“Could you . . . not?” Nick asked.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.
“Oh,” Nick said. “One more thing. Cade, can you go grab . . . the package?”
The evil twinkle in Cade’s eyes immediately told me I wasn’t going to like whatever the package was. He actually set off at a jog and disappeared into a room for a few seconds. When he emerged, he was holding a leash attached to the ugliest dog I’d ever seen.
It was some sort of mutt with short brown hair and an underbite so extreme that all its lower teeth were permanently visible. It was freakishly big, too, and it immediately jumped up on me and wagged its tail so hard that its butt was shaking.
I cringed, but the beast was unrelenting. It kept pawing at me until I finally gave in and gave it one grudging scratch on the top of its head.
“Meet Thug. He’s kind of like the company mascot, and we apparently inherited him when we bought the business.”
“Thug?” I asked. “What kind of name is that for a dog?”
“Well, his full legal name is actually Bone Thug. But Dan said he’ll answer to Thug.”
As if confirming this, Thug’s head whipped toward Nick at the sound of his name. I was grateful to have what must’ve been all one hundred pounds of the creature off me. “Okay. Great to meet him, but I’m going to go.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I need you to find somebody at the company who can adopt him.”
“Dan seriously just left his dog?”
“It’s a mascot,” Nick said. “Thug is part of the image, and we need him to be happy and healthy. So until you find a good home, I want you to keep him.”
Nick stuck the leash out toward my hand. I stared at it.
“You want me to . . . I’ve never even owned a dog.”
Nick shrugged. “It’ll be good for you.” He reached out and took my hand, peeling my fingers open before sticking the leash in my palm. “I think you two are going to make a great team.”
I made the mistake of looking at Cade, who was practically giddy. The bastard was enjoying this. I considered finding out if Thug knew any attack commands but decided that’d be about as dangerous as pointing a gun at Cade and finding out whether it was loaded. I wasn’t quite there yet.
“Okay. Fine. I’ll find somebody to take him first thing tomorrow. How bad could one night be?”
“See?” Nick said. “That’s the spirit.”
I left as quickly as I could to avoid getting dragged any deeper into the madness that was the King brothers—except, I realized with a sinking kind of dread, escaping today was only delaying the inevitable.
The last ten minutes had made me feel like I was circling some kind of black hole, just barely resisting enough to be pulled any deeper, but caught in its orbit all the same. I knew I’d been spending too much time around Cade King, because I could practically hear his voice in my head. You’re circling Nick’s black hole, huh? Some kind of fetish you want to tell us about?
Despite everything, I grinned to myself.
This new chapter of my life was exactly the kind of thing I’d been avoiding for as long as I could remember. It was unpredictable. It stripped away control from me and put it in the hands of a man who had already proved he was capable of breaking my heart once.
I should’ve been terrified, but I had to admit there was a part of me that could hardly wait to see how this all went. It was either going to end in catastrophe, or it’d turn into the biggest challenge I’d ever overcome. At least there’d be fireworks either way.
I met Kira and Iris inside the West Valley High School gym for the annual pig-wrangling show. It was packed, just like every other town event in West Valley. Even the light snow outside and biting cold weren’t going to stop anyone. We all met up in front of the little foldout table where high school kids were selling entrance tickets for two dollars apiece. Once we had our tickets, we headed inside the crowded gym.
I should’ve been feeling better, but my run-in with Nick King still had my brain spinning. I had a new job, but it had come with a sloppy side serving of complicated mess.
Kira nudged me. “You coming?”
I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Actually,” Iris said, “she probably isn’t doing a whole lot of coming these days. Unless she busted that monster dildo back out again. What did you name it again, the ClamJammer?”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about that anymore. And, no, I called it the UpperCunter,” I said tightly. I discreetly looked around to make sure nobody had overheard.
Iris and Kira both stifled laughter.
“Sometimes,” Iris said wistfully, “I still see it when I close my eyes. Big. Black. Shiny. So imposing. I remember wondering how any woman could possibly fit such a beast ins—”
I pressed my palm to her mouth. My voice was wire tight. “I was going through a lot of stress in college. Okay?”
“I’d be stressed, too, if somebody tried to put that twenty-pound monster up my hoo-ha,” Iris said.
Kira tried to hold back a smile but failed.
“What?” I asked. “You too?”
“I’m sorry,” Kira said. “But I mean, come on. It was under your pillow. Unless you were planning to beat a home invader unconscious with that thing . . .”
“A change of subject would be great,” I said. “Or maybe just two friends who are sympathetic after a breakup instead of teasing me about being single.”
“Since when do you want sympathy?” Iris asked. “I got you a get-well-soon card once, and you lit it on fire because you refused to admit you were sick. Ten minutes later, I was holding your hair back while you blew chunks in the kitchen sink.”
“Wait,” Kira said. “I cooked you dinner that night. You threw up in the sink? Did you even sanitize it?”
“Could we all just agree to stop roasting me when I’m at a bit of a low point already?” I asked. “I thought best friends were supposed to help you out of the crappy parts, not smash your face farther into them.”
Iris held up her fingers and turned them counterclockwise, making a clicking noise with her mouth.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Roasters are off,” she said in a dull tone that meant I was stupid for needing it explained. “Oh, but speaking of monsters. How is the Thug life?”
I rolled my eyes. “Did Cade make you ask me that?”
She grinned. “No comment. But I have to admit the idea of some huge out-of-control dog in your perfect little life is kind of amazing.”
“Who says he’s out of control? I kind of assumed he was well trained.”
Kira’s eyes widened. “Did you put him in a cage or anything before you left?”
“A cage? Where am I supposed to get a cage big enough to hold a dog the size of a small horse?”
“Well,” Kira said cheerily. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
I felt a lump of anxiety the size of a basketball thump into my stomach. I put a lot of work into keeping my house pristine, and now my mind was racing with the possibilities of what Mr. Bone Thug could be doing to it while I was gone. “Maybe I should go back home and check.”