the street.

At first, I didn’t see him.

It took me getting up to the edge of the fence with the bolt cutters in hand before I came to a sudden halt.

He was standing there, looking at me.

His tail wasn’t wagging, and his ears were pointed straight up.

His eyes were on me, and I had a second of doubt.

I didn’t think that this dog was going to be friendly to me.

My heart constricted.

I wanted to do this. I needed to do this.

I took a step forward, and I got within reaching distance of the fence.

He still didn’t move or react in any way.

I placed the bolt cutters to the fence and snipped the first link. Then the second. The third.

It was when I was four links from the bottom that he lunged for me.

I fell backward, heart beating fast, and stared at the dog who was now going ballistic.

Scrambling backward, I prayed that the fence would hold.

No such luck. I’d cut enough.

He poked his nose through first, then his top half, and before I could so much as get to my feet, he was on me.

I closed my eyes, lifted my hands, and covered my face.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes and stared in absolute shock as the dog buried his nose in my belly.

I was frozen.

The dog wasn’t attacking me. He was smelling me.

When I’d gone to leave, I’d spotted Baylor’s shirt. It was big, and hung on me—I would know because I’d tried it on earlier in the day because I wanted to smell him—and I’d decided that I’d wear it. It helped cover my body better, and there was no chance in hell my shirt would ride up to expose my skin.

Now, though?

I was thinking that it was no coincidence that I’d worn this shirt today. I’d grabbed the shirt almost without realizing the significance it would have.

And now that the dog was burying his face in my belly, rubbing his face from side to side, I realized that it had to be fate.

He dropped that shirt while I’d been watching him. I’d grabbed it today because I’d thought the black would help. Really, it was amazing how things fell into place.

Fate really was mysterious.

“Pongo?”

The dog’s ears twitched, and instead of lifting his head and looking at me, he only lifted his eyes.

That I could see in the halo of the street lamp.

“You want to go home?”

He closed his eyes and groaned—a big doggy groan that showed his contentedness.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Then we walked away from his old prison, and not once was I scared of the darkness.