Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
At five minutes to six, Austin pulled a couple of plates out of the cupboard. He’d stuck a frozen pizza in the oven, and the scent of dough and sauce hung in the kitchen, making his stomach growl.
Underneath his kitchen table, Sully the puppy chewed happily on a bully stick. Judy, his neighbor, was visiting a sick friend and didn’t want to bring the dog, but neither did she want to leave him crated for an indeterminate amount of time. Enter Austin, who Judy had waylaid on his way into his house after brunch with his parents.
In the five hours Austin had been dog sitting, Sully had peed twice on his front carpet, chewed a corner of his wall, and decided one of Austin’s stray socks was now his favorite chew toy. Nothing seemed to occupy him for long, including his own toys, and he was about as well-behaved as a stray cat. The only command he listened to was sit , but only when he felt like it, and he didn’t seem to have an off switch. If Austin sat down for a second, the puppy was trying to get in his lap, and he’d had the zoomies no less than four times.
Sully’s presence didn’t make a for a great “have a serious conversation with your best friend” environment, but he and Cal would make do.
Austin had tucked Ben’s idea of a casual first-date home-cooked meal in his back pocket for later. Tonight wasn’t a date. It was, hopefully, the lead up to a redo of a first date.
The timer for the pizza went off just as Sully looked right at him and peed on his floor.
“Gah! No. Sullyyyyyy.” Per Judy, he was supposed to interrupt the dog mid-stream and take him outside. Apparently, that would help Sully learn that potty breaks weren’t an indoor activity. But Sully was still under the table, and by the time Austin reached underneath, Sully was bounding away, tail wagging, tongue lolling as though life were a game, leaving a puddle of urine behind.
Sighing, Austin got the paper towels.
Note to self: never get a puppy.
Judy had assured him that Sully was halfway house-trained. Austin wasn’t looking forward to telling her she was kidding herself.
Once he’d dealt with Sully’s mess, he crawled out from underneath the table only to find Sully nowhere in sight. A quick tour of the house found him chewing on the leg of Austin’s coffee table.
“Sullyyyyyy. For the love of god. Stop that.” He shooed the dog away forcefully, clipped the leash on his collar, tethered the end of the leash to a kitchen chair, and gave him back the bully stick. “Jesus,” Austin muttered to himself. How did anybody get anything done with a puppy in the house? They needed constant supervision. Who had time for that shit? No wonder Judy always looked so gloomy these days.
The pizza was a little crispier than Austin liked when he removed it from the oven. He was debating googling whether he could feed this one to the puppy and throwing in a second one when he noticed the time.
6:15.
He frowned, then checked his watch in case the microwave was fast.
6:15.
His frowned deepened, ice spreading through his veins.
Cal was never late.
Sure, it was only fifteen minutes, but if Cal was going to be even two minutes late, he texted.
Austin checked his phone.
Nothing.
He called Cal.
Nothing.
“It’s fine,” he said to Sully, who ignored him completely. “It’s not like some of these mountain roads aren’t dangerous or anything.”
But on a sunny day with clear visibility? The danger was minimal. Not impossible, but minimal.
Leaving Sully in the kitchen, he stalked to the front door, ignoring Sully’s panicked barking—god forbid he be out of Sully’s sight for five seconds—and yanked the door open. The lights were off at Cal’s place, but the sun was still up and would be for a couple more hours, so that didn’t mean much. What meant more was the lack of a truck in Cal’s driveway.
So. Cal wasn’t home.
And he had Sundays off from the ranch, which meant he could be literally anywhere, including the ranch.
As soon as the thought struck, Austin smacked his forehead. “ Obviously he’s at the ranch, you idiot.”
It was Cal’s happy place. Austin wouldn’t be surprised if Cal had spent the entire day there. Maybe he’d taken Dash for a ride and lost track of time.
Or he was dead in a ditch somewhere.
No, no. Worst-case scenarios helped no one.
What would help Austin and keep him from going down the “something bad happened and life is over” road was driving to the ranch to make sure Cal wasn’t actually dead in a ditch along the highway.
He was perhaps being a tad... um... paranoid... but he’d already lost one person he’d loved. He wasn’t losing another.
He called the ranch, but when there was no answer, he situated Sully in the passenger seat of his SUV and off they went.
Sully immediately climbed over the center console and onto his lap. “Sullyyyyyy.” He shoved the dog away. “It’s going to be us dead in a ditch if you don’t stay on your side of the car.”
Sully didn’t appear to care. He climbed onto Austin, tried to jump over him into the back seat, licked the window, barked at other dogs on the street, and generally made a nuisance of himself.
Austin gritted his teeth and took Cal’s route to the ranch. Not that there was more than one way to get there from where they lived. Small town and all that.
Thankfully, Cal’s truck wasn’t flipped upside down on the side of the highway, nor was he stranded with a flat tire or engine trouble. As Austin approached the ranch, a cowboy on horseback lingered on the side of the road, waiting for Austin to pass before he crossed to the other side.
Recognizing him, Austin pulled over and rolled down his window. Sully immediately tried to jump out. Austin grabbed him by the collar and almost got his fingers bitten off.
“Hey, Las.”
From atop Harriet, Las ducked his head and peered inside the car. “Hey. I didn’t know you got a dog.”
“I didn’t.” Austin glared at Sully. “Not now and not ever. He’s my neighbor’s. Hey, listen—have you seen Cal?”
“Yeah, he was here earlier.”
Sully barked at Harriet. Not intimidated in the least, Harriet huffed and gave him the stink eye.
“He left a couple hours ago though.”
A couple hours. A hole opened in Austin’s chest, fathomless and dark. It wasn’t like Cal to leave him hanging like this, so either he was dead in a ditch somewhere else or he really didn’t want to have the conversation they needed to have.
Unfortunately for Austin, he couldn’t decide which scenario was more likely.
Of course, it was entirely possible that Cal had gotten distracted mid-whatever he was doing and lost track of time. But that was so unlike Cal that Austin had trouble believing his own theory.
“Everything okay?” Las asked.
“Yeah.” Austin forced a smile. “I’ve got to turn around so you go on ahead.”
“If you’re sure,” Las said, clearly unconvinced that everything was indeed okay. He nudged Harriet into a walk and they crossed the highway.
Austin called Cal again.
The phone rang and rang and rang before jolting over to voicemail.
“Cal, it’s me. Uh, are you okay? We were supposed to meet at six, and it’s a quarter to seven. I’ve got cooling pizza ready to go. Which I realize doesn’t sound appetizing, but we can pop another one in the oven. Just...” Austin scrubbed his forehead while Sully turned circles in the passenger seat. “Call me back. Okay?” He sounded desperate to his own ears, but the worry in his heart was so thick it was almost tangible.
He hung up and looked at Sully. “Should we try his house again?”
Sully peed on his seat.