Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tate wasn’t sure how long he’d been driving. Long enough to get him all but lost in the back roads of Northern Georgia, and then turned around and heading back toward the city again.
He couldn’t get the argument with Lys out of his head.
Every time he managed to present himself with a logical reason to move on, his brain dragged him back to the fact he wasn’t listening to himself.
He didn’t want to see her with another guy.
That’s what it came down to at every mental intersection.
Thinking of her spending the rest of forever with some random guy—even if he was the nicest dude on the planet, made Tate clench his hands until it ached all the way into his fingertips.
Tate had always told himself he wasn’t equipped to handle a relationship. That sat at the other end of his dilemma. His parents’ marriage was a painful thing to behold. Two people bound by law for business purposes, who had only ever slept in the same bed long enough to conceive him.
So why couldn’t he picture his future without Alyssia? The idea of growing old alone, of drifting away from her, of watching her fall for someone else, crushed him from the inside out.
That was what it came down to. He wanted her in his life. Needed her. Couldn’t do this future thing without her. And he had to tell her.
He turned the car back toward her shelter.
At least it was late, so traffic was light.
Half an hour later, he pulled into the parking lot.
Most of the picketers had called it a night.
That was something, at least. He strode through the front door, flashed Sara a smile, and headed straight for Lys’s office. He knocked, and waited.
Several seconds passed. He glanced back at Sara.
“She’s in there.” Sara shrugged. “Not on the phone. At least not the office lines.”
Tate frowned, and knocked again.
“Hang on.” Alyssia’s voice sounded tiny and raw. Several more seconds passed. “It’s open.”
Tate nudged into her office, ill-ease growing inside. His concern spiked when he saw her in her desk chair, knees pulled to her chest, and face pale and drawn. He closed the door behind him. In just a few steps, he was next to her. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, and her chin quivered. She opened her mouth to speak, and a sob tore out instead. Her jaw worked up and down, but nothing intelligible came out.
What the fuck? He didn’t know what was going on, but it was splitting him in two.
He held out a hand, and she stumbled forward and collapsed in his arms. Ear-piercing cries echoed through him, gnawing at his calm, flooding him with concern, and a desire to make this vanish, even though he didn’t have a target.
He rubbed her back until the sobs slowed to body-wracking, and then tiny sniffles.
Her muffled whispers drifted to his ears, and he strained to hear her.
“I didn’t know,” she muttered. “God, what’s wrong with people? I didn’t…” She choked on the words.
It didn’t matter what he’d come there to tell her. This was more important. “Talk to me, Lys.”
She shook her head, and pressed closer into his chest. “You can’t fix this.
Jesus, no one can fix this. What the fuck is wrong with people?
” She finally met his gaze with red-rimmed, puffy eyes.
“I just wanted… I was trying to figure out what to do if the crowd funding fell through. I stumbled on a site with an article about the shelter, going on about all of the lies Thompson’s told.
Spewing them like they were truth. And the comments.
The things people said about me, about this place…
” She swallowed, and nodded at her computer.
He kept her turned away, jarred the mouse, and pulled up her web browser.
It took him a moment to register what he was looking at, and when he did his lunch threatened to repeat on him.
Videos were embedded in several of the comments.
Of animals being tortured. Holy fuck. He closed everything, and slammed the lid shut on her laptop.
No wonder she was a wreck. He led her toward the couch, and lowered them both, never letting go.
He couldn’t find the words to ask anything new.
Everything stuck in his throat on a surge of sickness.
She curled up against him. “I know people are saying bad things about the place, but I didn’t realize how malicious it had gotten.” She shuddered. “I didn’t expect to find… God, what’s wrong with people, Tate? I couldn’t stop looking, and oh fuck.”
He couldn’t tell her it was going to be okay. Of all the lies he could come up with, that felt like the most insulting. All he could manage was, “I don’t know what’s wrong with people.”
He trailed his fingers through her hair, desperately searching for his own calm and not willing to let her go. He’d stay with her all night if that was what it took. It still wouldn’t give him a solution, but at least they’d both have something to hold onto.
* * *
Alyssia’s eyes felt like they’d been bathed in sand, and her throat wasn’t doing much better.
She couldn’t think about what she’d seen.
She’d known there were sick fucks out there, but having to see it firsthand…
No, she wouldn’t go down that path. Digging deep, she summoned the willpower to shove the mental images aside.
She sat up enough to look at Tate. “I’m sorry. ”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”
She disagreed, but didn’t have the strength to say so. “Why did you come back?”
He hesitated for the briefest second. “I had a hunch.” He wasn’t telling her everything. She didn’t care. Right now, she was just relieved he was there. “Will you be okay for a minute or two?”
She didn’t know if she’d ever be okay again, but it wasn’t like she could curl up in a permanent ball because she’d seen proof of how ugly the world was. “Yes.”
When he returned a few minutes later, he handed her a cup of water, and a damp washcloth. She let the cold liquid slide down her throat, trying to only focus on the physical sensations, then used the towel to sap some of the heat from her cheeks.
He set everything aside. She didn’t like the pity on his face. Or maybe that was just concern, and she was overreacting. Panic surged inside again, and she squashed the visuals it threatened to bring with it.
He grasped her fingers, and tugged her to her feet. “Come with me.”
She didn’t have any strength to protest, or even ask where they were going. She couldn’t meet Sara’s curious gaze when Tate led her into the lobby. He reached over the front desk and grabbed something she couldn’t see, then tugged her toward the kennels.
Most of the dogs were sleeping, but a few stirred when he let them into back room.
One animal barked, and seconds later the rest joined the chaos.
Her soul shrank from the sound. She wouldn’t react.
She loved that sound. It wasn’t a bad sound.
She squeezed Tate’s hand tighter, and followed closely behind.
They stopped in front of Grim’s pen. The dog had recovered wonderfully in the week since they’d taken him in. He still couldn’t do a lot of moving, but he was happy and playful as much as was possible.
Tate unlocked the pen, knelt in front of Grim, and gestured for her to do the same.
He lifted her chin until he was looking her in the eyes.
Even amid the barking of a dozen or so dogs, his voice was distinct, and kind.
“You can’t protect the world, Lys.” He licked his lips.
“Not any more than I can lock you away from everything bad. But what you do matters so much.” He held out his hand.
Grim sniffed his fingers, then ducked his head.
Tate scratched him behind the ears, and under the chin, affection rolling with the loll of the dog’s head.
Images from the videos spilled back into Alyssia’s head, and she gasped for breath. Grim whimpered and withdrew. Tate gave her all his attention. “Don’t think about it. Look at me.” His voice never rose. Never wavered. “This is here, and it’s just us and the dogs, which you’re keeping safe.”
“But, the things I saw—”
Tate brushed his lips over hers. It wasn’t hungry, or demanding, just soothing. “And the animals you’ve already saved. Like Grim,” he said. “He’s not going anywhere until his doctor says it’s okay, and even then, only with someone you sign off on. Right?”
She nodded, and forced herself to draw a deep breath.
Tate scooted closer to Grim, and let the dog rest its head on his leg. Fur and bits of kibble dotted Tate’s slacks. If he noticed, he didn’t care. He never let go of her hands, even while he scratched the dog’s ears and patted its sides.
As they sat there, the din around them died, and one by one the dogs drifted off to sleep again. Watching Tate with Grim, warmth leaked back into her fractured thoughts, sealing some of the cracks. She really was falling for him.
The words jarred her thoughts as they formed and solidified. It was a relief to finally let herself admit it. She’d focused on a crush for so long, she’d ignored the actual man behind her infatuation. The realization ached and soothed her at the same time.
“Come on.” She stood, and pulled on Tate’s hand. “Let the dogs sleep.”
He locked Grim’s door, followed her into the lobby, and set the keys on the front desk.
“Everything all right?” Sara looked between them, gaze lingering on the grime on Tate’s suit.
Alyssia’s jaw clenched, and a response died in her throat.
“Just playing with some of the dogs.” Tate flashed her a smile. Did she see the tight lines around his eyes? Or was Alyssia the only person who noticed that?
“Come on.” Alyssia found her voice. “I have some scrubs you can change into. You’re kind of a mess.” Not only was he covered with Grim’s fur, splotches of drool decorated his shirt.
Tate looked down, and his eyes widened. “Guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You know where I’ll be,” she said to Sara.
Back in her office, she grabbed a set of scrubs from a cupboard, and handed them to Tate. “You probably should change. I hope you didn’t ruin your clothes.” The normal conversation helped calm her further, and keep her in the now.
“They’re pants. They’re replaceable.”
“I know I shouldn’t ask. But, do you have anywhere to be tonight?”
He shook his head, and stroked his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “Just here.”
* * *
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Alyssia’s irritated voice dragged Tate from sleep. He winced at the kink in his neck, and sat up. It took him a minute to focus his eyes. She stood in front of her computer, face contorted with fury. She wasn’t back on one of those horrific sites again, was she? Tate’s chest squeezed with concern.
She pointed to her screen. “What the hell is this?”
No, probably not. He climbed to his feet, to get a look at what had her so angry.
It was a generic landing page from the crowd-funding site.
Pretty, friendly—creative had spent weeks on the graphic.
The one that said “Sorry, this campaign isn’t running right now. Can we help you find something else?”
His own ire spiked. Someone had shut her down without his okay. “Son of a bitch.”
She drummed her fingers on the back of her chair. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” All of the user agreements allowed the sites to be taken offline without consultation if there were legal or safety concerns.
Lys’s site wasn’t either of those things.
At this point he’d be tempted to tell her to go with another crowd-funding vendor, if there were enough time to spin her up with someone new, and get her donations in before the clock ran out. “I’ll fix this.”
“Of course you will.” Her voice held a hard edge. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not snapping at you.”
“You should be. Someone needs to be reamed for this.” He grabbed his phone, and dialed his mother’s office line.
It went straight to voice mail. Funny how it hadn’t forwarded to her cell phone.
She was either screening him or on the other line.
“You can come with me to yell at someone, if you’d like. ”
She shook her head. “I don’t know that I’m equipped for that this morning. Call me as soon as you have answers.”
He squeezed her hand. “Of course.”
He let his rage soar as he stalked to his car.
He was half tempted to go into work dressed in the wrinkled scrubs Lys had loaned him, but that wouldn’t help his case.
If he was taking on his mother, he had to be cool, professional, and unflinching.
This wasn’t just about Alyssia’s site, though the fact it had been shut down certainly resided at the top of his list. His mother never would have touched one of Jared’s projects like this.
Or Vivian’s. This was about shutting his business venture down without conferring with him first. The hypocrisy that accompanied the decision infuriated him.
That she thought she could do this to him because he was family.
For as long as he could remember, he’d yielded, caved, and gone along with her whim because she was his mother, and a parent should know best. It was out of respect and a sense of propriety.
Her actions indicated she didn’t hold him in the same regard.
He was done being steamrolled, and it was time to put an end to it.