Chapter 10
Ten
You don’t look a day over fine as fuck.
—Gentry to Sage
Gentry
I watched her try to work with Neo from the kitchen window.
It’d been a week since we’d moved her trailer over to the back property behind my house, and in that week she’d made almost zero progress with Neo.
He was out of his kennel, sure.
He wasn’t staying in her RV—that I made sure of when I gave her the ‘you can stay here but you have to be safe about this’ speech when she moved in. He was mainly in the backyard for now, refusing to go into his home we’d built him out of an old shed.
He refused to acknowledge her or me or anyone.
It was fairly heartbreaking to see Sage trying so hard and not getting anything out of it.
He wasn’t snarling, though, so I was counting that as a positive.
Anytime either one of us came near him, his ears pinned to the back of his head and he watched us as if we were about to harm him.
He ate. He drank. He laid out in the sun.
But he did not look like he was enjoying life like I’d once seen him do.
Seeing the defeated look on Sage’s face when she tried to lure him to her with his favorite treats, I headed for the back porch and whistled.
Both dog and woman looked up, but only the woman headed my way.
“Looking kind of sad,” I admitted as she came to within ten feet of me.
“I know that he’s doing better here,” she said as she came to a stop on my porch. “Can I have some of that?”
I handed her my cup of coffee.
She took it with a small smile before taking a healthy swallow.
“He looks better now that he’s not in the kennel twenty-four-seven,” I admitted. “But he still looks like we’re getting ready to beat him at any second.”
She took another swallow, not saying anything.
“He likes lying out in the sun, too,” I pointed out. “I noticed that he ate all of his food today.”
“He did,” she nodded. “Do you think he hates the muzzle?”
I studied the muzzle for a long time before admitting, “I think he actually looks rather comfortable in it.”
“I do, too,” she confirmed, still looking at the dog like she’d lost her best friend. And maybe she had.
I’d given her the dog for a reason.
She’d always looked so dang lonely every time I’d seen her.
I’d hated seeing the look on her face.
She’d come to every single day of my trial.
She’d written me every single day—even though by the guard’s admissions, I’d never seen a single one of them.
She’d looked so lost in that moment that I knew I’d do anything necessary to get the dog healed to put a smile back on her face.
Did they make dog therapists?
I picked up a ball off the picnic table and started to bounce it almost absentmindedly.
It was the dog’s, of course.
Sage had tried everything from treats to toys to gentle talking.
The dog didn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone.
But today, his head picked up and he watched me as I bounced the ball.
“Huh,” Sage said. “Try throwing it.”
“At him? Or near him? What?”
“Uh.” She paused. “Maybe just near him. See if he goes for it.”
I did, not quite hitting him, but getting really close to him.
The ball landed next to his feet and he watched it roll to a stop.
Not quite touching him, but if he reached, he could get to it.
The ball came to a stop and Neo watched it.
He picked his gaze up to watch us, then back down to the ball.
He did this for several seconds before he finally settled on us.
Sage and I started talking about the next steps with him. But as we spoke, not giving Neo any attention, he started to creep closer and closer to the ball.
The more we talked and “ignored him” the closer he got until he had the ball between his paws.
“Aces,” she whispered.
My lips twitched and I held out my hand for the coffee cup that she’d almost drained.
She handed it to me, and I went inside with Sage following behind me.
The moment she closed the door, we both watched in surprise as Neo got up and started to try to pick up the ball.
The ball was too big to fit in his muzzle, so all he ended up doing was chasing it around the yard.
Sage sniffled.
“He’ll get there, Herb,” I promised.
She cleared her throat. “Do you think so?”
Before I could answer, the doorbell sounded.
Neo laid down flat, ears pinned back, and glared at the house.
He’d heard the doorbell, too.
A doorbell meant visitors.
And he didn’t like visitors or surprises.
I looked at the door.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” she asked.
“I have a gate,” I grumbled. “Whoever is on the other side of that door isn’t someone I want here.”
“What if it’s FedEx? Or UPS?” she countered as she walked to the front door.
“They would’ve left the packages at the gate like they always do,” I pointed out, walking behind her to the door.
I wouldn’t let her answer it alone.
Whoever was on the other side had climbed over a fence to get here. Then walked a full fucking mile down a gravel road to get to the front door.
Anyone else who had come visiting would’ve called before they did that.
Seeing as I’d had my phone on me since I woke up, I doubted that it was anyone I wanted there.
She pushed the curtains to the side and said, “It’s a woman.”
I followed her line of sight and scowled.
“What is it?”
“The receptionist for the sheriff’s department, Kelly Waller,” I grumbled. “You answer it. I’m not here.”
“What?” she squawked. “I can’t answer the door to someone you work with!”
I left, leaving them both there.
She could answer it or not, I didn’t care.
I whipped off the t-shirt that I had on and tossed it into the laundry room as I passed.
Today I was going for a run.
Maybe I’d take Neo with me.
He hated the leash, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t run beside me. Or near me.
And seeing as I was now forced to do a trail run on my own damn property instead of going down the road like I’d originally been intending…
I walked out the back door and Neo came to his feet.
I walked past him, giving him a wide berth, and called, “You can come with me. Or you can stay and deal with the psychopath that never takes no for an answer.”
Neo watched me leave.
He leveled the open gate with an intense look, and I wondered if he’d follow me or stay.
I started out at a jog, careful to let my muscles get warm before I pushed it to anything more intense.
I heard a rock behind me click, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Neo there, but far enough away that there would be no chance of us accidentally touching.
I turned back around and kept my eyes down, making sure that I didn’t die on a loose rock.
It was cold out today.
Colder than the locals said it was supposed to be.
I doubted that we’d make it much longer before there was actual snow.
Being from the South, I’d never gotten the chance to experience a true ‘winter’ until I’d moved here last year.
I’d been thrust directly into snowmageddon, and forced to learn really fast how to survive a Montana winter.
I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would.
I didn’t exactly love it, either.
What I for sure loved were the mild summers.
It got hot here, sure.
But it didn’t get overwhelmingly hot.
Plus, it always managed to drop low at night, so even if it was hot during the day, it wasn’t at night.
By the time I’d run three of the six miles that I’d intended for that day, I started to get thirsty.
I could hear Neo’s panting behind me and knew he had to be dying, too.
I made a detour down to the brook that bisected my three hundred acres and stopped next to the bubbling stream in hopes that Neo would go for a drink.
He didn’t disappoint, walking directly into the water and lying down like this was the perfect spot for him.
I took a seat on a boulder and stared up at the sky.
Where my property was located, it wasn’t directly next to the mountain. But it was close enough that I had a pretty damn good view of it.
As Neo panted lazily next to me, I wondered what Sage thought of this place.
I also wondered if she’d gotten rid of the psychopath.
Then a smile lit my face because there was no doubt in my mind that Sage hadn’t gotten rid of her.
Sage was a force of nature.
She was quiet and unassuming…until she wasn’t.
I’d witnessed that in the courtroom once when she’d had to get on the stand to testify.
“We call Sage Rice to the stand.”
“Sage Kelly,” Sage corrected the man when she took her seat.
“Sage Kelly,” the prosecutor said. “I’m sorry.”
His smile was smarmy, and I wanted to punch it right off his face.
“Ms. Kelly, can you state your name?”
“My name is Mrs. Sage Kelly.” She emphasized the Mrs. and the “Kelly.”
The prosecutor looked taken aback by the vehemence in her voice.
That was the thing about her.
She looked all unassuming until you pissed her off.
I’d done that by telling her she didn’t need to come to the trial.
It’s not like she really needed to be there to see me go to jail for defending her.
But she felt a sense of necessity and obligation, so I hadn’t thrown too big of a fit.
It wasn’t like I could control her.
She may be my wife, but it was in name only.
Plus, we barely knew each other.
It wasn’t like there would be any consequences for her if I’d protested and she showed up anyway.
I was literally in jail.
I couldn’t control anything she did.
“Can you tell us about that day?” the slimeball asked.
I’d dubbed him “slimeball” because he’d made light of what had happened to Sage.
He hadn’t thought it to be a big deal at all.
A “simple misunderstanding” in his book.
I called it straight-up rape, but it wasn’t like I could make him comprehend that.
If my hands were free, I might could beat some sense into him.
But other than that…
“Where do you want me to start?” Sage asked sweetly.
“How about when you saw Mr. Kelly in the coffee shop.”
Sage spoke about her evening, what had led her to that coffee shop, then leaving the coffee shop when Nadine had arrived.
“You speak of Nadine like you didn’t like her,” the prosecutor accused her.
Sage crossed her arms over her chest.
It pushed her breasts up in the dress she was wearing.
Which I’d thought to be completely demure until that moment.
The prosecutor and one of the jury members noticed as well, their eyes zoomed in on her cleavage.
“I didn’t like her,” Sage interrupted my feast of her breasts.
“She was an awful teacher. She pushed her ideals on you. She got mad when you didn’t think the same way that she did.
She got angry when we said something that contradicted her.
Then she graded us so harshly that most of the class had to either drop it or take a failing grade. ”
“And you didn’t drop her class?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been very good about pretending my entire life. What was a summer course, when I spent the majority of my life pretending that I was happy when I wasn’t?”
Her words made my stomach clench.
“And do you think that it was understandable that Nadine Woolsy wouldn’t want a violent man having time with her child?”
“I think that she didn’t know him at all, and that it only made her sound even more disillusioned. I’ve never gotten anything but calm vibes from Gen—Ramsey.”
“What happened after you left the coffee shop?” the prosecutor directed her.
“I headed to where my car was parked. When I got to the parking lot, Mario O’Neal was there and directed me to get in the car.”
The next five minutes we listened to her recount what had happened in those minutes when she’d left the coffee shop and when I’d gotten there.
Even hearing about it, for the fourth time, didn’t dim the rage that ignited in my chest at the thought of anyone hurting her.
Or any woman, for that matter.
“After Mario was tossed to the ground and you got out of the vehicle, then what happened?” the prosecutor pushed.
“Then Ramsey held me until the cops arrived,” she said.
“He didn’t try to hurt Mr. O’Neal?”
“He didn’t try to hurt either one, no,” she confirmed.
“Hmm,” the prosecutor drawled. “Is that right?”
A loud bark snapped me out of my head, and I looked over to see Neo standing in the stream looking at me.
I got up and shook out my legs. “You ready to go back now?”
He didn’t exactly confirm, but he did climb out of the stream.
I started running back toward the house, keeping my gaze on the ground as I moved.
Loose rocks and debris might trip me up, but there were several rattlesnakes out searching for the last rays of heat in the day.
It would be just my luck that I’d step on one.