Chapter 10 #2
“Barstool. But the point is, this didn’t happen because you did something careless.
It just happened.” He reaches over and wipes more tears from my cheeks, and as I glance up at him, I’m struck by what I see.
The compassion. The concern. The fact that he’s even here in the first place, taking care of Winston.
He’s taking care of me. There are probably a hundred other places he could be—maybe would rather be—but he’s here.
I thought he was an unreliable asshole; he’s slowly but surely proving me wrong without even trying.
As I look into his eyes, those deep ebony pools I was so struck by that night at the cocktail party, I wonder if they can show me who Beau Shanahan really is. “Beau—” I say when his eyes track down to my lips.
“You two must be Winston’s parents,” a booming voice says, and I tear my gaze away from Beau to find the vet in his scrubs standing about six feet from us.
We both scramble to our feet so quickly that he smiles.
“Don’t worry, he’s going to be fine. It’s a good thing you got him here so quickly.
I was able to induce vomiting and there was a lot of chocolate in that stomach of his.
I’m surprised he didn’t throw it up himself.
That usually happens before the other symptoms you described,” he says to Beau, “like the panting and racing heart.”
“Thank you so much,” I gush as I cling to Beau with one arm and clutch the other over my heart. I’ve never been so relieved in my life.
“Do you know what kind of chocolate was in those brownies?” he asks.
“It was Baker’s chocolate,” I tell him. “Plus mini peanut butter cups that had milk chocolate.”
“That explains why he had such a quick reaction. Baking chocolate is particularly high in theobromine, which is toxic for dogs.”
“Is that why he was so lethargic?” Beau asks.
“Honestly, that was probably just because he ate too much. It hadn’t been in his system long enough to cause that reaction.
I’m surprised he had any symptoms so quickly, actually.
But it’s good you got him in here when you did, because that much chocolate could have been fatal if his system absorbed it all. ”
“Can we see him?” I ask, because I just want to give that little face all the kisses after my ignorance almost killed him.
“We need to keep him overnight for observation, to continue monitoring him for symptoms of poisoning. I’m afraid that if you go back there and see him, he’ll get all riled up, and we really need to keep him calm right now.”
I feel my chest deflate with a silent sigh. “Of course, that makes sense.”
We make arrangements with the front desk about checking up on Winston in the morning, and when we walk out the door, Beau puts his arm around my shoulders and guides me down the street to where he parked my car.
“Want me to drive?” he asks as he unlocks the car.
“Sure,” I say, relieved to not have to focus on anything other than my immense gratitude that I didn’t kill the world’s cutest and most rambunctious puppy.
He opens my door for me and when he plops himself into the driver’s seat, I ask, “So, how exactly do you have my car?”
“Your keys were still hanging in the entryway. I didn’t know what else to do but take it.” He starts the car and cranks the heat, then glances at me. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t.”
Beau pulls out of the parking space and we glide along the road, which is coated with the slush that’s left behind after many cars have driven over salted, sanded snow.
I pull out my phone and open Winston’s Instagram profile, wanting to see his adorable face and remember a time when he wasn’t lying in a crate in a vet’s office being carefully monitored for a toxic overdose of theobromine, a chemical I didn’t even know existed before tonight.
“Holy shit,” I say when the app opens.
“What’s wrong?” Beau’s voice has an edge of panic to it as his eyes fly toward me.
“Nothing,” I say, “eyes on the road. It’s just . . .” I pause as I hit the appropriate icon to find out why I have so many notifications. “Thousands of people have liked Winston photos today. I checked this morning, and we had a little over one hundred followers. Now we’re almost at ten thousand.”
“What the hell?” Beau mutters as he turns onto the main street that will take us back home.
“Oh my God,” I squeal. “It’s the photo I took of you and Winston this morning.”
“What?”
“That’s what’s gotten all these likes.” I click over to the photo and start scrolling through the comments. “About a quarter of the comments are about how cute Winston is. The other three-quarters are about you.”
“Right,” Beau says, obvious disbelief in his voice.
“And I quote ‘I’ll adopt that puppy if the hottie comes with him . . . Hopping on the next flight to Park City . . . I’d switch places with that puppy in a heartbeat.’”
“What the hell? I don’t remember the photo being anything special,” he says.
“You doubt my photography skills?” I say, pretending to be offended.
As far as photos go, it really wasn’t anything special.
The reason I snapped it, and the reason I posted it, was because of how much love I could see in the way Beau was holding and looking at Winston.
I get the sense that Beau’s never really had to think about anyone except himself, and Winston is giving him a chance to be a better version of himself.
“I mean, I could teach you a thing or two,” he says, and I can see the half smile curl up one side of his lips.
He’s fucking with me. Or does he really think he’s a better photographer than I am?
The photos I saw of his the other night were great, but they were heavily edited.
When it comes down to it, I bet I could still take a better raw photo than he can.
“I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know about photography.
” I’m joking because given the age difference, I have more years of experience than he does.
But he bristles at my words—I can see it in the sudden tensing and then the forced relaxation of his shoulders, in the hard edge of his rigid jaw.
“Want to put a little wager on that?” he asks.
I’m the opposite of a betting person, the kind of girl who always takes the sure thing over what could be.
Give me double or nothing odds and, even if I think I could win, I’d always stick with what I have.
The safe bet. Because there’s certainty in the known quantity, especially when there’s more to be lost than gained.
“How could I agree to a wager when I don’t even know exactly what we’re betting on?”
“On who’s the better photographer, obviously.” He shrugs one shoulder as he turns down our street.
“As determined by . . . ?”
“We could use Winston’s account as a testing site. Whoever posts the photo that gets the single highest number of likes wins.”
“And if you win?” I ask Beau.
“You have to learn to snowboard.”
I let out a laugh that sounds practically victorious. He doesn’t need to know that I already know how to snowboard. I just prefer skiing. “And if I win?”
Beau looks at me as we sit waiting for the garage door to the parking area for our building to roll open. “If you win, what is it you want?”
That feels like a loaded question as he sits there, letting his eyes slide over me like he has all the time in the world and nothing to do but look at me. Why couldn’t my date have looked at me like that tonight?
“If I win, you have to be fully clothed at all times while in our condo.”
He glances forward, then slowly presses the gas so we pass into the darkened garage.
With far fewer lights than outside on the street, he is a study in contrasts: the distinct lines of the straight, flat bridge of his nose; the sharp angle of his cheekbone; his strong chin barely visible under his facial hair; the thick column of corded muscles in his neck.
Hell, he looks like one of those marble statues carved by the Renaissance masters, standing in a museum in Italy.
But better. I could take a spectacular black-and-white photo of him in this light.
Then he turns toward me, and says, “You’d win and then punish yourself like that? That’s savage.”
I’m so focused on the black-and-white photo I’m envisioning that for a minute I don’t realize he means that him being fully clothed would be a punishment for me.
“You’re such an ass,” I say as I slap his shoulder. He doesn’t even flinch, he just turns my car into my parking spot like he does it all the time.
“It’s okay,” he says, turning toward me. “Maybe you can’t be honest with yourself, so I’ll level with you. You don’t mind when I don’t wear a shirt. In fact, I think you’d mind it a whole lot more if you didn’t get to look at me half-naked all the time.”
“First of all, ew,” I say, and roll my eyes, hoping that he can’t see how my cheeks are on fire.
I thought I was being discreet checking him out.
I mean, it’s simple biology that my body would find him attractive.
Snowboarding uses literally every muscle, and his body is a testament to how good he is at it.
Rock-hard everything—every single muscle is individually cut.
It’s impossible not to look when a specimen of physical perfection is standing in front of you.
“And second, I spent the first thirty years of my life not having someone with a perfect body flaunting it in front of me all the time, and I survived just fine. I suspect it’ll be a relief when you leave and I don’t have to walk in on you half-clothed. ”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he says, and smirks. Like literally freaking smirks. I am not a violent person, but I want to smack that look right off his face so badly my hand twitches.