Chapter One
It was Thursday morning,and I needed to hit the road to pick up the mail for the gods.
Usually I liked getting out of town. Not today.
“Is it me?” I asked the dragon pig, who was curled up on my bedroom floor. The hoard of clean socks it had gathered over the last few weeks—none of them belonging to me or my boyfriend, Ryder Bailey—stuck out from under it. The dragon pig grunted without opening its eyes.
I pulled a shirt over my tank top—early October meant layers—stuck my badge on my pocket, and nudged the little pink critter with the toe of my boot.
“Hey, are you listening?”
It rolled, four stubby legs in the air, round belly exposed, ears flopping back. Those button eyes glittered with a warning flash of fire.
“It’s not just my imagination, right?” I lifted the box of aluminum foil off my dresser and waved it in the air. The dragon pig’s gaze sharpened. It scrambled up to sit, curly tail wagging.
“You see it too, right? Ryder dashing out of the house every day as fast as he can?” I ripped off a length of foil and wadded it into a little ball. The dragon pig tracked my every move, eyes on the prize.
“Out of the house early every morning, home late every night. He’s avoiding me.” I paused. I knew what that sounded like. It sounded like he was hiding something.
I could feel it. Something between us was about to change. I groaned. “I don’t want to fight,” I said. “I don’t want this, any of this, to change.”
To end.
I blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.
“He’s hiding something,” I said to the ceiling.
Maybe I was overreacting. Ryder hadn’t told me he wanted to break up. He hadn’t picked a fight, hadn’t said he needed a change. What I needed was to talk to him. Really talk to him.
Find out if we’d taken a wrong turn, and if we could backtrack and make it right again. We were new at the relationship thing. It was okay if we made mistakes.
But today I had to pick up god mail, then there was the High Tea Tide event Bertie was throwing on Saturday.
“We could take the weekend and just talk. That would work right?”
The dragon pig grunted. It was standing now, little mouth open in a happy smile, and I choked on a laugh.
“Well, I can see I’m loved for my aluminum foil treats. Flame on.” I tossed the ball in the air, and the dragon pig waited until it fell off the apex. Then it blew a short, white-hot burst of flame, frying the metal to a black marshmallow crinkle.
The dragon pig caught the ball and crunched it with happy grunts.
I ripped off another strip. Wadded. “One more, then we’ll get mail.”
The dragon pig hopped up on its back legs, flamed the tinfoil ball, and snapped it out of the air with a happy little growl.
I grabbed my holster, keys, and a rubber band so I could pull my hair back in a pony, then headed down the stairs, the dragon pig on my heels.
Ryder was already at the kitchen island, his plate empty except for crumbs, his travel mug and thermos staged on the counter.
It still hit me in unexpected moments. How much I loved having him in my mornings, my days, my life. How his hair, dark with layers of copper and gold felt between my fingers when we were curled up together on the couch. How his mossy eyes went soft when we kissed, how that wicked smile of his popped dimples in his cheeks.
I’d watched him grow up from a boy to a man.
I’d loved him every step of the way.
There was going to be no breaking up with him if I could help it.
I inhaled, exhaled, and put on a smile.
