“I have nothing to say to that man, and I’m disappointed that you do.”
“Just throwing it out the window, are you? Not even gonna give it a chance? Wake up, Pane. Life isn’t always as black and white as you make it. Things happen. People change. You can’t shut everybody out all the time and pretend like things don’t matter to you. Life doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s worked that way fine for me.”
“And what has that gotten you? You don’t date anybody seriously. When was the last time you felt love in your heart, or something like it? And I’m not talking about for Natalie or even for me. When was the last time you let someone in?”
Tallulah walks up, sniffing the ground but keeping one eye on me. I shake my head. Whenwasthe last time I felt anything?
At the bar, with Rowe. That night, I felt something. It was also the same night I realized she can’t be abandoned again.
“We’re not talking about me,” I growl.
“Right. Just shut down. Pretend that you’re happy leading a lonely, miserable life.”
“What would you have me become, a man-whore like you?”
“At least then you’d feel something instead of walling yourself up in a hotel and pretending like the company is all you care about.”
My heart deflates. “Look, I don’t want anything to do with our dad. You want to talk to him, fine. But leave me out of it.”
After a short pause, he says in a cold voice, “I’ll talk to Sylvia about moving up the timeline.”
“Thanks.”
We hang up, not even saying goodbye. I drop my hands to my knees and close my eyes, breathing deep.
Something wet and soft touches my hand. When I look up, Tallulah’s sniffing the phone and gazing up at me with sympathetic dark eyes.
“You weren’t meant to overhear that.”
She wags her tail and snorts. I smile slightly in spite of myself.
“It’s easy to see why Rowe likes you,” I admit as the piggycorn pushes up my hand with her horn, a not-so-subtle request to be petted.
I run a hand down her neck, and she nuzzles my shin; then she sits back on her haunches and snorts.
And snorts.
And snorts.
I dismiss her, but the piggycorn stands and paws at my leg with her hoof. When I pet her, thinking that’s what she wants, she shakes her body, flinging off my hand.
Then she paws me again.
It’s as if she’s trying to tell me something.
“Is everything okay?”
Oh my God. I’m clearly delusional if I think this pig is trying to communicate with me. It’s apig.
Tallulah backs up, snorting harder, and turns in quick circles, kicking up her hind legs. Just for shits and giggles, I ask, “What’s wrong, Tallulah? Is Timmy stuck in the well?” to quasi-quote every episode of the ancient showLassiein existence.
The piggycorn snorts harder, backing up toward the house. Yes, she definitely wants my attention, and now she’s got it.
I rise and feel my shoulders pinch. “Has something happened to Rowe?”
The piggycorn snorts again.
Worry knots up my insides. If anything’s happened to her ... I grit my teeth. The need to protect fills me up. It’s the same emotion that slammed into me last night when Luke mouthed off about Rowe.
I don’t know what took over me then, and I don’t know what’s taking over me now, except the desire to keep that little sunbeam safe.
Then I say words I never thought I’d utter to a horned swine:
“Take me to her.”
