Chapter Sixteen Keely #2
“But it’s happened back home,” he said. “One of our goldens loves being outside. She’ll do whatever it takes to spend all day out there, and if it’s sunny?
Game over. Once, right before I left for college, she got out.
We couldn’t find her. It really messed with my summer training that year.
I couldn’t concentrate on anything—” He glanced over at her, pressed his tongue into his cheek, and cut off the rest of his sentence.
“Did you find her? And if the answer is no, just—lie to me a little longer. I need hope.”
He held a large branch out of the way, then paused on the other side of it. Was he waiting until she got closer to release it, so it’d hit her smack in the nose? “We’re going to find him.”
Tentatively, she stepped forward. It wasn’t until she was well out of the way that he let go.
“And to answer your question, yes. Goose came back after two weeks with a horrible sunburn,” he continued.
“Do you know how rare it is for a golden to get a sunburn? We ended up having to shave her to treat it. But she was home.” A small smile lifted the corner of his mouth.
“Henry said it must have traumatized her too, because she hasn’t run away since. ”
“Henry, as in your brother Henry?” They’d never had this long a cordial conversation, and Keely chalked it up to the lingering alcohol in her bloodstream.
Another item on her Reasons to Never Drink Again list.
He nodded. He gave the toy another squeeze and called for the dog.
“How is Henry these days?” Growing up, Max’s brothers had been annoying extraneous distractions from her best friend, but she supposed they were men now—not unlike the one standing in front of her.
Something inside of her jolted at the acknowledgment that Max was a man, and she tried to force the thought from her mind.
“And the others. . . Thomas and Jacob, right?”
“Right.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “They’re good. Thomas is married with a kid if you can believe that. Another boy in the family.”
“So many boys,” she murmured.
At Keely’s half-amazed, half-disgusted expression, Max laughed.
They used to laugh together all the time in school, both at and with each other, but Max had barely entered puberty back then. This one now was somehow both softer and harder, lower pitched. It wasn’t a bad laugh, as far as laughs went.
A bad laugh wouldn’t make Keely’s stomach churn with more of that same sickly-sweet pain.
His elbow brushed hers. “A totally different story in the Sinclair household, Miss Only Child.”
“Not quite.” His eyebrows shot up, and she laughed. “Vincent is eight. He was a complete surprise, obviously.”
“Is he a genius, too?”
“If by genius you mean ‘builds working model rockets from parts he finds at garage sales,’ then yes, he is also a genius.”
She shook her head and the treat bag as they stepped over another log. “Biscuit! Tr—argh!” She tripped on something hidden beneath the dead brush.
The bag of treats went flying, and her face was seconds away from scraping against the rough bark of an ash tree when hot, firm hands came around her waist. She wasn’t falling anymore, but her stomach didn’t get the memo.
“Careful,” Max snapped as he spun her around. He sounded. . . not mad, but definitely not happy. His hands swept down her arm, fingertips running over her knuckles and palm. “You’re so cut up. Is this from earlier, or the keg stand last night? Keely, you should have—”
“Max.” Her heart was suspended in the space between beats.
“I’m serious,” he muttered. “These are bad. You’ll need some antiseptic, maybe gauze.”
Her free hand—the one he wasn’t holding—came up to grip his wrist. “Max. Listen.”
“Keely, we need to—”
She gave up getting him to stop talking and did it for him by pulling her hand from his, placing it over his mouth instead.
His gaze snapped up. The tree cover doused them in shade, which explained why his pupils swallowed the golden flecks in his brown irises. His breath was hot on her palm, and while it was tender, it didn’t hurt anymore.
He blinked, his eyelashes fanning over his cheek. His mouth moved against her skin. Like he was going to talk again.
Or kiss the center of her palm.
Listen, she mouthed. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Not when they were more tangled than the brush along the path. Her hand was on his wrist, his mouth, and it was all too much.
Up ahead, she heard it again. The sound that had stopped her in the first place.
The faintest little bark.
As one, they took off running, down a hill, around one final curve in the path.
And there sat Biscuit, with his leash snagged on a downed tree, that shiny wrapper dangling from his smiling mouth.
They collapsed at his side, her knees sinking into the wet moss and grass.
She buried her face into Biscuit’s fur, right at the back of his neck. His fur absorbed some of her tears.
Max was similarly emotional, words rough around the edges. “What were you doing out there, dude? You have a stuffed squirrel back home.” He scratched behind Biscuit’s ears, throwing Keely a carefree grin.
She found herself smiling back, just for a second. Max’s pupils dilated further in the dim light.
Keely broke the moment, threading the leash onto her wrist and looping it around twice for good measure. As her pulse slowed, her body went heavy, limbs taking on twice their weight.
“Adrenaline’s wearing off,” she said, standing up. Then she groaned, because that meant the pain in her head and stomach would return soon too.
The three of them walked in silence to the shelter, and Max’s mere presence seemed to calm Biscuit’s frantic energy.
She wished the same could be said for her.
Most of the dogs were in the outside run when they got back, and Keely veered that way. When Max didn’t immediately follow, she paused. “Aren’t you coming?”
He shook his head. “I need to talk to Tricia about something.”
Panic scratched at Keely’s ribs. Max was going to tell Tricia what had happened, that Biscuit got loose, and Keely wouldn’t be able to count this toward her scholarship application either. He’d already sabotaged her once with Matilda. Several other times, actually.
Maybe that was the entire reason he’d helped her: to watch her screw up. If he kept collecting little bits and pieces of her failures, eventually he’d have enough to complete the whole picture.
“Sure,” she said weakly. She took a half step away from him.
It didn’t feel far enough.