Page 115 of Not Mine to Rescue

“Yeah, dub-con, fake kidnapping, forced sex of the motorcycle guy at the point of an unloaded gun.” There were whole hashtags dedicated to that.

“It’s loaded.” Her snide reply sent a chill down my spine.

Jesus. She really was crazy.

It was getting harder to play it cool. “That puts a whole new twist into this. What a strange kink.”

I turned to unbuckle my belt. An insane thought flashed through my head. I could whip the belt out and perhaps impress her with the trick, but I’d also have a tool I could snag her gun hand with. “Wanna see something cool?”

“No tricks.”

Damn, there went that idea.

Light stretched across the wall and crawled across the ceiling. It streamed in at an angle from the window near the corner. Someone was coming up the driveway. Maybe it was one of my brothers. I hoped like hell it wasn’t Sonnet.

The car pointed toward the garage rather than turning to park near the house.

That meant it was a Destroyer. I smiled at Winter. “Looks like one of my brothers is here to party.”

Her face blanched. “Tell them to leave.”

Not on her life. I was counting on them to save mine.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Honoria

After Wombat left, Molly wouldn’t stop barking at the door. No matter what I did, she’d return to the front door and whine, then bark, whine some more, and stand by her leash.

At first, I thought she needed to walk outside. That was odd because we took walks during the daytime, never after dark. But after I got her leash down, she ran to the garage door instead.

Smart girl. She wanted to follow Wombat, obviously.

I got her bundled into the car and pulled out of the garage. As I waited for the door to close the futility of what I was doing almost made me hit the button for it to roll up again. But I couldn’t do that until the door had finished its cycle.

Molly barked once the door stopped and the light inside was gone.

“Backseat driver.”

Bark.

I glanced back. “You know he’s in a bad mood and really tired, right?”

This time the sound coming out of her was closer to a whine, but had enough tone in it to tell me she was frustrated we weren’t moving.

“Right. Drive.”

As I did, I called myself all sorts of things. Needy, foolish, stupid… “Desperate?”

Molly was no help. She plastered her nose against the window to scan the landscape to make sure we were heading the direction she wanted. I almost turned a different direction to see what she’d do, but resisted.

Why? Part of me knew what he was going through. About a year ago, I’d taken a vacation from work. It was after I filed for divorce and before I moved out. I’d been going to therapy almost daily because the grief had taken a nasty turn.

Jim urged me to take Molly with me on the trip.

Those days were awful. I just wanted to be alone. I resented my beautiful dog who’d done nothing but become my lifeline. I can’t even say I came back changed. But I did discover one thing. Living is fucking hard.

And maybe I was harder.