The Beast

“Is it Friday?” he asked as he pulled into one of the open-air lots.

“I think so—no, wait, it’s Saturday.” Mary took out her phone. “Yup, it’s Saturday.”

“No wonder it’s so busy.”

It took him a while to locate a suitable spot, and he rejected a number of them for either having truck-crowding issues, cockeyed SUV-itis, or minivan creep. Finally, he found a vacant berth that was next to a planting area and docked his baby close to the curb.

“Yes, he’s always this choosy,” Mary said as she got out and popped the seat forward for Bitty.

“Hey, I take care of my females.” As their door was shut, he reached across and locked it manually, then he got out himself and used the key on the driver’s-side handle. “Ain’t no human going to ding my panels.”

They fell in line together, Bitty between them. TGI Friday’s was up ahead on the corner, and as a group of noisy humans came rushing out of its doors, Rhage frowned.

“Hey, Bitty?” he said casually. “So you’ve never been in a restaurant before?”

“No.”

Rhage stopped and put his hand on a shoulder that shocked him because it was so thin and small. But he had another concern at the moment.

“It might be kind of loud, okay? Lot of talking, you might hear babies crying, people laughing in bursts. There are going to be servers running around with big trays of food—lot of different smells and sounds. It can be overwhelming. Here’s what you need to remember. If you have to go to the bathroom, Mary will go with you so you don’t have to worry about getting lost or being alone. And if you find, at any moment, that it’s too much, we leave. I don’t care if we’ve gotten the menus, put in our order, or just picked up our forks. I’ll put a hundy on the table and we’re”—he snapped his fingers—“outta there.”

Bitty stared up at him. And he worried that he’d gone too far or—

The kid hit him with her little body and held on tight. At first, Rhage didn’t know what to do and just held his arms out to the sides and looked at Mary in a panic. But as his shellan put her hand to her mouth and seemed like she was composing herself, he hugged the girl back lightly.

As they stood there together, Rhage found himself closing his eyes.

And saying a silent prayer.

* * *

Mary could only shake her head. She’d thought that she’d fallen in love with Rhage before. Thought she loved him with all her heart. Thought that he was her soulmate, her center, her never-gonna-get-better-than-this.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Seeing him curl his enormous body around that little girl as he hugged Bitty back?

Well, what do you know, not only did it turn out her ovaries had a little spark left in them—the suckers might as well have exploded between her hip bones.

When the three of them started walking again, Rhage kept one hand on Bitty’s shoulder. Like for the both of them it was the most normal thing in the world—even though Rhage had to tilt to the side and the pair of them bumped into each other until they got their strides on a par.

As they closed in on the restaurant, Mary glanced around and ID’d the other families—and she couldn’t help but open the fantasy door for a split second and pretend that her little unit was just like all the others. That they were a mom and a dad and a daughter, going out to dinner to talk about silly stuff and serious stuff and nothing at all—before they headed back home to a safe place together.

Rhage jumped ahead to open the door, and inside, the restaurant was exactly as he’d described it, noisy and busy and teeming with life. Fortunately, Bitty seemed more curious than nervous, although she stuck with Rhage as he went up to the hostess stand and asked for three in a booth, if possible.

The brunette who was behind the cash register took one look at him—and what do you know, no waiting for Rhage. As the young woman smiled with all her teeth and did a little shimmy as she pulled a trio off the pile of menus, Mary shook her head in apology at the other twelve people in line.

“Right this way!”

The hostess hipped her way through the different sections of the place, taking them to the far side where there was, in fact, a booth that had just been cleaned off, its surface still wet, no silverware rolls put out yet. The latter was taken care of immediately as Rhage and Bitty sat on one side and Mary took the bench across from them.

“Enjoy your meal,” the hostess said to Rhage.

Before anyone could say a word, a blonde with short hair and a lot of eye makeup came by with waters on a tray. Her expression was a combination of bored and harried—until she saw who she was serving.

Mary just smiled and shook her head as she opened her menu. As she checked out the enormous variety of food offered, she was dimly aware of some conversation happening, but she didn’t bother with any of that.

When they were alone, Rhage opened his menu. “Okay, what do we got—”

“Do they always do that?” Bitty asked.

“Do what?” He turned a laminated page. “Who?”

“The human females. Stare at you like that.”

Rhage picked up his water glass for a test sip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s like they want to order a meal of you?”

Water. Went. Everywhere. As Rhage coughed and fisted his chest, Mary had to laugh. Also had to unroll her fork, knife, and spoon and do a little mop-up.