Page 27

I don’t have an answer for that.

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. I watch the white in his skin ease down, a little at a time, to gold.

“One night,” he says. “That’s all I’m asking. You get your own room. The door locks from the inside. Billy Bob comes with you. In the morning, if you want to come back to this car, I’ll drive you here myself, and I won’t say a word about it.”

“No conditions?”

“No conditions. You can leave whenever you want.”

Behind me, Billy Bob has backed out of the window and gone back to his blanket. I turn around and look at him. He’s curled up in the only flat spot on the back seat, wedged between the kibble bin and a garbage bag of my clothes, with his chin on the armrest because there’s nowhere else to put it. He’s slept like that for two nights. He’ll sleep like that for four more if I let him.

Keep him warm. Keep him dry. No jumping. Those were the vet’s instructions, and I’ve been following them in a Corolla.

I look at him for a long time.

“Okay,” I say. “One night.”

Merek doesn’t smile. He just nods once, and stands up.

“My truck’s right there,” he says, and points. Three spaces down sits a huge black pickup. I’ve been parked next to it all night and assumed it belonged to a delivery driver.

I reach for my boots.

“Leave them,” he says. “I’ll carry you.”

“I can walk.”

“You’re in socks, and it’s pouring.”

“I have boots.” I start working my foot into one. The laces are knotted, and my fingers are still too sore to pick at them.

“Tara. Six hours ago, you couldn’t feel your feet.”

“I’m not made of glass.”

“I know you’re not.” He leans on the open window frame. “Let me carry you anyway.”

I give up on the knot. It’s raining harder now, and my socks are my last dry pair.

“Fine,” I say. “But if you drop me in a puddle, I’m keeping your truck.”

“That’s fair.”

He opens the door, reaches in, and lifts me out of the driver’s seat, one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, as easily as if I were a sack of laundry. My coat slides off my legs onto the seat. Then I’m out in the rain and pressed against his chest, and the heat of him hits me all at once.

It’s like being picked up by a woodstove. The cold air is on my face and my socks, and everywhere else, there’s him. The rain is hissing on his shoulders. Steam is lifting off the black jacket in a thin haze, and above me, his horns are wet and gleaming, water running down the ridges and dripping off the tips onto my hood.

I’d love to stay indignant. I’m finding it hard, with my face this close to his neck.

From inside the car, Billy Bob starts to bay.

He’s standing up on the back seat with his front feet on the window ledge, head thrown back, telling the entire Pearl District that a horned stranger is stealing his person.

“You can’t leave him,” I say.

“I wasn’t planning to.” Merek shifts me higher, without any apparent effort, until I’m sitting on his left forearm with my hip against his chest, the way you’d carry a toddler, if the toddler were a grown woman and you were seven feet tall. “Hold on to me.”

I put my arm around his neck. It’s the only place to put it. My hand ends up resting near the base of one horn, and the horn is warm and ridged under my wrist.