Chapter 13

I love sarcasm. It’s like punching people in the face with your words.

-Baylor to Lark

Baylor

The ringing of my phone jolted me out of sleep so fast that it took me a few minutes to figure out where I was.

The phone was already in my hand and placed to my ear before I’d consciously told myself to pick it up.

“Hello?”

My hello was garbled, and sounded like I was still three-quarters of the way asleep.

“Baylor?”

I sat up straighter in bed, instantly awake despite the late hour.

“Are you okay?”

I heard a shaky breath release from her throat before she said, “Can you come over?”

I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was half past three in the morning.

“Yes,” I replied instantly. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “I just…I have to talk to you.”

With that, she hung up, leaving me to sit on the side of the bed in confusion.

She didn’t sound scared, or worried. She sounded…excited?

Curious now, I got up and went to the end of the bed where there was a basket of clothes that I’d seen when I got home. That only meant one thing—my mother had been in my house.

Though, she did that a lot.

It was also how I was always supplied with Little Debbies and chocolate milk.

Thankful that she’d washed my clothes, and I now had something clean to wear instead of the same sweats I’d worn to run all week, I pulled on the first pair I found sans underwear.

Moments later, I had socks, a shirt, and my shoes.

Two minutes after that, I was walking out the door with the keys to my bike in my hand.

Less than three minutes after that, I was walking up to Lark’s door.

I knocked.

She opened the door.

And I was hit in the chest with a battering ram.

I would’ve fallen had I not had my feet already braced apart.

Confusion clouded my features as I wrapped the huge battering ram in my arms and held him in place.

“What the fuck?” I looked down.

Straight into the eyes of my dog.

***

Lark

“Lark…” He paused, his eyes filled with grief. “I can’t.”

“I can draw his blood,” I blurted. “I’m good at it.”

Well, I was good at it on people. It couldn’t be that hard to do it on animals.

“I applied to work at a vet’s office. They accepted me. I start on Monday. I also made sure to take him at night so no one saw me,” I continued to word vomit. “In my previous…” I winced. “I used to be a phlebotomist. I can draw blood like a pro.”

He looked at the dog who was practically in his lap, then back to me.

We were now in my living room. Baylor was on the couch, and Pongo was in his lap. Pongo’s face was buried in Baylor’s armpit of all places, and his tail hadn’t stopped wagging in the last twenty minutes.

We’d been arguing for the entire length of time, and I was beginning to wonder if he’d ever budge.

“How the hell do I hide a dog in the middle of a city?” he asked, holding onto Pongo’s head like he didn’t want to let go any less than he wanted the dog to stop breathing him in. “Oh, and let’s not forget that it’s kind of illegal to steal a dog. Not to mention since Piper and Pruitt is a huge security firm, they won’t have a problem using money to search for him.”

I shrugged. “You said you wanted to move out of town.” I paused. “And honestly? I don’t think they’ll do anything. At worst, they’ll report him as missing. I made sure to watch. I didn’t see them ever bother to feed him. It was always the security guards that were on duty for the night. Someone else took him to his appointment the other day, too. Not the owners.”

He ran his hands down Pongo’s jaw, scratching the pooch, causing his lips to flop around.

“This is going to come back and bite me in the ass,” he rumbled, “but it’s the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me.”

I beamed at him.

His eyes narrowed on me, and I looked down, only just realizing that I was still wearing all the clothes that I’d gone on my adventure with.

“How did you get that shirt?” he asked.

I grinned.

“You dropped it on your run a few days ago.” I paused. “You didn’t call me today.”

He frowned.

“I would have,” he scratched Pongo behind his ears. “But I got a call that got a little…heated.”

“Heated…” I paused. “What the hell does ‘heated’ mean?”

His mouth tipped up into a grin. “Heated means someone got a little feisty when I tried to take their car.”

I took a seat on the corner of the couch and crossed my hands over my chest. “Getting your car taken without your say-so is kind of annoying,” I pointed out. “But it likely shouldn’t get violent. What happened?”

He eyed me for a moment, likely gauging my sincerity in wanting to hear, and shrugged.

“You remember that guy that you fed the meat to a few weeks ago?”

Boy, did I.

I was working at the Taco Shop when Hennessy had come in with a date. That date had ordered a vegan taco with tofu on it while Hennessy had ordered a taco with ground beef. On their refill of their endless tacos, I’d brought the same tacos out, only instead of handing the vegan taco to the man, I’d handed it to Hennessy.

It was less than five minutes later that the man started screaming that ‘There’s cow in me!’ that I realized I’d done something wrong.

Something bad.

I’d felt terrible and didn’t find it the least bit funny like Tate Casey and Baylor had.

Tate Casey and Baylor were best friends, and I heard that they had been for a very long time.

It was no surprise that they found it funny. Only, five minutes into that fight with the vegan and me, Hennessy had stepped in, demanding that the guy calm down.

But I hadn’t realized that I’d been in any danger until Tate Casey had practically thrown the guy out of the Taco Shop when he’d harmed Hennessy.

From then on, any time I saw that vegan—I couldn’t remember his name because everyone in town now called him the ‘sometimes vegan’—I tried to go the other way.

“Yeah, I remember him,” I told him. “How could I not?”

Baylor grinned. “Exactly.” He frowned. “The fucker tried to run me over with Tate’s tow truck.”

“How did he get Tate Casey’s tow truck?”

Baylor rolled his eyes at my use of Tate Casey’s full name. I couldn’t help it, though. Seriously, I loved the name. It rolled off the tongue so easily.

“Well…it went like this…”

***

I was in the kitchen an hour later when an arm slipped around my waist.

Normally, I wouldn’t have had a problem. Normally.

But I’d already been thinking about Sal. I’d already been remembering everything he’d done to me. I’d been doing that a lot lately, thinking about what I could have done differently.

So when that arm snaked around my stomach and pulled me up against a hard chest, I didn’t even think. I reacted.

I pulled the knife out of the bottom of the sink and pushed the hard body away with my ass at the same time as I spun, lifting the knife.

I had it up, ready to strike when the hard arm that’d been around me moved.

The hand that wrapped around my wrist was relentless and unforgiving.

“What the fuck?”

I snapped out of my head so fast that it physically hurt.

I was staring into the hostile eyes of Baylor as he scowled at me.

My eyes lifted and I stared at the knife that I was somehow holding in my hand, and I gasped.

“I’m so sorry!” I breathed, loosening my grip on the knife.

It hit the counter first and then fell further onto the floor with a clatter.

“What the hell was that?” he asked, still not loosening his grip.

“That,” I swallowed my tears, “that was me freaking out.”

He laughed humorlessly. “I can see that.”

Still, he didn’t let me go.

“Something is broken inside of me,” I blurted.

His eyes studied me for long moments before he let me go.

“Everyone’s broken, Lark,” he said. “You just have to find a way to fix yourself. Tape sometimes works.”

I couldn’t even find it in me to smile.