It was that draw I felt to her, the one getting harder and harder to ignore, that had me saying my hurried goodbyes to the Paulsons and Hightowers so I could follow Lennix out the door when the evening finally came to a close.
I hadn’t missed the moment, right after Zach and Rae announced their pregnancy, that Lennix seemed to go into some sort of daze. While everyone else congratulated the couple, Lennix had frozen. It hadn’t taken her long to come out of it, but I swore I saw a flash of pain in her deep green eyes before she blinked it away.
After seeing that, I spent the rest of dinner feeling like I had a cinderblock sitting in the bottom of my stomach. Part of my reason for following her out was because I wanted to check on her, make sure she was okay. But mostly, I just wanted a few more minutes with her. Any way I could get them.
“Lennix, hold up.”
She muttered a string of curses under her breath as I rushed to catch up with her. I’d half expected her to keep going just to spite me, so it took me by surprise when she actually stopped.
“What?” She turned to face me, and it was impossible to miss the look of wariness stretched over her beautiful face. It had started right after Zach and Rae’s announcement and grew more pronounced as the evening wore on, and I knew I was responsible for a large portion of that look, if not the majority.“What do you want now? You want to screw with me some more?”
A spear of guilt pierced my sternum. I held my hands up in surrender. “Not trying to screw with you. I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind giving me a ride back to the barn on the way to your place. I rode here with Zach.”
“Oh.” She looked momentarily taken aback by my request.
I could have just walked; it was only a few miles. But any additional time I could get, I was grabbing hold of. It felt like an eternity passed before she spoke, and I thought she was going to shoot me down loudly and colorfully, probably adding in a‘go fuck yourself’for good measure. I would have deserved it. But she didn’t.
“Fine. Come on.” She huffed out a breath and rolled her eyes like it was the biggest inconvenience in the world, but she still said yes. Grudgingly, but I’d take it as a win all the same. “Just... don’t talk.”
I mimed zipping my lips and followed her to her SUV, climbing into the passenger seat before she could change her mind and do something like run my ass over. I did as ordered, staying quiet for the first couple of minutes of the ride, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking in her direction every few seconds, taking in her gorgeous profile. Christ, she really was beautiful. I had no business noticing that kind of thing, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“For the love of god, what?” She cast me a glance, her brow furrowed, before looking back at the windshield. “Why do you keep staring at me?”
Busted.
I took that as my chance to ask the question that had been weighing on my mind. “Are you okay?”
Her head whipped back in my direction, her dark brows pulling together in a confused frown. “What?”
“You just look at little... I don’t know. Sad, maybe? Tired?”
She let out a humorless laugh as she shook her head, her ebony hair sweeping around her shoulders and catching the lights from the dashboard. “Wow. Sadandtired. One is bad enough, but both? You might as well have just said I look like run over dog shit.”
“What? No! That’s not—I didn’t mean it?—”
My denial was cut off when Lennix slammed on the brakes so hard I jerked forward. The seatbelt locking and cutting into my chest was the only thing that kept me from slamming into the dash.
“What the fuck?”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?” I asked in bewilderment, looking through the windshield at the small fraction of the gravel lane cutting through the field that was illuminated by the headlights. “I don’t see anything. It’s dark as hell out here. There’s nothing to see.”
She hugged herself closer to the steering wheel, her eyes scanning. “No, I saw something. It was out there—” Her words stopped on a sharp gasp right before she threw the door open.
“Christ, Lennix. What the hell? You can’t just run out into the dark. You don’t know what’s out there.” Of course, she didn’t listen. “Goddamn it,” I grunted, unbuckling my own seatbelt and rushing out after her. It was that wild side Bill had spoken of earlier that night that had her rushing out into the night when anything could be out there. All kinds of dangerous wildlife could be found roaming the ranch and foothills beyond once the sun went down. Not that she seemed to care.
She stood from where she’d been crouched down just off the gravel lane in the ankle-high grass as I rounded the hood. Lennix turned toward me, clutching something in her arms. The headlights caught on it, showing its matted fur was streaked with blood.
“It’s hurt,” Lennix said, her eyes wide and brimming with worry.
I closed the rest of the distance between us and finally saw what she was holding. It was a puppy. One that, by the looks of it, was too young and tiny to be separated from its mother. And it looked like it was seriously hurt. If I had to guess, it had probably been attacked by a wild animal much larger and meaner.
“Someone probably dumped it out here with the rest of its littermates, left it for dead.” Lennix’s eyes flashed with a fire I was all too familiar with. It was that side of her that made her nickname so accurate. “You know, there’s a special place in hell for assholes who do this to poor, defenseless animals. They deserve to be strung up by the short hairs.”
There were many things Lennix was passionate about. Her family, the bar and brewery, her friends. But she was most passionate about animals. She’d been that way her entire life. As a little girl, she’d bring all manner of wounded and helpless animals home whenever she found them around the sprawling ranch. So it was no surprise she’d take the injury of this puppy so personally.
The animal in her arms let out a pained whimper, stealing both of our focus. “He needs help,” she said, desperation bleeding into her words. “We need to help him.”
