This place isn’t familiar. The hallway I'm in is long and seems to go on forever with no end in sight. Every door is clear at first, but as soon as I run to them, they burst into flames.
“Evan!” I scream in panic as the thick smoke starts to burn my eyes. Where the hell is he?
Did he really leave me here to die?
“I think you already know the answer to that,”a dark, deep, familiar voice murmurs in my ear.
The flames reach up to the ceiling, and it suddenly collapses?—
“Get up.”
I’m shaken awake roughly, leaving the fiery nightmare behind only to be thrust back into the cold darkness of the real world.
I clear my throat and sit up in bed, trying to fully wake up.
“Evan?”
“Why the hell is the dog in my bed?” he snaps, angrily grabbing Lunchbox by the scruff of his neck and tossing him to the floor. He cries and tries to run away, but now he has a very prominent limp and blood starts pouring from his paw.
“No!” I scream.
Fully awake now, I get out of bed and run to him, cradling him in my arms. I gently lift his little paw to assess the damage, but he only cries and pulls it away. What I can see, though, is that one of his nails is broken pretty badly; it must have gotten snagged on the carpet.
Furious tears blur my vision. “Why are you like this?” I ask Evan, my voice thick with emotion. “He’s an innocent little puppy—he didn’t do anything to you!”
Evan stumbles over to his side of the bed and starts pulling his work clothes off.
Great, he’s drunk.Again.
“I don’t want that nasty animal in my fucking bed,” he growls.
I take a step forward. “It’s my bed, too, Evan. And if I want to sleep next to my dog in my bed, I’m going to.”
His nostrils flare. “Just shut up, okay? I’ve had a long shift, and I don’t need to come home to you bitching.”
“I wouldn’t have been bitching if you had just left me alone,” I snap.
He just gets in the bed like he didn’t even hear a word I said and gets under the covers.
“So you don’t want Lunchbox in the bed but you’re perfectly content to sleep in the spot he was just in? Make that make fucking sense.”
He doesn’t respond, and not a full minute goes by before he’s sound asleep.
I’m shaking now. If he’d just taken his anger out on me, I would have put up with it. But to purposely harm an innocent animal to satisfy your abusive need to hurt everything and everyone around you isn’t okay.
“Come on, baby,” I say gently, holding Lunchbox tightly against me. Grabbing my phone off the bed, I go downstairsto the kitchen to find something to wrap his paw in and soak up the blood, and then I search online for a twenty-four-hour emergency vet in the area. After a few minutes, I find one about half an hour away.
Lunchbox protests when I set him down on the carpet, which breaks my heart even more.
“I’ll be right back,” I promise him before rushing back upstairs to get my wallet out of my purse and Evan’s keys out of his work bag. Thankfully, he’s already in such a heavy sleep that he doesn’t wake up. I sprint back down the stairs, scoop up Lunchbox, and run out to Evan’s car.
CHAPTER 15
ESSENCE
The restof the night goes by in a blur.
Thankfully, Lunchbox’s little paw isn’t broken or even sprained—but the doctor had to cut back his nail so it doesn’t get infected. On top of that, he’s experiencing PTSD. The doctor gave me a paper with some instructions on how to care for him mentally and physically, and prescriptions for his antibiotics and pain medicine.
