Chapter 23 #2
The oddest sense washes over me, and it takes me longer than it should to recognize it.
Belonging .
Belonging in my very existence. One with nature. Here with purpose. Accepted into the surroundings because nature made me too. No judgment. No manipulation.
Simply being as a tiny dot here in this vast array of beauty.
There’s a pull deep in my chest. This is where you’ll make a difference .
It’s vastly different from this is where justice will give you peace .
I suck in a deep breath, the extra burst of chilly air pulling me back to myself. Sabrina and Jitter have stepped over to stand on a rocky outcropping. She’s holding her phone up and snapping a picture.
“You’ve lived here your whole life and you still take pictures.” I don’t want to disturb the peace, but I can’t not comment on it.
She doesn’t look back at me. “It’s still beautiful.”
Jitter plops down into the snow and pants happily, and once again, there’s that pull.
I miss my dog. I miss laughing. I miss believing in the good in people.
And I’ve never stopped wanting to feel like there could be a place in this world that I belong. Where I could trust more than a small handful of people.
I look back at the mountain peaks, shadowed by the glowing orange clouds, and wonder how long it’ll stay.
Then I steal another look at Sabrina.
She’s squatting next to Jitter, pouring water into a small collapsible dish for him as he laps it up before she’s done. She finishes pouring, snaps the bottle shut, tucks it back into a side pocket in her backpack, and then rubs his neck. “Who’s such a good boy?”
He grins at her, then goes back to drinking.
While lying in the snow.
He’s so fucking adorable.
“Good boy,” she says again, then she rises and looks back at the sunset over the mountains. “We need to go soon though.”
“You have somewhere to be?”
“I always have somewhere to be.”
“You don’t sit still well.”
“I don’t do alone well.”
“But you don’t date.” Shut up, idiot. Quit pushing it.
“Okay, Mr. Travels with His Nibling Personal Assistant.”
She bends over Jitter again, rubs his ears, and kisses the top of his head before gathering his water bowl, wiping it out, popping it flat, and tucking it back into her bag. “C’mon, Jitter. Time to go home.”
He straightens and stretches, looking bigger than Sabrina herself.
She smiles at him and scratches his back. “Such a good puppy.”
I want her to smile at me like that. Smile at me. Touch me. Kiss me. Right here. In the chilly evening that’s getting chillier by the minute with the sun dropping lower but still illuminating the low-hanging clouds over the mountains in that brilliant fire-orange glow.
She swings her backpack over one shoulder, and as she’s shifting the leash to her other hand, Jitter straightens and sniffs the air.
I straighten.
Sabrina gets her other arm through the strap, and Jitter tenses.
I open my mouth. “Jitter, don’t—” I start, recognizing that look after the porcupine incident, but it’s too late.
He lunges, barking and pulling Sabrina with him. I spot a red fox tearing across the path to disappear up another hill into the trees.
“ Ahhhh! ” Sabrina shrieks as her snowshoes get twisted beneath her and she goes down, face-first into the snow, still clenching the leash.
I dash after the dog. “Jitter, stop ,” I order.
“Jitter, halt ,” Sabrina yells.
He whines and slows and pauses, looking back at both of us.
Then he whines again.
I grab the leash. “Got it. You can let go.”
“He doesn’t usually do this.” She grunts while she tries to untangle her legs, but her snowshoes keep getting tied up together.
“I’ve noticed.”
Jitter whines again and sinks back to the ground, puppy dog eyes out in full effect while he army-crawls closer to Sabrina.
“You’re a good boy,” she tells him. “But we don’t chase wildlife. Especially while we’re on a leash. Okay?”
He whimpers.
“Can you please pet my dog and tell him I’m okay?” She keeps trying to disentangle her feet and legs, and it seems to be a struggle.
“She’s okay, Jitter.” I scratch his back the same way she did, and instantly regret it.
I want my dog back.
I want friends I can say that to.
And I want to lift Sabrina out of the snow and carry her down off this trail.
“ There .” She gets her legs untangled, reaches for one of her hiking poles as I’m turning to assist her, and in seconds, she’s back on her feet. “Oh, fuck .”
I lift a brow.
She growls to herself and bends over. Mutters some more, which prompts Jitter to whine more.
“You okay?” I ask her while I squat next to the dog and stroke his thick fur.
“Broken strap,” she mutters. She pulls off one of her snowshoes and holds it up for me to see. “It’ll slide right off my foot.”
This is a problem.
And I see an easy solution that I suspect I’m far happier about than she is. “Huh.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and sucks in a massive breath.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”
The suspicious look is back. “You will not .”
“I will. It’s getting dark. I need to get out of the cold. You probably do too. Fastest way down the path when you have a broken snowshoe. Not like we’re trading footwear so you can give me a piggyback ride.”
Those bright green eyes probe my face.
It’s like she’s asking if this is a trick. If I planted the fox so Jitter would run so I’d have to offer to carry her. If I’m planning to drop her. If I’ll enjoy having her arms and legs wrapped around me.
Only the last one is a resounding yes .
“Who’ll hold Jitter’s leash?”
“I can handle you both.”
She flashes a cocky grin like she can’t help herself. “Big talk, boss-man.”
“I’d rather you call me Super Vengeance Man .”
“I’ll consider it if you get me safely back to my car.”
Yes . “Climb on up, Duchess.”
“You wish,” she murmurs.
“Hawaii was fun.”
I get another eyeball of don’t push this , but after she’s pulled off her second snowshoe and hung them both on her backpack, I squat in front of her and she climbs onto me, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my hips and holding on as if she thinks I’ll drop her.
“The only reason you’re not rolling in the snow being pelted with snowballs right now is because I want to get home,” she says as I stand.
“This the last snowfall of the year?”
“Not even close. Tell me if you get lightheaded.”
“Doing fine.” Better than fine.
And possibly terrible at the same time.
I want her to kiss me again.
And I know if she does, I’ll probably break and agree to not change her café, and then I’ll realize I don’t actually need to be here, and all of this will come to a screeching halt.
If I don’t belong in a lab, and I’m actually terrible at being Super Vengeance Man , and I don’t want to go back to Connecticut even if it would put me closer to Mimi, then who am I and where do I fit in this world?
It’s a heavy question.
And I still want to kiss Sabrina again. Peel back every layer of her clothes until she’s completely bare. Study her skin. Her curves. Her breasts and her pussy.
And pretend I belong.
“I had a dog,” I tell her while I follow Jitter down the path, Sabrina’s body pressed tightly to my back. “My ex took him in the divorce.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Someone showed me your old Insta.”
I should be alarmed, but instead, all I feel is warm. “What else do you know?”
“That I would do terrible things to anyone who took Jitter from me. And I’m sorry. That must’ve hurt.”
“I didn’t cheat on her.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you did.”
“She gave me an ultimatum. Kick Zen out, or she was gone.”
“That was dumb of her.”
I actually laugh.
“How long have they been your personal assistant?” she asks.
I hesitate, but only briefly. I would’ve told Duchess in Hawaii. I can tell Sabrina now.
Worst case is she betrays me and I destroy her café.
That was supposed to be funny, but even in my head, it’s falling short.
“Zen showed up on my doorstep shortly after they turned sixteen. Said I was the last blood relative they were giving a chance to let them be who they were before they disappeared completely.”
“Oh, shit.”
“I barely remembered them from when I lived back east. Didn’t spend a lot of time with family once I left for high school?—”
“ Left for high school?”
“Boarding school.”
“That’s a real thing?”
“That is indeed a real thing.”
“Ew.”
I readjust my grip on her legs. “So Zen asked if I wanted housekeeping and cooking services in exchange for room and board while they finished high school, and it turns out it’s really hard to say no to a kid who looks like they fit in with the rest of the family about as well as I always thought I did. ”
“They cook?”
“No. They’re awful.”
She laughs.
“Repeat that and you’ll disappear.”
“Do they clean?”
“Yes. Very well.”
She doesn’t ask anything else.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to tell her though. “When I told Zen I’d send them to college, they informed me the only way they’d take my money was if they were allowed to pay me back.”
“By being your personal assistant?”
“Works out well for both of us. I forget to eat and shower when I’m in the middle of something, and they have an inherent distrust of the world at large. I give them a safe place. Honestly, they do the same for me.”
She falls silent, but she rests her head on my shoulder.
And I could walk like this for days.
Which is another reason I need to abandon my plans and leave.
Zen says they’ve never really fit in anywhere.
I’m not sure I have either.
It would be too easy to fall into the trap of thinking we could fit here.
I don’t know how far we’ve gone when Jitter stops and angles around a bush on the trail.
“Not today, Jitter,” Sabrina says.
Jitter whines and gives her the most pitiful look I’ve ever seen. Between the floppy jowls and the utter despair in his big brown eyes, there’s no question what we’re doing.
We’re letting Jitter lead.
“ Hey ,” Sabrina says while I turn off the path.
“Have to check it out,” I reply. “Someone could be hurt. Maybe Timmy fell down the well.”
“Timmy? Who’s Timmy?”
“You never watched Lassie reruns as a kid? Even I watched Lassie reruns as a kid.”
“What’s Lassie ? Hey. Wait . Don’t?—”
“Sorry, but when a dog tells me to go somewhere, and it looks urgent, I listen.”
I’m not sorry.
I’m delaying putting her down.
And Jitter is very insistent that we follow this skinny, snowy path through the pine trees and around larger boulders.
“There’s not a problem,” Sabrina says. “He just wants to go see something that we don’t need to see today. It’s getting dark. Seriously, we need to get back to the parking lot.”
“What does he want to see?”
“ Jitter . Back on the trail.”
I tug the leash and retreat. “C’mon, Jitter. Before we both end up in the doghouse.”
He snorts, but he listens and heads back to the main trail.
“I feel you, buddy. I’ll bet it was something good.”
Sabrina sighs. “It’s just my grandparents’ old house and yard. You can kinda see it through the trees.”
I squint into the growing dimness and spot a single light twinkling beyond the trees. “They still live there?”
“No, the family put renters into it after Grandma died and Grandpa moved into a retirement community.”
“Must still love it if you and Jitter go visit often enough that he knows the way.”
“I—yes.”
There’s more to that story.
You can hear it in the hitch in her voice.
Wonder if it had to do with Chandler.
After a minute, she takes a big breath and lays her head against my shoulder again. “Laney, Emma, and I used to walk through this part of the park after school as often as we could once we discovered an old treehouse right on the edge of Grandma and Grandpa’s property.”
I start to smile. “You had a clubhouse.”
“We had a club . We were the ugly heiress society.”
I clamp my mouth shut so fast, my jaw audibly pops.
“It was Theo,” she says. “Emma’s brother.”
“The porn guy.”
“ Naked inspirational knitter , but yes. Laney and I met him in kindergarten, and when we were all in third grade, Emma leveled up and joined us. She’s a year younger but super smart.
She’d get straight A’s—or whatever it was they gave us in third grade—and he’d get parent-teacher conferences.
He and Laney hated each other, and I know it rubbed him wrong that his baby sister was outshining him at school, and we were all kind of heiresses .
Me to Bean & Nugget, Laney to Kingston Photo Gifts, and Emma to their dad’s taxidermy business, not that she wanted it.
Anyway, that’s what he called us. And it made Laney so mad that she told us we were going to own it and make him rue the day he made us tighter. ”
“She actually said rue the day in third grade?”
“You haven’t had a chance to talk to her much yet, have you?”
“I have not.”
“She’s mellowed since third grade.”
“Haven’t we all.”
She sighs and tightens her grip on me. “I miss those days,” she adds quietly.
I can’t imagine missing being younger.
But I would’ve if I’d grown up the way she did.
“You talk to Emma yet since she got home?” I ask.
“Oh, good, the parking lot.” She squirms. “I think you can let me down now. The path should be solid enough for Jitter and me to get to the car. Thank you for the lift.”
We can barely see where the cars are parked from here, but I squat and let her down anyway.
I know when I’ve pushed too far.
Maybe.
“You have dinner plans?” I ask. “Zen and I have this fridge full of every kind of food you can imagine.”
“I do. But if you’re looking for someone to share with, the senior center would probably take you up on the offer. Hope you didn’t get too cold. See you at work tomorrow.”
“Sabrina—”
“You are entirely too attractive for my own good. Thank you for the help. Thank you for being kind to my dog. Thank you for considering leaving Bean & Nugget as it is. But I have to go before I do something stupid.”
“Maybe it’s not?—”
“Oh, yes, it is. Just trust me. It very much is.”