Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

6. You hit a bald eagle

6

YOU HIT A BALD EAGLE

CAMPBELL

I debated driving on by the roadside disaster.

I had places to be, shit to fix.

But Story Lake wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, and there was a good chance no one else would stop either. Besides, the way Goose was perched on the trunk, he was likely to give someone a heart attack.

On an aggrieved sigh, I swung my pickup onto the shoulder behind the mangled convertible.

Of course they were New York plates.

My boots had no sooner hit the ground than twin screams cut through the dust and the quiet.

“Everybody okay?” I demanded gruffly as I approached.

Both driver and passenger were too busy screaming and wrestling with their seat belts while staring over their shoulders to notice me.

Goose spread one impressive wing, keeping the other tucked into his side.

“He’s gonna eat our faces,” the redhead shrieked from the passenger seat.

“Just give him his fish back,” the dust-covered driver hollered.

Swearing under my breath, I opened the driver’s-side door. “Anyone hurt?”

They screamed again, this time looking at me. The driver, a brunette with sunglasses that sat crookedly on her nose, was bleeding profusely from a cut on her forehead.

Biting back a few colorful f-bombs so word wouldn’t get back to my mom that I’d been swearing a blue streak in a couple of tourists’ faces, I leaned in and released the driver’s seat belt.

“Get out,” I commanded. When she didn’t move fast enough, I picked her up and deposited her next to the car. “You’re bleeding.”

“No shit. I thought it was strawberry jelly,” she said, slapping a hand to her forehead. “Zoey, are you okay?”

“You’re the only one bleeding,” I pointed out.

“Sir, I don’t know who you are or if you’re a good person or like a serial killer, but I will be your alibi for any murder you commit if you get this fish out of my lap ,” the passenger shrieked.

I glanced down, and the redhead held both hands in the air like she was under arrest. A fat rainbow trout stared up lifelessly from her lap.

Goose squawked his annoyance.

“Shut up, Goose,” I told the bird.

He fanned his wing in an almost human shrug.

“Will someone please explain what just happened?” the driver said, starting to pace as she clutched a hand to her bloody forehead.

I walked her backward until she was leaning against the hood of my truck. “Stay.”

The redhead was still sitting stock still, hands up, face scrunched up, refusing to look down, when I opened her door.

“Fucking ridiculous,” I muttered as I picked up the fish.

Its scales were slippery, and it almost got away from me, but I got a better grip an inch before it whapped her in her movie-star-sized sunglasses.

She pursed her lips together and muffled some kind of internal scream.

I tossed the fish into the grass off the shoulder of the road, where it landed with a wet thud.

Goose hopped from the trunk to the ground and swaggered John Wayne–style toward his lunch.

“Can you walk or you wanna sit there screaming?” I asked the redhead.

“I think I’ll whimper for another minute if that’s cool.”

Women. Specifically of the New York variety.

I headed back to the wounded driver, who had shoved her sunglasses up over the wound into her dusty, blood-soaked hair. Wide brown eyes turned to me. “Is that a…?”

“Bald eagle,” I filled in.

“I was attacked by a bald eagle,” she said almost dreamily. Suddenly she stomped her foot and squinted up at the cloudless sky. “Why does the universe hate me?”

The question felt more rhetorical than anything, so I didn’t bother responding to it.

“Goose didn’t attack you. You got in his way right before you plowed into the welcome sign.” Technically, the damn bird had dipped too low with his lunch and smacked her in the head with the fish and probably a talon. But she was inconveniencing me, so I wasn’t about to let her off the hook.

She looked like I’d just told her she ran over a litter of puppies. “Oh my God. Are you kidding me? Is he going to die?”

“No.” I took her by the less bloody hand and led her to the back of my truck, where I lowered the tailgate. When she just stared, I plopped her down on it. “Don’t move.”

She craned her head toward the eagle. “But is he okay? Does he need some kind of bald eagle medical attention?”

“He’s fine,” I snapped. I stomped around to the rear passenger door and dug out the first aid kit from the back seat.

“Hold still,” I ordered, popping open the well-used metal box next to her.

“Are you sure Zoey’s okay?” she asked, squirming around to look for her friend.

I stepped between her open legs, captured her chin, and turned her to look at me. “If Zoey’s the one with the fish in her lap, she seems more emotionally scarred than physically. Now hold still.”

The cut wasn’t deep, but like all head wounds, it was bleeding dramatically.

“She’s terrified of fish and birds. This is like a horror movie made just for her.” She tried to turn again. “Zoey? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” came the weak reply. “Just watching my personal nightmare play out six feet from me.”

“Trouble, if you don’t hold still, you’re gonna get an alcohol wipe in the eye,” I warned.

“Are you going to throw up again?” my patient yelled to her friend. “Ow!”

She winced and shot me an accusing look when I cupped the back of her neck and slapped the wipe to her face.

“I told you to hold still.”

“Well, I’m sorry. This is my first time getting in a fight with a bald eagle. I’m a little traumatized.”

I cleaned up the blood and dust as best I could.

I reached for a bandage and rolled my eyes. My mother had gotten sick of us raiding her first aid stash and had swapped out her normal-looking Band-Aids for fake mustache bandages. I kept forgetting to stock up on less stupid first aid supplies.

My patient leaned in closer, examining me like I was something under a microscope she’d never seen before. She had thick dark lashes and a faint scattering of freckles over her nose.

“What?” I said gruffly.

“You look familiar, and you have really pretty eyes,” she said.

Great. I was stuck with a concussed stranger and her hysterical fish-fearing friend. “Yeah? Well, you have head trauma and no business being behind the wheel of a car.”

“I’m serious,” she insisted.

I ripped open the mustache bandage. “So am I.”

“They’re green but with all these little gold flecks.”

Trouble’s eyes were brown. Like the forest floor. I pressed the bandage into place before she could move again.

“Are you Campbell Bishop?” she asked.

I gripped her by the back of her neck again and pressed the heel of my hand to the bandage. “Cam. And what’s it to you?”

She let out a chuckle that turned into a snort. “You really have the mean-nice thing down.”

There was no way I was touching that statement with a ten-foot pole. “What’s your name, Trouble?” I asked.

“Hazel,” she said. “Hazel Hart.” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh shit! What time is it?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“I don’t know. You look…” She looked me up and down. “Reasonably responsible.”

“It was about one fifty when I saw you run down our national bird.”

She grimaced. “I’m late for an appointment. And now I’m going to be even later since I have to find a bird hospital.”

“What?”

Hazel wiggled to the edge of the tailgate, which put her in direct, unanticipated contact with my crotch. All the parts I’d been too busy ignoring for the past year suddenly came to full attention. Had it really been that long? I hadn’t gotten laid since I moved back, which was…an entire fucking calendar year.

Oblivious to my instantaneous, inconvenient physical reaction, she slapped a hand to my chest and pushed me back a step. Her sneakered feet hit the ground, and she tilted her head to look up at me. “How far is the downtown from here?”

“Story Lake’s downtown?” I couldn’t think of a single reason a stranger from New York would have a meeting downtown.

“Yeah. I need to get to 44 Endofthe Road. Can I walk it?”

“Do you walk better than you drive?”

“I’m too stressed to take offense to that at the moment,” she said. “Thanks for the first aid.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” I followed her around my truck.

“I’m going to get Zoey, figure out how to pick up a bald eagle, and then we’re going to walk into town. I’m meeting the mayor. I’m sure he knows a bird doctor.” She headed for her friend, who was leaning against the car door, chugging a sports drink and trying not to watch Goose as he mauled the dead fish.

“Zo, can you do a search for bird hospitals near us?” Hazel called, stripping off her sweater to reveal a plain black tank and the trim body worth a second look underneath.

“He keeps making a creepy amount of eye contact,” Zoey complained, glaring at the bird.

“Well, he’s probably holding a grudge since I hit him with the car…or my face,” Hazel said reasonably. She brandished the cardigan like a bullfighter’s cape.

Much as I would have enjoyed watching a New Yorker try to pick up Goose mid-meal, I was running low on first aid supplies and patience.

Muttering several fuck s, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, opened the stupidly named Bish Bros message group, and fired off a text.

Me: Ran into trouble. Running late. Have to make another stop.

Levi: Loser.

Gage: Need help? I’m on my way back and already hit my hero quota for the day. But I don’t mind getting a head start on tomorrow’s.

Me: No. Under control.

Gage: Might as well call it a day then, Livvy. Beer?

Levi: The first not-stupid thing you’ve said all day.

Gage: See you bright and early, Cammy.

Business settled, I stashed my phone back in my jeans.

“Here nice big scary eagle,” Hazel crooned, inching closer to the bird.

Goose looked up, chewing on a bite of fish.

“Take another step and he’s gonna take a bite out of you,” I warned, marching up behind her.

Hazel froze.

Goose had never once bitten anyone. He’d whapped plenty of us in the face with his wings, and he’d been known to swoop dangerously low in flight just to show off. But he was about as vicious as a Labrador retriever.

Hazel turned and shot me a wide-eyed look. “But I need to get him to a bird doctor.”

“There’s an avian hospital three hundred and seven miles from here,” Zoey called out.

“He’s fine,” I announced.

Hazel narrowed her eyes. “You’re not just saying that to spare my feelings and then, as soon as I leave, you’re going to put him out of his misery, are you?”

“You think I’m going to secretly shoot a bald eagle to protect your feelings ?”

I should have kept right on driving. I should have minded my business and left them to their own devices.

She tipped her head side to side, eyes skyward as if she were replaying the words. “Okay. Fine. That sounds pretty stupid when you say it out loud. Sometimes things rattle around in here and seem completely reasonable, and then I get them on the page—well, I used to get them on the page?—”

“There’s a regular veterinarian ten miles from here that specializes in birds, but it looks like mainly those creepy talking birds,” Zoey interrupted.

“The fucking eagle is fucking fine,” I shouted.

Both women stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

“He’s grumpy,” Zoey observed.

“Yes, yes, he is,” Hazel said with a look of delight, which I found completely inappropriate and annoying for the situation. “And he’s not fine. Look at his wing.”

Goose still had one wing tucked into his beefy body while the other extended out.

“He’s faking it,” I explained.

Hazel scoffed. “Yeah. Okay, bald eagle psychologist.”

Muttering several uncomplimentary and ungentlemanly statements, I stomped back to my truck and opened the glove box. I grabbed the bag of treats and returned to Hazel, who was still holding her sweater like an eagle swaddle.

“Quit playing around, Goose,” I said, tossing one of the treats in the air.

The bird caught it smugly. He snatched up the remains of the fish in his talons and took flight.

“I just got scammed by a bald eagle.” Hazel lifted her hands to block the sun and poked herself in the mustache bandage. “Ow.”

“I’m gonna have nightmares about this for the rest of my life,” Zoey said.

“You and me both,” I announced.

We watched the bird bank to the east, soaring majestically over what was probably Main Street. A large chunk of fish came loose and plummeted back toward the earth.

Zoey gagged then clamped a hand over her mouth.

“How did you know he was faking?” Hazel asked me.

“It’s what he does. Now get in the truck.”

Zoey gestured with her sports drink at the destroyed sign. “Don’t we have to wait for the cops? Or at least a tow truck?”

“What about our stuff?” Hazel chimed in. “I have my laptop in the trunk.”

“I’ll text the tow driver and tell them where to find you. Just get in the damn truck. I’ll drive you to your appointment.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Zoey said before I could add something uncomplimentary about how the sooner I got them where they were going, the sooner they’d be out of my life.

“My hero.” Hazel sounded suspiciously triumphant for someone who’d just gotten hit in the head with a fish.

“Stop playing with your head wound,” I ordered.