I hadn’t been able to look Brewer in the eye all day, afraid he’d somehow know I’d heard him. Afraid he’d see how it had affected me. Afraid he’d know it was still affecting me now, hours later, the memory making my skin flush and my?—
“Gahhhh!” I screamed—actually screamed—as something cold and wet pressed against my forearm.
I grabbed my phone and scrambled up onto the couch, wine flying from my glass and splashing across the floor. My heart hammered against my ribs, adrenaline surging through my body.
For one absurd, alcohol-fueled moment, I thought:Alien abduction. This is how I die.
But when my eyes finally focused through the darkness, the reality was ten times worse.
Brewer’s enormous dog stood a foot away, her massive form outlined by the firelight. She watched me with her head tilted and her tail slowly wagging, like I was amusing.
I scrambled up onto the sofa, my heart slamming against my ribs. “Holy fuck! What are you doing down here?” I demanded.
She stood perfectly still, watching me for a long moment, then padded forward with the doll Tierney had been playing with earlier dangling from her mouth. Her massive paws made no sound on the hardwood. In the firelight, her dark eyes reflected golden sparks.
I pressed back into the cushions. “That’s far enough!” I said firmly. “S-stop right there! No jumping.”
Surprisingly, she listened. She took the doll and settled onto the hearth several feet away, still watching me.
“I forgot about your door-opening trick,” I muttered. “How the fuck did I forget that?”
The fire crackled between us, and despite the distance I was maintaining, this was still the closest I’d been to a dog in years without panicking.
“Look,” I said after our stare-down had gone on for a moment, “you seem… friendly. But the last dog I got friendly with seemed that way too.” I rubbed absently at my forearm, where faint scars remained. “Until he bit me.”
Teeny tilted her head, as if she was actually listening.
“And Tam might say what happened afterward wasn’t my fault, but we all know it was, okay? It’s Monroe family lore. I’m the reason we didn’t have any more pets.” I took another sip of wine. “See that? I can admit when I’m wrong. Just not to certain large, sexy, know-it-all contractors.”
Teeny made a small whuffling sound.
“Yeah, you know exactly who I’m talking about.” I laughed, the wine making everything seem funnier than it was. “He drives me crazy.” I lowered my voice. “In all the ways.”
Teeny shifted, stretching out on the hearth.
“Tam thinks I should jump him. Get it out of my system.” I rolled my eyes. “Like the Pavlovian Dick Response isn’t bad enough already, let’s just make it worse! Can you imagine?”
The dog made a soft noise that almost sounded sympathetic.
“It’s not like me,” I confessed. “I mean, yes, my dick generally points the way to destruction. But, like, only temporarily, like a compass in a weird magnetic field. Take the last guy I dated…” I burped gently. “Big guy. Met him at the gym when he corrected my form. Muscles on muscles, you know the type?”
Teeny licked her lips.
I snorted. “You get me. For, like, a whole week last summer, I listened to Jared tell me about his macros and how, ‘if it’s not lifting, it’s not a real workout.’ I listened to him not listening to a fucking thing I said about my work or my opinions or my interests. But then reason and logic asserted themselves.” I took a sip of wine and pointed my glass at her. “I remembered I’m a higher life form, not an amoeba with a dick. I remembered I deserve respect. And I kicked Jared to the curb, just like that.”
Teeny lifted her head and growled low.
“Thank you. Yes, it was empowering. But now, with Brewer… Fuck, I don’t even know. It feels like it’s part of a—” I hiccuped. “—a larger problem. I had a whole life in New York before I moved here,” I informed the dog. “An apartment, a favorite coffee place, a… a gym membership. And yeah, I didn’t have tons of friends because I traveled so much, but I didn’t care.”
Teeny buried her head in her paws.
“Okay, maybe I cared somewhat. But it was my choice, and I knew why I was making it. Here in Copper County…” I sighed and shook my head, then whispered my deepest, darkest secret. “I don’t know who I am here. I don’t know what I’m doing. And I fucking hate that. Hate it,” I repeated with drunken solemnity so the dog would know I meant it. “I feel like I’m standing on a prissy… a pressy… a precipice, and the ground might fall away. I don’t know how to get back to where I was. To who I am.”
Teeny slow-blinked as my admission hung in the air between us. It was heavier than I’d expected, but it was the most honest thing I’d said out loud in months… even to myself.
In the city, I’d been Delaney Monroe, award-winning journalist. Here, I was Tam’s brother, the one who’d burned down a camper, couldn’t build a fire, and fought with his contractor over cabinets that looked like shit and wouldn’t fucking stay closed.
The identity I’d built my entire life around was slipping through my fingers like sand.
