“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. Some of them are real snappish and aggressive. I remember this one, he had a crazy look in his eye like he wanted to kill me. At that point I was seriously wondering what the fuck I’d gotten myself into, and then I looked over and saw this other dog gazing around at all the chaos with what I swear was a sneer on his face, like, ‘You peasants.’ That was Bosch.”
She stifled a giggle, picturing Geo on that barstool, his own expression exactly what he was describing.
“So you picked him?”
“Yep. I asked to work with him, and after two days, I knew he was the dog for me. One of our final exercises was to clear this house. He found the explosive odor right away, and then we were supposed to run out a side door into the yard where a dude in a bite suit was waiting to fight with him. Instead of going out the door, though, Bosch went out a window that nobody realized was open and fuckin’ pile-drove this guy to the ground. Boom!”
The little-boy enthusiasm in his voice reminded her so much of Rhys that tears sprang to her eyes. It’d been so long since she’d lain in bed and talked to a man like this, and she’d forgotten how nice it was.
She wiped the tears on the neckline of her pajama top. “Wow,” she said hoarsely. “That sounds intense.”
“It was.” He fell silent, and after a moment asked, “You okay?”
“What? Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine,” he said, then went on, his tone rueful, “I’m such a tool. You said you’d had a rough day, and here I am, just babbling on about myself.”
“Well, I like hearing you babble.” Her face burned. “I mean, I’m really interested in, you know, dogs. And stuff.”
Lani, you idiot.
“Have you ever had one? A dog, I mean.”
“No.” She sighed. “Rhys and I moved around so much, and we both worked, so it seemed unfair to have a pet.”
“That’s too bad,” Geo said softly. “Dogs are great.”
“Did you have dogs growing up?”
For a moment he didn’t answer, and then he said, “I had a fish once. But no, no dogs. My dad was too sick for us to have pets like that.”
“Oh. Did he—”
“He had MS. Died when I was eleven.”
Lani winced. “I’m so sorry, Geo. That’s rough.”
Her heart aching, she waited, knowing there was nothing she could say, no platitudes he’d want to hear.
He blew out a breath. “Anyway...”
She could tell he’d revealed way more than he’d meant to, and intending to distract him and hopefully put him at ease, she asked, “Do you think I could have a picture of Bosch sometime?”
He cleared his throat, then rasped, “Sure. He’s quite the ham when he wants to be.”
“Awesome. Text it to me?”
“I will.” His voice sounded stronger. “I’ll do it as soon as we hang up. And on that note...”
“Right. Guess we should probably get going.”
“Guess we should.”
Neither one of them said anything, or made any move to hang up, until Lani whispered, “Bye, Geo.”
“Bye.”
For a long time, she lay on the couch, staring unseeingly at the TV, her Chinese food ignored.
Geo’d lost someone, too. Not as suddenly as she had, but it’d certainly been traumatic. And he’d been a child, just like her.
A wave of pure empathy flooded her, which made the inevitable tears come. She sobbed until she had nothing left, until she was curled in a tight ball, her gasping breaths slowing to occasional sniffles. Finally she pushed to sitting, only to groan at the nausea now surging into her throat.
Trudging into the kitchen to make some ginger tea, she thought, “I don’t need this. I’ve got too much of my own shit going on to spend my energy crying over someone else’s past.”
Besides, Geo was a SEAL, one of the most mentally tough people on the face of the earth. He wouldn’t need her sympathy. He’d only followed up because he said he would, and if her baggage hadn’t scared him off before, it probably had now.
After her tea was brewed, she picked up her phone again. Yeah. No text, no pic of Bosch. In fact, it was highly unlikely she’d ever hear from him again.
Well, maybe it was for the best. For both their sakes.
Chapter Six
“Oh, God, I fucked that up.”
Groaning, Geo tossed his phone aside and slammed a pillow over his face.
Real smooth there, dumbass, bringing up your dad.
He hadn’t meant to. All of that was long into the past, when he’d been a different person with a different life. What in the hell possessed him to bring it up now? And why was it hurting so much all of a sudden?
Next to the bed, Bosch twitched his ears, his face impassive, although he cocked his head as if to say, “What was that?”
Geo groaned again. “Yeah. Here I am, talking to this great girl, and not only do I choke when she’s trying to tell me about something important, I dump my shit on top of all her shit.”
Dragging himself up from the bed, he buckled Bosch into his harness and clipped the leash on. They made their way out into the stifling hot night and headed toward the small greenbelt a few blocks away.
Once there, he let Bosch loose to wander, and explore, just be a dog for a little while. An occasional fighter jet screamed overhead as the pilots practiced night landings and touch-and-gos. With the combination of that sound and the heat, if Geo closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself back in Iraq. The only thing missing was the scent of honeysuckle. Each war zone had its own distinct scent. Afghanistan’s had been pine, from the forests high in the Hindu Kush. Iraq’s was honeysuckle.
Pulling a tennis ball from his pocket, Geo held it up. Immediately Bosch went into prey mode, muscles quivering, tail held high. Geo made him wait for a beat, then flung the ball into the darkness.
Bosch took off like a shot after it. This wasn’t a game of fetch. Once Bosch had his ball, he wouldn’t give it up unless commanded to. It was his to gnaw, to crush in his powerful jaws, to carry around, until Geo told him to drop it. Ambling after him, he let the dog have his reward for one full minute.
Upon the command to release, Bosch dropped the wet, slobbery ball at his feet. Geo scooped it up and threw it again with a sharp instruction for Bosch to hold, which he did, his whole body straining toward the direction it disappeared in.