“How do you feel about a walk?” I ask Penny, swiping the back of my hand over my wet cheeks. “Just enough to let him cool down. Then we’re going back in.”
Penny perks up as though understanding me, and with one last glare at the house that homes one of the most infuriating men I have ever known, I let Penny lead me back to the car to swap her walking leash for the longer one I keep in the back seat.
I open the rear door and lean in for the long lead. It's tangled around a water bottle and a tote, and I have to work it free one-handed while Penny stands at my hip, watching the brush. I get it untangled and pull it out. The clip is in my left hand. The handle of Penny's short lead is looped around my right wrist the way it's been all morning—the way it's supposed to be while I make the swap. I bring the long lead's clip toward her collar and reach for the short lead with my other hand to unclip it once the new one is on.
Except my hands are shaking. They have been since I walked out of his bedroom. And sat some point, I'd droppedthe short lead's handle off my wrist without noticing. I didn't double-loop it. I always double-loop it.
I have the long lead's clip an inch from her collar when a blur of brown and white shoots out from under one of the sagebrush bushes by my tire—a jackrabbit, maybe, fast and small and gone before I can register what it is. Penny goes rigid for half a second. Then she launches.
“Penny, no!”
The clip in my left hand catches nothing but air. The short lead's handle is not on my wrist where it should be. The leash whips across the gravel and disappears into the brush behind her, and then I see her copper streak, all greyhound, eating distance the way she was bred to.
“Oh my God, Penny!” I yell, running after them. My shoes—flats meant for a PT session, not for the desert—slip on the gravel as I push off into the scrub. She’s faster. Of course, she is. And these stupid shoes are not made for running on slickrock. But Penny is a large dog, so I manage to keep her in my sights, ignoring the little cuts and scrapes from the dry brush and the bite of low cactus as I push through. “Penny!”
I run for what feels like hours before I find Penny at the edge of a drop-off, barking and clawing at a small opening in the rocks.
“Jesus. Penny!” I pant, dropping my hands to my knees as I try to catch my breath. “What the heck?”
She whines and claws at the opening before giving up and turning to me like I’m going to put my hand in that opening. “No,” I say firmly. “I love you, but no. Who knows what’s in there?” I bend down and grab her trailing leash. The relief of having her tethered again is so strong my hands shake.
She whines with disappointment but lets me pull her away from the drop-off, and when we emerge at an opening, my heart falls to my feet.
I can’t see Matt’s house anymore, and everything looks the same. Red sandstone formations, scrubby juniper, dry washes cut between the slickrock benches. The sun is high overhead—so much higher than it should be. We’ve been gone longer than I realized.
Oh my God. We’re lost.
Chapter Eight
Matt
I didn’t expect it to be this hard.
Or for it to hurt as much as it does, but the second those pretty eyes filled with tears, I was ready to get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness. I wanted to apologize and confess my feelings for her, but I didn’t.
I deserve her hate.
This is my penance, my punishment for what I did.
Yet, I didn’t expect a pain like this. It’s been several hours since Ashley stormed out, and my chest aches. Still. It burns with emotions I can’t begin to describe. More than once, I’ve considered following her after all but stopped myself.
“Being scared isn’t a reason to be cruel.”
I flinch at the memory of her words. Right and deserved as they were, they sting. They hurt.
The sound of the engine outside my house has me straightening. My heart begins to race when I hear a door open.
She’s back.
She came back. Christ, how do I deal with it? How the hell am I going to stand hurting her again?
I don’t want to hurt her again.
The need to see her, smell that flowery scent again, sends me rushing out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen where the sound is coming from. I stop in the doorway, and myface drops when I see my brother standing in the room with a cookie perched between his lips.
He doesn’t notice me for a second, and when he does, he nearly drops the glass he’s holding. “Jesus fucking Christ, can you please make a sound when you move?” he says, turning to pour cold milk into the glass. “These cookies are good. Where’d you get ‘em?”
My eyes follow his to the tray sitting on the counter and the chocolate chip cookies lined up on it. Ashley. She brought cookies, and fuck, how did I repay her? By kicking her out of my house and breaking her heart.
