Chapter 25
Lark
I was making dinner. Actual dinner, on the stove, with ingredients that required chopping.
Not crackers over the sink. Not cold leftovers standing at the counter while I recalculated numbers that never got better.
I was standing in my kitchen with garlic and onions in a pan and Tova on her bed by the table and country music on the speaker, and I was cooking a meal for two because Logan would be home later and I wanted him to walk through the door to something warm and delicious.
We had money.
Isaac Baxter’s offer of a loan hadn’t solved everything, but it removed the impossible. It removed the acceleration clause, the thirty-day deadline, the number I couldn’t reach. I would pay him back with interest, because this was a loan and not a gift, and I was not a charity case.
But the terms didn’t come with conditions. Isaac hadn’t asked me to justify my choices or prove I deserved the help. He’d watched Fallon put her hand on Gimbal’s back, seen that what we did here at Pawsitive was important, and that had been enough.
I did not have to call my parents.
I did not have to stand in my mother’s silence and beg.
I could dance around my kitchen and be excited. Which I promptly did. Tova glanced in my direction then promptly curled herself back up into a ball.
I stopped my dance, reached for the cutting board, and started on the peppers.
Logan had headed to Warrior Security this afternoon. He’d decided to go back part time. Hunter needed another operator, and Logan had the skills and the training and the trust of the whole team.
Tonight was a session to get him back up to speed on protocols and comms. I’d watched him leave and felt something settle in my chest at the sight of it.
He was good at this work, and it was good to see him step back into it on his own terms, not because he was running from anything but because he’d found a reason to stay.
And I had time to focus on more grants. Figure out why the last two had looked so promising but then collapsed at the last minute.
I had time to figure out how to make sure Pawsitive was never in that financial position again.
If that meant birthday parties every other weekend, Logan and I were willing to do it.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
I wiped my hands on the dish towel and picked it up. Unknown number, but an Upstate New York area code. My thumb hovered over the screen.
I almost put the phone back down, but I wasn’t going to be a coward. I pressed the connect button.
“Eleanor.”
Damn it. I shouldn’t have answered. “Carter. I told you to lose this number.”
“I know. I was hoping you’d pick up, though.” The warmth in his voice was practiced, each word set in place with care. “I owe you an apology for last time. I’ve been thinking about it, and I was out of line.”
I wasn’t fooled a bit. “What do you want?”
“I miss you, Eleanor. I sit in this house every night, and I think about what I lost. I’m not the same man I was.”
I turned the burner down and leaned against the counter. He was performing. I’d heard this voice a thousand times across a dinner table, in a car, through a bathroom door I’d locked because it was the only room in his house where he couldn’t follow.
The wounded ex-husband who had done the hard work of self-reflection. The voice that said I’m being reasonable, Eleanor, and you’re the one making this difficult.
I was so fucking done with him.
“Carter, I need you to hear something.”
“Yes. Tell me. I’m listening. I want to listen more. I’m trying to be better.”
I rolled my eyes. I just wanted this to be over as soon as possible.
“I’m in love with someone else, Carter. It’s real, and I don’t want any further contact with you. Don’t call me again.”
The silence that followed was the kind that happened when a script failed and the actor hadn’t rehearsed what came after. I could feel him scanning for the right angle, the right lever.
“All right,” he said.
Carter Hollis did not say all right. Carter Hollis circled back, reframed, found a different door when the first one closed. He did not concede.
“I won’t call you again, Eleanor. I promise.”
I didn’t know what was going on, but I would take it. “Good.”
I ended the call before he could start whatever arguments he was surely prepping. I knew this wasn’t the last time I’d hear from him, but next time, I wasn’t going to answer. Or I’d block the number. Or maybe I’d hand the phone to Clarence and let him talk for me.
I smiled at that. Smiled at all of it. My hands weren’t shaking. My chest wasn’t tight. I was standing in my own kitchen with dinner on the stove and I had just told Carter Hollis I was in love with someone else, and the world hadn’t cracked open.
The property was quiet in the darkening skies through the kitchen window. I had just said I’m in love with someone else out loud, and it had been true. The simplicity of it surprised me. No qualifying, no second-guessing, no careful explanation of what I meant and why.
I was in love with Logan Stroud.
There was a second mug on the counter and a jacket on the hook by the door and a man who would walk through that door later tonight, and I wanted him to. I wanted him to tomorrow and the day after that and every day I could see from here.
I picked up my phone and opened a text. He wouldn’t see it right away, but I wanted him to have it when he was done with the training.
I don’t say enough how much it means to me that you’re in my life. And I’m glad you’re at Warrior Security, refusing to let your demons get the better of you. Come home safe to me.
And, of course, I knew I should add:
Tova says to come home safe to her too.
And while I was getting it all out in the open, I remembered…
Also, I never thanked you for the rose you left in my truck the other day while I was in town. You didn’t have to, and that’s what made it so special. Knowing you were thinking about me.
I almost typed I love you. I didn’t want to say that for the first time through a text. But I was going to damn well say it to his face tonight.
I sent it and put the phone down. I didn’t wait for a reply.
I turned off the burner and covered the pan. I’d finish when Logan got home. Right now, I wanted to go over the loan paperwork from Isaac one more time before we signed it at the notary.
It took me a while to look through it, but everything seemed in order. This was going to work. It was all going to work.
I took a shower, singing the whole time. I walked back into the kitchen, knowing Logan would be home soon. I looked out the window into the darkness and could see a glow from the barn. I must have left the aisle light on after evening chores.
My financial problems might not be so dire anymore, but that didn’t mean I wanted to waste electricity. I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door, slipped on my boots, and headed out.
I walked toward the barn. The gravel was cool under my boots and the air had the first edge of night in it, and I thought about the rest of the week’s schedule.
I had a training client and a new dog coming in.
I also needed to confirm that birthday party for next month and get the offering of birthday parties up as an official part of the Pawsitive website.
I pushed open the barn door and walked the aisle.
Duchess was in her stall, ears forward, watching me with her standard expression of measured disapproval.
Duke was curled in his kennel with his nose tucked under his tail.
The goats were scattered around the spread hay with Snowball closest to the front of the pen.
The rabbits, the ferrets, even Clarence with his cursing commentary were silent.
Frank’s snoring was the only noise filtering through the space.
The barn held the warm, heavy feel of animals at rest. Every living thing in its place, safe and settled for the night.
The way it should be.
I hit the light switch at the end of the aisle and walked back through the dark. I could hear them breathing around me, shifting in their stalls and kennels, the sounds of a place that was still mine.
I stepped outside and pulled the barn door closed. Turned and stopped.
Carter was standing between me and the house.
My body locked. The flinch I’d buried for years ran through me, and I involuntarily stepped backward and pressed into the closed barn door.
He was ten feet away. No idling car with headlights on in the drive, no parked car in the lot.
Nothing visible but him. He was just there, standing in my yard in the last of the daylight, and everything warm about this evening evaporated.
He’d been on the phone just a short time ago. He’d said I won’t call you again.
He hadn’t made an argument to keep me on the phone. He hadn’t needed to—he was already here.
“Don’t run, Eleanor. It will be much worse if you do.”
The hell I wouldn’t. I turned for the tree line.
If I could only reach it before— His hand closed around my arm before I made it three steps, and he jerked me back.
He spun me into him with a grip that sent pain lancing into my shoulder.
His other hand roughly covered my mouth, and I was looking up at him from just inches away.
He looked wrong. The Carter I knew was immaculate, every detail managed. This Carter had shadows under his eyes and a looseness in his jaw that I’d never seen, and something behind his eyes had come untethered.
“There’s no one here, Eleanor. I saw your boyfriend leave,” he said. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
He twisted my arm behind my back and pushed me across the yard in front of him, away from the house, toward the back of the property. I fought his grip, and it made no difference. He had sixty pounds on me, and he was holding my arm at an angle that punished every attempt to twist free.