Chapter 7 #2
“Shade, your friend that gave the lime to Mable?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
Birdee’s shoulders slumped. “He’s a great person. Truly, he is. He’s just…protective. For the longest time, Mable was enemy number three for me.”
“Who was number one and two?”
“My mom and dad,” she admitted, purposefully not looking at the diner and the three laughing people there.
“Shade’s protective. He saw everything from my point of view.
He was always there for me when I needed someone.
But he does have impulse control issues.
I don’t think he would’ve normally done it if he’d had more time to think about his actions. ”
I snorted. “He’s lucky he only lost his job when he did that.”
“I know,” she sighed. “He’s really a good person. Will give you the shirt off his back. But he’s seriously got issues when it comes to the people that he loves being hurt.”
I was thankful when the light turned green and she finally allowed some of the tension in her shoulders to relax.
She reached for the coffee, and another thought occurred to me. “Reyelle mentioned you have a heart condition…”
“Long QT syndrome,” she answered before I could form the question.
“I’ve always had issues with dizziness and fainting.
In college, though, I started having seizures.
When I went to the doctor, they found that I had a prolonged QT interval.
That’s part of the heartbeat in layman’s terms. I’m on beta blockers now that help with it, but I was told that I can’t have any caffeine at all. ”
“What about chocolate?” I asked.
“I’m going to pretend to not have heard you. As far as I’m concerned, chocolate doesn’t have caffeine.”
My stomach clenched.
“But it does…”
“La-la-la-la.” She covered her ears with a hand holding a scone, and the other holding her coffee.
My lips twitched.
“I’m doing way better. I have some palpitations at night when I go to bed. Some dizziness. But overall, I’m doing okay,” she said. “Thank you for the latte and the snacks.”
“They’re yours,” I said as I pulled up to her job and shut the truck off. “I’ll help you get it all inside.”
She grabbed her jacket and I grabbed the pastries and her drink, as well as my own.
She let me into the building, and then I started to look around. “I guess I never really thought that you would just have snakes all over the place like this.”
I looked at the wall to ceiling cages that housed multiple types of venomous snakes.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she asked.
“Very.” I dropped down to look at one rather large rattlesnake. “How many kinds of snakes do you have here?”
“Since the region of Montana we’re in only has one type of venomous snake—the prairie rattlesnake—that’s mostly all that we have on hand, this being a local business.
There are other, much bigger companies that’ll do all of them, but the owner of this one doesn’t see the need.
We have some frozen for other venomous snakes found throughout the country, but mostly we don’t need them. ”
“How long do you keep these snakes?” I asked.
“We got most of them as babies,” she admitted. “Do you want to watch one get milked?”
I blinked. “Um, sure.”
“Hey, Charleigh!”
A tiny slip of a woman about the size of a doll walked out wearing black pants, a white AC/DC t-shirt and combat boots.
I immediately noticed the Marines tattoo on her forearm.
“Hey, Birdee.” Charleigh smiled. That smile dropped when she saw me. “What’s going on?”
“This is Creed,” Birdee said. “He wants to see what we do here.”
Charleigh smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Who are you wanting to show him on?”
“We’ll go with the big boy,” Birdee suggested. “He needs done today anyway.”
“How often can you milk a snake?” I wondered, my mind totally enraptured with everything that was going on at that moment.
Charleigh had pulled a plastic box down from the top shelf that had a lid on it with a lot of numbers and letters on the side.
She struggled with the weight, and I wondered just how big this snake was.
I had my answer when she opened the lid and Birdee reached in with a snake hook to get him out.
“Whoa,” I said as she took the four feet in length snake out of the bin and placed him on the table.
The snake was fairly docile, unlike the ones that I saw in the wild.
Within seconds a huge black padded mat came into Charleigh’s hands. She pressed down on the snake almost as fast as Birdee rolled the hook up the length of the snake’s neck. Seconds later she had the snake by the head and she was walking it toward a glass beaker with a plastic covering over it.
My heart was in my throat as I watched her do her thing.
The snake struck the plastic with a satisfying pop, and then the snake’s venom was released into the container. A sickly yellow color that was similar to the look of gasoline.
“Whoa,” I said as she did this two more times. “That’s incredibly satisfying yet downright terrifying.”
Charleigh, who was holding the snake’s writhing body, tossed me a genuine smile this time. “I can’t say that I wasn’t in total shock when I had to come in here and help her.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Everyone jumped at the angry male voice that came barging into the room.
Charleigh even partially dropped the snake.
If it wasn’t for my hold on the snake, almost in an automatic response, Birdee’s hold would’ve slipped on the head.
“What the fuck, Stacy?” Charleigh barked, her inner Marine coming out of her voice. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing coming in here like that? We were milking a damn snake!”
Stacy’s frown went from ferocious to contrite.
Birdee finished up what she was doing, and I helped her and Charleigh get the snake back in the box it’d come out of.
“We don’t allow random strangers off the street in here.” Stacy tried to sound intimidating, but he came off as whiny.
“He’s not random.” Charleigh rolled her eyes at who I now knew was their boss. Shade’s stepfather. “This is Birdee’s new man.”
I couldn’t quite see how a man like Stacy and a woman like the coffee shop owner could have a relationship. Reyelle could do way better.
“He’s…”
I caught Birdee’s hand and squeezed.
She shut her mouth and looked at me with a question.
“Birdee’s just going to walk me out,” I said as I caught her by the shoulders with one arm and guided her out of the room and past the narrow-eyed man.
“What the hell?” I wondered as we got out into the open air. “I had the feeling that you weren’t telling me something, but the way he looks at you is proprietary. Does he make you uncomfortable?”
“Every single day,” she admitted. “But he’s a necessary evil. I won’t give up Reyelle and Shade.”
I squeezed her shoulder lightly with my hand and let her go. “Feel free to use me as a buffer then.”
With that, I headed toward my truck, but said over my shoulder, “I’ll be back to take you home today after work.”
She cleared her throat, once again moving into my space. “I’m borrowing Shade’s truck. I have an interview after work in Jawbone.”
“What’s in Jawbone?” I wondered as I stopped and turned back around to see her face.
“A dog food company that does research for their dog food components. Have you heard of Great Dane’s?”
I frowned. “That really new facility that’s bigger than every business on Moose Trail?”
“That’s the one,” she confirmed. “I have an interview there.”
“I’ll take you,” I blurted.
She blinked. “What?”
“I have some things I need to do there anyway for work. I can pick you up before your meeting and take you. If you’re okay with it, I’ll run my errands and come back for you.”
She blinked. “Are you sure?”
I tugged her ponytail lightly before rounding the hood of my truck and getting in.
I probably should’ve stayed away from her, but there was just something about her that I couldn’t quite let myself do that.