Chapter Seven #2
“I’m going. But you should know—being scared isn’t a reason to be cruel. And you were cruel today, Matt. I won’t forget that.”
I pick up Penny’s leash, tap my leg once for her to come, and slam the bedroom door as I storm out. The tears swim in my eyes, blinding me as I stomp down the hall to the front door. Penny whines beside me, confused, glancing back at the bedroom we just left.
I don’t let the tears fall yet, and I make sure to slam the front door just as hard as we step outside. I walk to my car, and when I start to open it, the tears decide to fall.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I cover my hands with my face as I let out the tears choking my throat in violent sobs.
Penny whines and bumps my legs with her head.
I know what this is. I know what he’s doing.
I’ve watched him for two weeks now—the way the migraines flatten him, the way the nightmares wake him three hours into sleep, the way he won’t say what he saw when his eyes go somewhere I can’t follow.
He didn’t sleep last night. Something climbed into his head between when I left him last evening and when I walked in this morning, and he hasn’t let it back out.
This is a man holding the door shut against his own grief, and he just told me to leave because I was on the wrong side of it.
I’m not going.
I’m not driving home. I’m not telling my boss I quit. I’m taking a walk. I’m letting Penny stretch her legs and giving Matt the space he asked for, and then I’m coming back to that door. If he tries to send me away again, he’s going to find out exactly how stubborn the woman he picked actually is.
Because I did pick him too. Whatever he thinks happened back there, whatever ghost climbed into him overnight, I am not the one who’s leaving.
I’ve watched this man hold himself together with his teeth for two weeks, and I’ve watched him let Penny lean on him.
I’ve watched him reach for me at three in the morning when his nightmares wouldn’t quit.
I know what’s underneath the way he just spoke to me, and it isn’t that he doesn’t want me.
It’s that he doesn’t think he deserves to.
But he doesn’t get to make that decision for both of us. Not without a fight.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and look around. The Galloway property spans acres into undeveloped desert. A walk first. Air, space—give him an hour to remember he isn’t actually alone, then I go back through that door.
“How do you feel about a walk?” I ask Penny, swiping the back of my hand over my wet cheeks. “Just enough to let him cool down. Then we’re going back in.”
Penny perks up as though understanding me, and with one last glare at the house that homes one of the most infuriating men I have ever known, I let Penny lead me back to the car to swap her walking leash for the longer one I keep in the back seat.
I open the rear door and lean in for the long lead.
It's tangled around a water bottle and a tote, and I have to work it free one-handed while Penny stands at my hip, watching the brush.
I get it untangled and pull it out. The clip is in my left hand.
The handle of Penny's short lead is looped around my right wrist the way it's been all morning—the way it's supposed to be while I make the swap.
I bring the long lead's clip toward her collar and reach for the short lead with my other hand to unclip it once the new one is on.
Except my hands are shaking. They have been since I walked out of his bedroom. And sat some point, I'd dropped the short lead's handle off my wrist without noticing. I didn't double-loop it. I always double-loop it.
I have the long lead's clip an inch from her collar when a blur of brown and white shoots out from under one of the sagebrush bushes by my tire—a jackrabbit, maybe, fast and small and gone before I can register what it is. Penny goes rigid for half a second. Then she launches.
“Penny, no!”
The clip in my left hand catches nothing but air. The short lead's handle is not on my wrist where it should be. The leash whips across the gravel and disappears into the brush behind her, and then I see her copper streak, all greyhound, eating distance the way she was bred to.
“Oh my God, Penny!” I yell, running after them.
My shoes—flats meant for a PT session, not for the desert—slip on the gravel as I push off into the scrub.
She’s faster. Of course, she is. And these stupid shoes are not made for running on slickrock.
But Penny is a large dog, so I manage to keep her in my sights, ignoring the little cuts and scrapes from the dry brush and the bite of low cactus as I push through. “Penny!”
I run for what feels like hours before I find Penny at the edge of a drop-off, barking and clawing at a small opening in the rocks.
“Jesus. Penny!” I pant, dropping my hands to my knees as I try to catch my breath. “What the heck?”
She whines and claws at the opening before giving up and turning to me like I’m going to put my hand in that opening. “No,” I say firmly. “I love you, but no. Who knows what’s in there?” I bend down and grab her trailing leash. The relief of having her tethered again is so strong my hands shake.
She whines with disappointment but lets me pull her away from the drop-off, and when we emerge at an opening, my heart falls to my feet.
I can’t see Matt’s house anymore, and everything looks the same. Red sandstone formations, scrubby juniper, dry washes cut between the slickrock benches. The sun is high overhead—so much higher than it should be. We’ve been gone longer than I realized.
Oh my God. We’re lost.